Foreseeable Futures

I have now been working my new corporate job for a total of three weeks -- two weeks of training first, and this past week I've been on the floor doing my actual job.

This, of course, is why I haven't updated the blog in the past three weeks. No, I'm not dead; I am, in fact, very much alive and more financially stable than I've been in a long, long time.

As for the job itself, I can't really talk much about it. Legally, I mean. I had to sign a bunch of nondisclosure agreements when I took the job, as it is a corporate job in which I'm dealing with and working with/for very high-profile customers and accounts...and that's about all I can really say about it. I am little more than a middleman (in fact, I've been told that most of the job is "middle management") between those accounts and the massive corporation I work for as a business contractor of sorts. That's about as in-detail as I can go.

Everything I was told about the position is correct, however -- it is not necessarily a difficult job, but it is a very detail-oriented and somewhat stressful one. I'm seeing that already, even after only working one week of my normal shifts. And no, I've never done anything like this before, so it comes a little less naturally to me than to people who have worked in similar environments for years. However, each day I'm learning more and I'm able to work more quickly and naturally. In another week or two of experience at it, I'll be on par with pretty much everyone else in the office.

After all, this is what I wanted, right? A desk job in an office. Well, I got what I was looking for, at least. And, as you may already know, I get to work with the wife.

My shifts are staggered with hers, and I took second shift (3PM to midnight) when it was offered specifically for that reason. I work that shift Tuesday through Saturday. Daisy works the overnight shift Wednesday through Saturday. Four of my five at-work days, I will work more than half my shift with her. I am not working tonight, even though it is a Saturday night, because I got tonight as a paid day off to make up for Labor Day, which is a day I would've had off regardless as it was a Monday. Yeah, this company does that sort of nice thing for its employees -- anytime there's a paid holiday off that I wouldn't work anyway because of my schedule, I'll get a makeup day for it sometime during the rest of that week so that everything balances out. So does Daisy, technically, even though as a manager/supervisor she's a 24/7 employee. She's taking hers later this coming week, I think, as she can do that whenever she wants since she's fully salaried and not hourly (read: she doesn't clock in and out like the rest of us do).

As I've mentioned before, though Daisy is a supervisor there, she is not my supervisor. Technically she can't be, as it would be construed as favoritism/nepotism. There are several "teams" in the office led by three different supervisors, and I'm under one of the other ones. We also, of course, have to be professional in the office even though we're husband and wife, so this basically means we have to act like strangers in front of one another despite the fact that yes, we do sleep in the same bed together at home. I'm fine with this, though it's yet another new dynamic to me -- just because she's my wife doesn't mean I can talk to her and act like she's my wife at work; because she is a supervisor, even though she's not mine, she does technically rank above me and I have to treat her as a superior just as I would any other supervisor at any other job. This is not without its difficulties, but I think I've managed to deal with it fine. I can be professional and quite serious when I need to be, especially in a working environment.

Really, my goal in my new job is just to do well; Daisy now gets to see that firsthand. It's always been my goal in every job I've ever worked to do the best possible job I can do in my position and to be eager and look forward to going to work because it's another opportunity I have to learn something new and improve myself. That applies more to this position than any other position I've ever worked anywhere, I think. As I mentioned, there is a learning curve to the job -- some people take to it faster than others. I know people working there now who are picking up the ball and running with it quite well, and I know people who are taking a long time to learn all of the systems we have to use. I've been told I'm good, and I've been told I'm learning quickly, but really I don't think I'm doing any better or worse than anyone else at this point. I'm still new, and I'm still learning processes and procedures in the position every day. It's hard to memorize them all until I've been "on the floor" and experienced for longer than I have been now.

At the same time, I've thought in the back of my head already that this is not a job I want to do my entire life from this point forward, but it's actually somewhat fun (thus far) and challenging for me, which is something I haven't experienced in a long time. Teaching, for example, came naturally for me. It was not hard, it was not a challenge, even though it was very time-and-work-intensive at times. But, here's the thing -- this company has incredible opportunities for advancement, and it's a company that's never going away (it's headquartered here in Omaha, for one, and for two it's getting bigger every year). This is a position that -- as long as I can do the work and do it well -- pays me extremely well compared to any other job I've ever had, and in six months I qualify to begin moving upwards through the company if there are positions available. That's what Daisy did; she started out in the position I'm in now, applied for the supervisor position when she could, worked it on an interim basis for a few months, and got it officially shortly after our wedding.

So, if I like the company and enjoy the work I do for the company, I see myself working there in some capacity for the foreseeable future. If that means I eventually move up through the ranks, then so be it. If not, at least I have a position that pays me really well for what I do. Make no mistake, I am incredibly thankful I have this job. No, it's not teaching, but this actually feels like the beginning of a career for me -- and I haven't felt like that since before graduate school when I was working for the newspaper.

Ahem. Anyway.

A lot of little things have happened in the past three weeks, not all of them work-related of course (though it does seem like I'm there more often than I'm at home). It's been really stormy and nasty most days, and when it hasn't it's been either 90 degrees or 50 degrees with no real rhyme or reason to the weather patterns. As a result, my allergies have gone fucking nuts yet again. No wonder Daisy's doctors told her she was allergic to Nebraska -- apparently so am I, because my allergies won't go away. Like, ever. Oh, sure, I'll have some good days where they won't bother me that much, but I'll also have days where they systematically crush me and I can't breathe or go more than five minutes without blowing my nose. Let me tell you, that's fun to deal with when you're busy at work all night.

A week into my training, I went out to the car to go in one morning only to find that my car had been broken into and all of my stuff inside the car (read: what few things I've ever kept in the car) were all scattered and in disarray.

No worries, there was no damage to the car. Why? Well, it's probably because I can't lock my doors. I mean, I can, but I wouldn't be able to get back into the car afterwards because I don't have (and have never had) the door key. Yeah, my car is that old, so old that it has two different keys -- one for the ignition and one for the trunk and doors. I never got the latter key when I bought the car. Seriously. So for the past several years I've owned and driven my Monte Carlo, no matter where I've gone I've never locked the doors.

Whoever "broke into" my car rifled through my stuff, unsuccessfully tried to tear out my (non-working) stereo, and they took my really old GPS that was about useless and I got on Amazon for $30 or so used several years ago, but that's it. I'd even forgotten that I'd had the GPS in the car because I haven't used it in so long. My insurance cards and registration was still there, and the car itself was and is fine, so eh. Daisy called to report it to our apartment's management office (as it happened less than, oh, 40 feet from the building), and all they told her on the phone was "Oh, well, we haven't had any other reports."

As if that helps me or solves anything, right?

There's no use to file a police report or anything; I don't care about the GPS and there's nothing the cops could do anyhow -- other than tell me "well, we'll make a report, but it's not like you'll ever get your GPS back." It's just the principle of the matter that pisses me off. I told Daisy that if the thieves really wanted to fuck me over, they could've left the door ajar, as that would've killed the battery. We do have a security detail that does sweeps of the properties every night at least once or twice, but as the thieves were probably in and out of my car in less than 30 seconds, that doesn't help much.

I got my first paycheck yesterday, and Daisy got paid as well -- and we immediately began paying bills. Mine is a paper check right now as the direct deposit doesn't kick in until the second check, so I have to deposit it physically at the bank on Monday. However, eh, not a big deal. I completely paid off my Amazon Chase card tonight -- the card with the highest interest rate -- and over the next two months or so I'll be paying the others down and/or off completely as well. This weekend, on the days we have off together, we need to do our normal grocery shopping as well as run a few other errands -- such as hitting up the local Gordman's to see if I can get some workshirts with green in them. Literal green, as in, one of the colors in the shirt -- Dad gave me a ton of his old slacks and pants when he lost a lot of weight earlier this year, and many of those pants are a dark forest green. I have almost no workshirts with green in them, which means that while I look damned good in the pants, none of my "business casual" work attire will actually match them.

Yes, the dress code at work is "business casual" and it is fairly strict. Dress shoes every day -- no tennis shoes or other shoes/sandals of any sort. Shirts must have a collar. No jeans (except on Fridays). Slacks or khakis of any sort is fine, but no cargo pants. Women must wear hosiery with all skirts and dresses. Etc. Stuff like that. However, I've found that a lot of people don't necessarily stick completely to the dress code -- they only stick to it just enough to get by. For example, the dress code also states that all shirts must be tucked in. To that, I say "well, good luck." Most of my shirts won't tuck in (they're either not long enough or they won't fit under my belt/waistline and still allow me to button my pants), or they'll immediately pull out when I make any movement of my body above my waist. I've not once tucked a shirt in at my new job, neither in training nor in my actual position, and nobody's said a word to me about it. I'm not bringing it up if nobody else does.

I'm still getting used to my iPhone -- I'm a lot more comfortable with it now than I was before, and I know how to do/use most of the things on it, but I don't really mess with it that much. It's a phone, and I hate phones as it is. Today I was frustrated with it because you can't download files to it (unless they're, say, picture attachments) no matter what you do. For example, I sent an mp3 to myself this afternoon, an mp3 that I had edited and had turned into a ringtone. I can play it, yes, but I can't download it from my email and set it as my ringtone. You can't even turn a song you've purchased -- a song you own -- into a ringtone and save it that way. Apple won't let you. Can you buy ringtones from them and have them save to your phone? Of course. Want to do it yourself? Sorry, you're shit out of luck. There are apparently workarounds for it, but all of them involve installing iTunes on your computer and editing your own ringtones through that, then sending them to your phone, where Apple will apparently "recognize" them somehow and they'll work. Yeah, no, I'm not wading through all of that bullshit. To put this into perspective, I could download and set any ringtone I wanted, any ringtone I'd gotten from anywhere, on my Motorola Razr V3, and that was seven years ago.  Want to do that on an iPhone? Sorry, denied.

While I love my phone and I love what it can and does do, it's little things like that which piss me off. I get super-irritated about little things in all walks of life though, as you have probably gathered by this point.

On that note, that's about all that's going on right now. I'll continue to update when I can, though with my new schedule I'm not sure how often that will be. Is it possible I won't write another post here for three more weeks? Yes, but it's also possible that I'll write another one tomorrow.