OK, so first impressions… I will never make any real close personal friendships here. At all.
This job is in a very tiny town, owned by a very large family for about a hundred years or so.
If I had to compare personalities by bands, I would be the Sex Pistols to their local church choir with that family friend who is tone deaf and very loud.
My sense of humor is usually cranked to 11, even downright caustic at times, and level 2 on a scale to 10 just blows them away, I have to temper it further or just be quiet. It’s like time stood still and Andy Griffith is the only risque thing they know. I don’t understand how some locations in the world just seem to be time capsules hiding in little pockets around us.
One of my co-workers seemed surprised that I didn’t spend just… random time in this tiny little town. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that despite being born in the same state, I have never found anything in the particular town in it worth visiting. The town I currently live in is kind of dull but has more going on it than this one does… so no?
Do not mistake me. They have all been very nice, very accommodating, and hell… even very worried I’m going to find the job itself so stressing I will leave.
The person I’m replacing has a very ill spouse at home, is long past retiring age and, understandably, wants to spend what time they have with their family. They are really classy, stoic and I’ve enjoyed getting to know them.
They have been with the company about thirty to forty years and know everyone and everything. If I dug a little deeper, I think I might find the start of a wicked streak in there, and I already get the sense they do not miss a thing, despite rarely commenting on any of it.
Still waters run deep.
By week two, they’d already flat out said they regretted leaving a job they had for ten years prior to this one. How do you regret several decades of time spent in a place you didn’t want to be and not change it?
We both hate gifts and getting sucked into feel good work-sponsored present-swapping and holiday crap. We share a hatred of paperclips. We’d rather sneak out the back when no one is looking when we leave forever, rather than stop and say goodbye and we HATE being the center of attention.
I sincerely hoping I’m not looking at my future. I would like to think I have the courage to change and walk away by now, considering I’ve been forced to enough it no longer scares me as it once did.
The company assumed that once my predecessor’s spouse got out of the hospital during a rough patch, the “I’m retiring, you need get someone in here” would be taken off the table.
They were wrong.
So while at the same time I will miss them terribly on their last day, I wouldn’t have a job if they stayed.
The tasks themselves are less challenging than I have ever dealt with. My predecessor is a very manual, hard-copy loving person who embraces the concept of “triplicate” for recording keeping. They have files from before my birth, and as I’m am now phasing into the trombone-reading stage of my life, “young” no longer applies.
I kind of blew their mind a little when I used the snip tool, with Word. They were not comfortable in this program and never played with taking screenshots or even print screens.
Their superpower is knowing the exact idiosyncrasies of every person in the building, anticipating needs even they don’t realize and meeting them without fail or complaint. You want a report with only red pen annotations done in such a way… it will be done, every single time.
They have been the person who is privy to all the crap no one wants anyone else to know about for so long, I’m actually surprised they hired an outsider to do it.
I’m also grateful they did.
I have already been informed that although the company supports having crossover training and backup, my position will be the one they want strictly limited with few that have access. Considering I’ve rarely if ever (read: never) missed a period of time that required all hands on deck, I do not see this will be a problem. Even while sick, I figured out a way to bypass IT and work from home despite their declaration it couldn’t be done.
Suck it, Chad.
One a side note, there is a single person in my department that seems to get my sense of humor, as they possess it themselves.
Co-Worker:”Hey I know your predecessor isn’t here right now so you might not have gone over this, but I believe they only file it until the audit to support this entry we do for this thing.”
Me (deadpan):”You know you could tell me anything at this point and I would believe you.”
Kindred Humor Spirit (sits behind me):*snort*
As to how deep that well of smart-ass is, I am not sure. So far, I only know of one fandom we share and it requires a pretty sharp mind to enjoy it. So I have hopes.
But the rest spend a bulk of their time confused, stunned, possibly borderline offended or surprised by my humor. By the shit I consider lame and rather dull and unworthy of so much as a snicker. I heard at least twelve references to god and prayer in the first week…
Prayers don’t do shit, actions do.
So essentially, I’m surrounded by diet vanilla yogurt. It pretends to be healthy, but has no nutritional value. Despite being a flavor that generally appeals to the masses, it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
We’ll see how things progress.
idioglossia: the blog 