My New Job

I just want to say that I'm really sort of loving my new job. I work as an account manager (for lack of a better term that doesn't require loads of explanation) for a small company that runs an online billing service. Including our CEO, there are 12 people in my office. Quite the change from my previous jobs where employees numbered in the hundreds.

The small business environment is soooooo different from the large corporate environment. Dress code? What dress code? I've never seen my CEO in anything other than cargo shorts and flip flops. This week, we started working 9/80s, which means that instead of working 80 hours over a 2-week, 10 day period, we work the 80 hours over a 9 day period: meaning EVERY OTHER FRIDAY OFF. Score! We ordered some food in for lunch today and took an hour and a half lunch break (we technically get 30 minutes); our boss even joined us for about 45 minutes of it.

The people are different too. When you work in a corporate environment, everything is so political. Greedy people selling you out to try to get that promotion ahead of you. It's not like that here. First off, there's no middle management bureaucracy. We have our CEO, an operations manager, and a supervisor. There's not a mish-mash of departments with a VP of this and VP of that, and "Oh, did you hear so-and-so in this-n-that department is retiring and they're going to promote somebody and I hope it's me." Everyone just chills and does their job. Responsibility is divied up equally and it's not about proving you're better than anyway else. People are encouraging and friendly, not standoff-ish.

It's always hard to enter a new work environment, but I think this is the easiest transition I ever made. My first job was working at a restaurant when I was 16. Restaurants are different than any other workplace, I think. Because of the hours that you work and the lifestyle that a lot of restaurant workers lead, there's always something going on. Your fellow employees tend to be students in college, or people that never went to college and therefore can't really get your typical office job. Party here, party there. Everyone is cool, and you get invited to go out with them, but there's still a period of acceptance where you have to show that you can hang. That's a whole lot of going out. Still, I loved working at that restaurant; I had a lot of good friends during that time.

With the job that I was working at when I moved to California, I was working in a customer service call center for an insurance company. Call centers are a whole 'nother thing too. With call centers, you typically start out in a training class. You are with a big group of people that are all new too, so you band together and make friends that way. Those people are the ones that you tend to stick with; you usually spend upwards of 8 weeks with them in a classroom with the same breaks and the same lunches. Once you're "out on the floor" you don't have to worry about the other employees accepting you because you've already got your group. Call centers are clique-y. Not intentionally, but it just happens by design. I had that in Indiana. Once I moved to California, I was like an outsider again. I didn't have a class of friends. And everyone else already had their class, and there's not really room for outsiders.

When I went to work for the mortgage company from hell, that was my first work experience entering a corporate environment as a single person by myself. It was a really strange time. I was no longer in a world of "hey, what are you doing this weekend?" or "wanna go get a drink after we get out of here?" It was really hard for me to adapt. It wasn't a place where coworkers were friends outside of work. It actually was kind of was a lonely time for me. Since moving to California, I haven't really made a lot of friends. Not because I'm mean or have no personality or whatever, but mostly because I don't really have the forum to meet any. When you're younger, your main way to meet friends is through school and work. Since I lost that college forum four years ago when I graduated, that left work. And there I was in a place where people weren't really interested in getting work friends. Except for these two girls, but their conversations were so vapid I couldn't stand to listen to them.

So that brings me to where I am now. I've been here six weeks. Everyone is so nice. They're actually interested in what I did last weekend, or what my plans are for this weekend. They're interested to know how I met my husband. They ask questions, they're involved. Some of the girls have a happy hour planned for an evening next week and they invited me.

It's really refreshing to be in job where I actually enjoy going to it. Sure, I get the Sunday night blues, because who really wants to get up on Monday mornings to fight traffic and go to work? But the point is, once I'm there, I like my job. It's refreshing to be in a job where I'm given responsibility and accountibility. It's refreshing to work with people who don't suck and who I actually want to be friends with, not people that I pretend to be friends with from 8am-5pm because I feel obligated to.

Everyone always says when you get laid off from a job "Don't worry, you'll find something better." I think I have.