Adjusting to working life - First days at the new place

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I've started to write this whilst I wait for the recommended 30 minutes to elapse on the latest self-learning course. I figure it's best to close the task as near to the allotted time even though I finished the reading the slides and the short PDF, twice, in ten minutes. This course is just one of 74 that have been assigned to me, based on my role, via the learning management system. I have a feeling that part of the test on a new hire is the ability to overcome the wall of documentation without throwing the towel in - so far so good.

I started on Monday, sat in induction meetings all morning, got my badge, account+password (the windows login at least), and a brand new laptop which is to follow me around and be locked away at night. There were four other new starters, but none of those are in my department. One of the guys said he hadn't been employed for 10 years - this made me feel better for my 2 year absence!

Since Monday afternoon, I've been mostly picking this short courses, and introductions to the various policies, laws, tools, systems, and other tough to stay away to stuff - there is a lot, and because none of it is 'hands on', it's pretty easy to drift away whilst the robotic voice gives you some information that will unlikely aid you in the future.

I get it though, the sector is heavily regulated, and the company needs to cover its backside. Each piece of material has a due date, logs your start and end time, and no doubt goes back to the manager in the form of a nice chart so he (in this case) can see if you've managed to keep your eyes open and click on the next one.

Free tea and coffee though, this will help!


From my position in the office I have a pretty reasonable view of the windows and can see the renovation work going on at Nottingham Castle to the west, a clock tower close to the market square to the north, and the clock tower at the train station to the east - not bad at all.


nottingham-2856858_1280.jpg
Not far away, although the blue sky has been edited in :P source

The floor is very open plan but quiet enough at present, although this may change in the next week or two when the schools are back at 100%. One thing I was dreading was the one temperature doesn't fit all thing going on with open plan offices. And yeah, I have a faint cold draft above my head. At lunch I walked home (timed at 8 mins) and brought a hoodie back for the second half of the day. The dress-code can kiss my ass - If I'm cold then they will get little work out of me.

So far the people I've met have been very welcoming, as you would expect in week one I think. My boss, who wasn't at the interview, seems decent enough. I had a meeting with him yesterday and we spent a lot of the time talking about football and our children, who are of similar age. He's asked how the reading is going on, and made it clear that I should take regular breaks as to not suffer 'death by LMS'. And I've happily followed his advice and stretched my legs by navigating the spiral staircase down to the front of the office to check out the canal for a couple of minutes.


My last post was Sunday, and whilst the Steem downtime was partly due to this, the other reason for last nights non-entry was that I was just too tired. I did my Splinterlands quest, wrote the Fantasy League entry for Acidyo, logged an actifit report that had been in the making for three days, burned through 10 accounts sat at 100% DV, downvoted a couple of posts, and had nothing left in the tank to do anything else.

For the past couple of years all my content has not been scheduled and has been produced on the day (unless it's taken multiple days). I'm not sure how well that is going to work for me during the week any more. Stats posts take time to put together, and if I'm offering data then the comments/replies can take just as long as the main Post. Hopefully I'll get used to this 9-5:30 malarkey and have some energy left for the evening so I can put out some data related posts, and not just free-write on my 'busy' days at work.

Alright, 'Fire Safety Plus' is about to start - time for a coffee...


Aha! Made it home to tidy up the spelling mistakes and find a photo. I've just remembered that on the turn of the month I should be offering a report - that will be tomorrow I think.

Cheers

Asher



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42 comments
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It looks to be a very good organization! With training, laptop and coffee for free...
For the moment everything is fine.
Enjoy!

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Yeah the perks are there early on as an incentive to gear you up on what's to come I think!

Cheers :D

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Congrats on starting the new job. I hated all the CBTs (Computer Based Trainings) I had to do at my old job. My current job just requires 1 mind-numbing day to sit through and 8-hour class and then you're pretty much completely done with mandatory training.

I have my fingers crossed I'll one day find a job with a view.

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(Edited)

Thanks!

I've not added the times of all the courses together but I would say it's 2-3 week back to back - one course is a week long!

I wouldn't say the view is spectacular but it is nice to have windows overlooking parts of the city on all sides - a small win :)

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Great to hear how you're getting on Asher but don't pit pressure yourself to keep up here. More fun to see what you can get done at leisurely pace and adjust from there.

The start of your job sounds pretty boring. How long will it be before you do some work rather than learning?

View sounds nice though so at least you have do a bit of gazing out the window.

i hope it continues to go well for you and you settle in nicely.

Thanks for the update. 😍

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Thanks Gill! Steem is all I've known for two years though and so I can't help not wanting to be involved!

The start of your job sounds pretty boring. How long will it be before you do some work rather than learning?

Hopefully next week - tomorrow and Friday are booked up with other courses - at least these are hands-on training though, I have more of a chance of staying awake :D

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I'm sure it will all settle down and you will still be involved in Steem in a big way. Just differently.

And . . . think of all those new people you will be able to bring onboard. 😁

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Perhaps :) If I had 250k SP I would be Steeming differently, but until then posting content most days is the plan.

I've not mentioned Steem to anyone yet - plenty of time for that :)

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To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.

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Fantasy League?

And quit the alternative accounts now :)

https://economicstudio.github.io/vp/?a=abh12345&t=PAL

Change the &t= portion of the URL to the ticker symbol of the token VP you'd like to check..
And near the bottom right of the page you'll see a link Vote Weight Multiplyer followed by your current setting.. click on the words, and there you can change your vote multiplier with ease for the specified token in the URL! Works a breeze to keep tribe VPs in check!

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Fantasy League latest :) https://steemit.com/premierleague/@acidyo/5xdafi-steem-fantasy-premier-league-gameweek-4-review

Yes I've seen that useful link and use it for a couple of tokens like PHOTO and INV, but for more popular ones I have the alts. It is more work but much more flexibility.

So for this post, I am going to vote all the comments with my '.life' account and probably a couple of other accounts, saving precious Steem voting power for Posts :)

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Interesting.

You could set up high multiplayer, such as 50, and then just vote the comments with your main @ 1% ;)

But since you've already done the work to make all those accounts, I could see why ditching them would be hard thing to do.. but it must take a lot of work to maintain them all.

I'm just glad I discovered this link now, before I was enticed to create an alt for some tribes, because my VP was sitting at 100% for most until I changed the multiplayer. Now maybe I should expect to see more tribe tokens rewarded as a nice side-effect of vote increasing too :D

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I could, but then if i get 10/20/50 :O comments, then I'm sending a lot of VP to the dust.

Hopefully you will see a nice little increase in your curation rewards from the tribes :)

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Oh man I hate those courses! I had to do a wodge of them lately! The first couple of weeks in a new job is always good if a little boring. Welcome back to the land of the bored office workers!

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Getting paid to stay awake!

I can't wait to get stuck in, although I'll likely regret that statement soon enough. Cheers!

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That is the perfect way to describe working, getting paid to stay awake. It is both the job and the challenge!!

Soon you will be an old hand, like a cowboy standing at the bar of the saloon, ready to draw on anyone who messes :OD

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(Edited)

I thought you were going to describe the old hand as the person who looks like he’s working but is actually in the land of nod - what a skill to possess!

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We had a guy that fell asleep once and his head slumped all the way down onto his keyboard and it started making that annoyed bleeping that they do when the buffer gets full and someone had to go and give him a shove. He still never woke up, haha!

Maybe not as skilled as that :O)

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That is massively skilled - he must have been tired!

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Speaking in my old role as an accountant who used to write blog posts too - try getting up ## minutes earlier in the am to do some writing, posting, voting, or whatever works for you.

I was also a single mom in those days, and did this 45 minutes a morning mon-thurs for years. I had to get up at 4 am and went outside wake up to for 15 minutes first. Those were often the most productive times of my whole week.

The key was having a list made on Sunday of what I wanted done by Thursday. "Sleeping in" on Friday was a thrill.

Then getting the kid to daycare by 7 and working 7:30 to 5:30 for my 1 hour of overtime pay per day. I have no idea how I did this for ll those years, and I am glad it's over. I had a very short commute as well and that was a saving grace.

So behind on commenting - TY for all your very helpful support, @abh12345.

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I've been getting up quite early as my flatmate is out of the house an hour or so before me. And yes, I've been doing the morning token collect, a little reading and curation whilst eating breakfast.

Thank you for the encouragement :D

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Glad to help. The grind is not easy to get back into, but I think you are in the right place.

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That doesn't sound too bad. Once u get past all the induction stuff you will be fine. Imagine you might even enjoy it 😁

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Naa, not bad at all. More cash would be nice but I can't complain. Enjoy it, hmmm - steady on!

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Congrats on the start! Don’t forget your Splinterlands daily quests buddy! Have to get that DEC too!

Posted using Partiko iOS

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Oh yes, that’s one of the first things I do when I get home!

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Seems like you're settling in well, and 8 minutes to walk home...Gold.

I gave my sister in-law some advice this week as she also started a new corporate job.

I told her find out the most important things first: Where the coffee machine is, what time lunch is and when the hell is knock off time. Needless to say, she aced her first day!

Just joking of course. (Not really) 😋

Anyway, all the best with it..

Posted using Partiko Android

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The commute is a huge win for me - although I did enjoy the 13 km cycle each way in Valencia and considered it free exercise.

Yep, located the coffee machine, toilets, fire escapes, and canteen - that's about all you need for the first week or two. Cheers!

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Sounds like you're set for the next few weeks...After that maybe work out where your desk is. No pressure though, bit by bit. 😂

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Hey, @abh12345.

Well, cool. Glad to hear that you actually do have the job and that it's keeping you "oriented."

Nothing like my first day on the job. I guess when your a small company you don't have to cover your backside as much. I pretty much went on the job training for about seven days, and then the last two of my training I was sent off on my own in the afternoon to finish up. :)

Can't say I'm envious of all the recordings/videos to catch up on everything they think they want you to know. I wouldn't mind some orientation, though. :)

Well, now that we're back in the same boat, this time without the free time we once had—I'm not sure if it's worth it or not. My wife thinks it is, so I guess that's the main thing. It's nice to have some more money to pay pills with and maybe save at the end of the month, but it makes it tough to get the once a day post out (when the blockchain is up and running, right?).

Good luck. I wish you all the best.

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Cheers Glen

I much prefer 'on the job' training and feel that after these courses I'll need that like the self-managed learning didn't happen. There's still so many to take and more are being added each day I arrive.

Worth it, most definately for me, I couldn't survive without this income here in the UK. Hoping there is some left at the end of the month to, I don't know, buy some STEEM or something.

Thanks for stopping by :)

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Well, at some point the the self-managed learning has to end right? And then you actually get to do some work?

I've been trying to hand out some of these and they haven't been working.

!ENGAGE 20

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Cool!
I really hope your actifit things not about navigating that spiral case and staring at the canals for months 😂😂😂

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The staircase probably accounts for 300 or so step each day - I am grateful for the exercise and use them instead of the lift :D

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daaamn thats a new life for you dude!

Indeed, wait and see until you form your real opinion about it...and please get some office humor done down the road there

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Hope you can enjoy it! I think the hoodie is a great idea when you can't be on a sunny beach!

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Well so far so good. And the non schedueled blogs can be schedueled and we Will think you rock anyway.
And 74 courses after that you can be the CFO

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I thought that view looked familiar. The fountains and water features might be a bit different to 11+ years ago, though. Certainly different to my teen years. I think they were like that last year when my daughter visited.

How's the sky over Nottingham looking at the moment? Grey would be more familiar! 😆

Posted using Partiko Android

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Howdy sir Asher! Good to see that the job isn't bad so far, except for the boring tutorials. Hopefully it will get interesting once the real work starts!

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