I started my new job this week! First week down! Woot! I’ll be working mostly from home for now. Almost completely. Then eventually I’ll merge into a sort of hybrid of the two.
Now, I know working from home is an old hat to most people by now. However, as an essential worker, my ass has still been in a cubicle all year. So this is new for me. I wanted to give my thoughts on this whole thing. Well, initial thoughts. It’s only been one week.
MONDAY: Monday I went into the office for new hire orientation and to get badges and equipment and all that jazz. I found out I’d be working from home. This caused much anxiety. WHERE from home? Mr C works in the office! Where the fuck am I supposed to work? The dining room? My mind was racing. I also had a shit ton of training to do and no headphones so I left around three to nail this shit down. I decided to take one of the guest rooms and make it my office. I rotated the bed against the wall to make room. Mr C took my desk because his sucks, so I took an old card table and set it up in front of the window. Two computer monitors and a keyboard from my old computer set up and mostly there. I stole a reject office chair (Mr C has a sweet gaming chair for his setup). Then I headed to Office Depot for some monitor cable adapters and a mouse and boom! We have a work station. A few Harry Potter books for monitor raises and I have a comfortable two regular monitors plus my laptop set up.
TUESDAY: I rolled out of bed at 7:30 and logged in before giving the cat his meds and grabbing a drink. Fuck me, did I just get to work at 7:30 am? You’re damn right I did. This no commute thing has promise! Dude, I’m not even dressed! This is awesome. The cats curled up on the bed behind me. I like it. I like it too much. But I did end up grabbing a shirt because zoom meetings. Yay.
WEDNESDAY: I get called in for my upgrade badge. That was fast. I park it in my cube for a bit of training (so much training) and wait. When they bring me my badge, the girl next to me who started over a week ago asks about hers. Nope! Ha, I’m a high roller VIP, baby. Then once that was all done I ran three errands and picked up lunch for Mr C and I before getting back to work in my new office set up. So much training. I grabbed a foot stool from my bedroom nook and holy shit — this is what office work is missing. Foot stools. Why don’t we have foot stools? Between foot stool and the cat — I could get used to this WFH life.
THURSDAY: Fake Friday! Also after, literally, over twenty hours of training videos, I gotta get more comfy headphones. Shit. But I didn’t even get dressed today. Still got “in” before 8 AM. Got all my training finished up. Requested lots of role-specific stuff. Took an hour long nap for a lunch break. Talked to HR about December medical leave. Now I’m freaking out. I have to get paperwork and doctors notes and shit. But this is plastic surgery — can I do that? Guess we’ll find out tomorrow. I’m so freaking out now. Apparently you can’t just take unpaid leave like I could at my last job. SHOULD I HAVE STAYED AT THE LAST JOB? Fuck, I’m freaking out now. Gotta get this sorted tomorrow. Also need a white board command stripped to the closet too. Yep. Need space to hang stuff.
SUMMARY: I like it. For now. I don’t feel the satisfaction of finishing a good days work. I’m working more than ever because I can’t just jerk around because i’m “at” work technically. I have to show productivity. However, I don’t get to leave it behind. I feel like I should have done more. Like I should go back and do more. You don’t have that when work is across town.
Also, I need more chit chat in my day. I wanna talk to my coworkers. I wanna go out to lunch. This WFH thing may rock for a little while, but I can’t just never leave my house. How will I make friends? How will I get to know my team? I think ideally, I’d go in twice a week and work from home for the rest.
Those are my first impressions.
