Questions on the job

After 4 months of arduous searching, daily visits to Craigslist, my school’s website, and the OregonLive! website, I finally found a job, something that isn’t easy to come by in the current economic state we’re in. But God bless my contact at my temp agency (one of the many I applied to) who found me a position at a local distribution warehouse and got me an interview. After 3 trips to their Clackamas location, 2 interviews, and a lot of nerve-controlling chocolate, I landed myself an entry-level job in their offices as their new Customer Service Order Processing clerk.

I’ve never been so happy to delete shortcuts from my IE Favorites menu. Farewell Craigslist, OregoneLive!, Jobdango, Monster Careers, and school site. Good riddance, more like it.

Sorry. I just need a moment to revel in that.

Anyway, so I started my job yesterday. Man, I was prepared….at least at home. I had already decided what I was going to wear (in order to skip the 20-minute ordeal of standing in front of my minuscule closet, lamenting over the fact that I have nothing to wear), I had packed my healthy lunch (is it a faux pas to bring your lunch to work in an American Eagle bag?), and had the coffee pot ready to go for the next morning. I almost forgot to set my alarm clock for the ungodly hour of 5:45, but maybe that was just my subconscious rebelling against getting up that early. Which for a previously recent college grad who was sleeping in until 9 every morning, is pretty early. I walked in the door 10 minutes early with homemade cookies in hand, all in the attempt to make a good impression on the first day. We’ll see how long that lasts.

(Just kidding, Mom. I know you raised me better than that. I think.)

So for the next week, I’m just trying to learn the ropes of the discount dry-goods business. We distribute lots o’bread, those tasty pies from Safeway, bread, chips, and coffee. All the stuff that I love and is just kinda bad for you. This job doesn’t seem half as complicated as the insurance industry (my last office job, which made me realize my deep and passionate hatred for insurance of any kind), and the biggest problem that I’ve seen so far is that a few boxes of potato chips that were labeled “Rippled” were actually “Plain.” I can deal with catastrophes like that. Fires, semi-trucks stranded on a highway, and physical harm usually cause an unnatural spike in my blood pressure.

Not to mention the amount of tedious paperwork that always accompanies those kinds of catastrophes.

But the one thing that I hate when starting a new job is not knowing anything. I know that no one expects me to know anything, but I simply hate asking a question every 3 minutes, no matter how legitimate it is. People know that I don’t know the names of all our drivers, or product listings, or who to call when one of the garage doors doesn’t work. I’m usually a pretty independent person who can figure things out on my own, but this new kind of environment is completely befuddling to me.

I can’t believe I just used the word befuddling. I apologize.

I’ll start my formal training next week, the training that will be useful to the actual job that I’ll be doing, in my very own office. Until then, I’m more than happy to answer the phones, put together drug testing procedure binders, and send out a million faxes.
Because that’s the stuff I can do without asking too many questions. J