Wednesday, November 12, 2008

That whole work thing

I survived.
The first day. Over. Done.
Wasn't as bad as it could have been.
And I got my desk back too - without having to ask. All that trauma for no reason! ::sigh:: Typical!
I skulked in at 10am without being spotted and quite shamefully lurked in the journal stacks until I could get to the stairs without being spotted. As I stood there peering through the journals I thought how much more embarrassing being caught lurking in the stacks would be compared to just having walked in and said 'hello' to people......but I got away with it anyway.
I stood outside the office door for a few minutes and it took a couple of goes before I could bring myself to actually go in. Once there it was bearable - I saw straight away that my desk was clear which took me out of my defensive mode a bit. My two immediate colleagues were pleased to see me and were welcoming without being too fussy or prying or "how are you?".
I spent the day in pottering - unpacking my stuff, trying to sort out my computer which in my absence has gone a bit potty. Initially it was having fits and telling my profile was too large - which turned out to be because it was saving multiple copies of my Outlook archives - who knows why! But the remote IT helpline people fixed that. However they couldn't work out why Workflows - the cataloguing program we use - was refusing to open. So they'll come and look at it in person tomorrow.....
Other than a little chat with my line manager about who the new folk in the office were it really wasn't much of a day. I was on the tired side by the time I went home at 3pm but wasn't completely exhausted - which was good. The real question remains of exactly how much cataloguing I actually remember; plus having to learn the new procedures and MARC 21 rules.....
And tomorrow I imagine I'll get to start investigating all this!
I had today off and I'll have Friday off too - a very gentle start with 2 days this week and probably 3 next week, plus I'm sticking at 10am-3pm for as long as I can wangle it!! :)
The only iffy bit of the day was the giant 'diss' from the girl who had been in my desk and had been moved. We did the whole nod and 'hi' thing and I said something like "[are] you alright?" and she responded with "not really" and I went all "oh, mumble" and then she proceeded to say to me "How are you? You're looking...." [pause, she looks me up and down] and I can't remember her exact word but basically something along the lines of 'not too bad'. At which I imensely insulted - plus quite amused. Mostly because I hate it when people tell me how well I'm looking - and here I was being insulted at being told I wasn't looking well!! Actually, I think most of the insult was from the fact that I'd dressed smartly for work and was actually wearing make-up for the first time in an eon. So - there we are.
Let's hope tomorrow is as mostly pain-free.

4 comments:

laurie said...

There is one in every workplace! What a b*tch! You did well, though! Hope it gets easier.

Sweet Camden Lass said...

Hurrah for the first day being over! ~x~

Sarah Dillon said...

Maybe you could let the "back off, b!tch!" comment loose in her direction, and not feel guilty?! (wishful thinking, I know... but a gratifying thought :) )

Kirsty said...

Hurrah for a good first day. One and a half days to the weekend... (well, half a day for you!)