My Eleventh First Day

Tomorrow is my first day at my new job. First days at new jobs are always stressful. I should know; in the past year and a half, I have endured ELEVEN of them. ELEVEN times I have walked into an office setting wearing a stiff black blazer and uncomfortable heels. ELEVEN times I have extended my hand to the person sitting behind the front desk, smiled, and declared in my friendliest South Dakota voice: "Hi, I'm Amanda. Today is my first day."

There are some people that I know that have stayed at the same job for 10, 20, 30 years. They have had to walk in to a brand new job once or twice in their lifetimes. They don't know how nerve-wrecking it is to walk in like a blank slate and have to learn all new log-ins and passwords for computers, different switchboards and copy machine settings, or the specific ways each company prefers that you answer the phone:

"Good afternoon, Fidessa corporation. Amanda speaking, how may I help you?"
"Ziff Brothers Investments. This is Amanda"
"Good morning, Weinstein Company"

The first thing I do when I sit down at a new job is write down the name of company on a stick-it note and place it by the phone so I don't answer the phone and say the wrong company name. Yes, that has happened. More than once. The second thing I do is log on to my email to see if I can access gchat. I have about a 50/50 success rate, and this greatly affects the quality of my life for the duration of the job. The third thing I do is quickly forget everything I have learned at my previous job(s), and start from scratch. I learn who the big wigs are and how not to piss them off. I learn what exactly the dress code is (ie do I really have to wear a blazer every day and what's your policy on nail polish?). And mostly I just smile and follow instructions and swallow my pride and act politely. Sometimes it's the hardest part of the job.

Ugh. Here we go again.

This is NOT how I feel: