First Day at Work and Cancer

When I got to work this morning I was so excited that both breakfast and lunch are free!  The coke machine is only 25 cents for a 12 ounce can and there is no time clock.

I spent the morning hours training with a man that was so jaded on life he was making me depressed!  There were so many times when I thought he had a gun in his desk and he was going to end the torture that was his life.  At around 10am we took a walk outside of the building and he told me the real story about the man who's desk I am sitting at.  I hate to say this but the man was a slob, there were coffee stains everywhere and more food stuffed in all the drawers than office supplies.  I felt odd cleaning the desk of a dead man but life moves on.  The man that was training me told me that he told him to go to the doctor because he had a cough that was not getting any better.  The guy went to the doctor and had pneumonia and then they discovered cancer in his lungs.  They started treated the cancer and two days later he was dead.

I went to lunch at noon and the cafeteria was packed and the food was really good.  I had so much to eat that I felt sort embarrassed so I sat outside alone.  The people there were not too friendly but I was in heaven with all the free food.

I came back from lunch and I sat at my desk cleaning as much as possible and trying to get settled in.  around 1:30pm a girl showed up to train me on more systems.  She was a heavy smoker and her smoker breath was giving me a headache and she seemed more interested in talking to her fiancé on the computer.  I took as many notes as I could but she kept telling me about her great love in her life.  When I asked her how she and her fiancé were going to deal with the kids of a previous marriage.  That is when she showed me a picture of another girl...  I gulped and said she is cute.  The girl in the pictures looked really young maybe late teens and well she is in her 40s.  She said that after she broke up with her husband she felt like being with another girl felt right.

The late afternoon was spent listening to her yell at the dealership about her car.  She did not have much interest in training me and was very short with me.  That is when we got the e-mail saying the other girl of the team was leaving immediately (and not coming back ever again). Now the five man team had one dead person, a girl with colon cancer, an angry man and a lesbian.  Now that is colorful group.

I don't care what everyone else is doing, I am there to learn how to do my job and to start my career.  This company is really a good one and when I met the VP this morning she said we like to make sure all our people are happy working with us.  I want to make things work here and I am willing to put up with what ever they throw at me.  If I a see a smoking monkey tomorrow on top of unicycle it won't surprise me since every one smokes around there.

My first day was pretty cool.