Day One — Monday
I arrived at the new job at 10am, after being told to come in some time after 9:30, and was introduced to the coworkers and shown my desk. I barely had enough time to drop my bag before I was into a meeting. That must be a record there. The meeting was a great way for me to discover just how much is actually done there.
After that I was given a stack of guidelines an manuals to flip through. Once I was done I started playing around with the various CMS they use while I waited for the supervisor to finish a conversation. I asked her what I should be doing next, her response was to play around with the content management systems. Score one for initiative!
Day Two — Tuesday
When I walked in to the office I was greeted with a “Happy Day Two!” It’s the little things, really.
I was given two tasks: brush up on the department’s style guide; and have a look at the intranet. They couldn’t find the style guide, so I suggested I look for it when I was on the intranet. There’s that initiative again. I ended up finding two guides in a completed unrelated system and spent the next few hours pouring through the 27 page Visual Guide and 112 page Publishing Guide.
After that I was given a few pieces of content work that I threw myself into. Having just about conquered the CMS on Day One, this task was no problem for me. After that it was back into the reading.
At lunchtime noticed something very cool. Tuesday means boxes of fresh fruit are delivered and distributed to various caches around the office. Apples, pear, bananas and oranges. I wonder if the summer months will bring extra variety?
Day Three — Wednesday
Not much to report here (at least according to my notes). I arrived a few minutes after 9am, but was only beaten to the office by one other guy. Yep, I’m still in the public service.
Corporate induction at 10am. The presenter mentioned how cool it was that we got free fruit every week. I had to agree.
Once back at my desk I was given enough work to last me until the end of the day. While working my way through them I even managed to break the CMS. I was then told that it contains a lot of bugs and not to be worried when things like that happen.
Day Four — Thursday
Today marked an auspicious occasion: the first time I’d worn a suit to work.
If I was going to be crafting HTML by hand, I needed something better than Notepad, so installed Firefox and Crimson Edit on my machine. I’m surprised it took this long actually. So far I’ve managed to resist the urge to install an RSS feed reader and an IM client though.
Due to issues with the CMS I uninstalled IE7 and reverted back to IE6 on my coworkers advice. Hey, if I was breaking the SOE, I might as well go all out. Really, it’s the IT department’s fault for leaving the machines so open.
I started my professional writing career today, with three articles that will appear in the intranet and weekly ebulletin. Having a bit of time to spare before the end of the day I mocked up a rough HTML page showing how the intranet version would look.
Also today I realised I was not the nerdiest guy in the office. The shocks just keep coming.
Day Five — Friday
Ah Friday. Where normally I’d push the boundaries of the casual dress policy, I instead decided to arrive in full suited regalia — sans tie.
More complex content tasks were given to me today, though I’m quickly learning the limitations of the CMS. Some very interesting bugs have emerged!
I was also shown how to create statistical reports for the sites today. I had over 50 reports to run, but ended up producing them so quickly the analytics guy called bullshit when I told him I was done. He had to see it to believe it.
After spending the first four days admiring the view out my 31st floor window I finally cracked and brought my camera to work to snap off a few shots. These will appear on Flickr once I’ve cleaned them up a bit. Reflections are a bitch.
I had a lot of fun this week, and that’s not just the honeymoon period talking. There’s a lot of work coming my way in the future that I look forward to: content changes for subdomains I never touched on, new projects and new content management systems to play around with. Oh yes, I think I’m going to like it here.