And thus ends my first week as a new employee. For the most part, it went pretty smoothly. The work is not easy, but it seems like I have to get on the bosses to actually hand me things to do or risk having a perfectly capable IT consultant sit at his desk for eight hours "training" but not "working."
That having been said, I'm so-so about this position. Why? Well, when you go for a job, don't you usually try to find something where you make more than you did at your last position? They offered me the same exact money I was making at my old position, but for more responsibilities. They tried to give me the excuse that I'd be taking home bonus money depending on how much work I did in a single day, but so far, I don't see that happening. Admittedly, it's only been a week, but I'll see where it goes.
I think the only real thing I didn't enjoy about this week was the hotel room stay. Sure, the staff was nice, but the room itself left a little to be desired: the bed was semi-comfortable; turning the lights on and off was a chore, since not all of the switches worked; and, most importantly, there was the boredom that came from being there by myself.
There is a LC user on my list who lives in the area, but after filling my head with hope that we might actually get to hang out, she spent most of the week making up excuses as to why she couldn't see me. Thursday and Friday she wasn't even available online, and she has my phone number. By the Wednesday of that week, however, I'd given up on seeing her, since it was pretty obvious she was playing a game.
One more week to go... I guess I'll spend it concentrating on work. I still don't have a laptop, so I'm once again going to be denied meaningful network access (except for my phone, the data portion of the bill reaching astronomical proportions due to my text-messaging through Yahoo). My job isn't an appropriate place to connect to LC due to the potential for lots of adult photos showing up in my Temporary Internet Files folder (did I mention there's a computer forensics team there?).
On the other hand, there's always that Dallas position, now that I hear it has reopened. My contact called me just before I left for New Jersey to ask if I was still interested in the job. Yes, I'd be working overnight, but I'd feel a lot less like I was being scrutinized. And then, it's four days on, three days off, with the potential for night differential.
Worth a shot, maybe. We'll see how it goes.
