In case you were wondering, I've been listening to a lot of Clutch in the past few days, specifically 'Blast Tyrant', 'Beale Street' and 'Robot Hive/Exodus'. Day before yest., "The Mob Goes Wild" got stuck in my head for no reason & wouldn't leave, so I've been playing the band since (interspersed with various bits of punk and faster-paced indie) while driving around and running work errands.
Things've been busy as Hell in the past several weeks, which is great but hasn't given me a lot of time to catch up w/people I haven't talked to in awhile. I've started a new job doing admin.& operations work (similar tasks to my last job) with an engineering company over in Chantilly that designs and builds flight simulators for the Navy & USMC. It's a smaller company with the HQ in Chantilly and three other offices in Jacksonville (NC), Orlando, and one that's basically just a guy in CA working from home with occasional outside help. They’ve pretty keen benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401k, PTO, etc.) that started 12/1 for me, which is fantastic considering I’ve not even been here a full mo.yet & I been w/out for almost a year. The pay's not bad either (or won’t be once I get my first check) and my supervisor seems to be pretty nice so far.
The keen thing about starting here around this time of year is two-fold. First, there are a lot of company holidays right now, like the 4-day weekend I got for Thanksgiving right after starting, then being off from 12/25 - 1/1 for Christmas. (Sweet!) Second, there's not really anyone in the office at the moment. See, right around this time of year, every year, there's a big convention down in Orlando called IITSEC where all the owners of the co.(and a good number of our engineers) go to promote what we do, which means that for about 4 or 5 days straight there are very few people in my office.
When I'm starting in a new place, something like this is freakin' fantastic. I get almost a full week to put in as much OT as I like while I overhaul whatever space I'm working in, reorganizing everything to suit me, and starting on personal projects and initiatives I'd like to get going in the office while everyone's away. In short, I'm not interrupted often (unless the guys call from the Con, which does happen sometimes) and I can work on WHATEVER.I.WANT. Love. Also, though I've made sure to keep her updated on whatever I'm doing, my supervisor seems to trust me thus far to find something useful to do and get things together, pretty much leaving me to my own devices, which is ALSO something I appreciate more than I can say in a workplace. (I despise micromanagement and have never understood the thought process behind it.) She goes for a couple of hours at a time w/out coming by or calling at all, so I’m able to get a jump on things I normally might not be able to touch if I were constantly interrupted. Hopefully this won't change completely when the guys come back tomorrow/Monday.
There are some other nice things about this place, too: Being able to listen to music (though at a low level) on speakers by my comp., even when I'm covering phones; the insistence that even if we choose not to take a break away from the office ea.day, we at least step away from our work & do something on the internet for a little bit so we don't get cranky and stressed; and getting mileage reimbursement for any work errands we do (which is not nearly as common as you'd think). All in all, not bad thus far. We'll see how things progress.
Aside from that this weekend should be nice. Tonight is wings for the first time in forever (provided it's happening this evening), Friday I'm celebrating a friend's birthday and Saturday I'm to head to a third Thanksgiving gathering, which should be pretty keen. No clue what else I might be doing, but it’ll probably be local as I’m not getting my first paycheck for a bit yet. If you’ve any ideas, hit me up.
More later.
~E.
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