My first week as a public servant

With the Monday missing it wasn't technically a whole week, but my contract says 38 hours for a 5 day workweek and I say that I spent at least 40 hours in 4 days, so I am calling it a week!

The job is great, a bit confusing at this point to find out which piece of the puzzle goes where and I have to keep reminding myself that they had 5 months to get where they are now and I don't have to solve it all in 5 days. By next Monday I will get my project manager colleague and I feel that from there on out things will start to roll a bit faster and smoother. In the meanwhile I am figuring out what it means to be a communication and change manager in the public domain. Fortunately people are mostly the same everywhere, when it comes to keeping secrets. Friday morning I ask my boss about who I get to talk to on the plan, she tell's me 4 people. Okay. Few hours later I have a meeting with 4 people who are not the 4 people my boss mentioned and they tell me that, yes they we're sworn to secrecy and informed, but they felt they could trust me to be in the know... Like I said, the same everywhere.

I've met what feels like all 1,100 members of Shared Services (SS does just not sound right does it?)
in 4 days, but it's probably closer to 100. The freaky part is that they all remember my name and I struggle to remember 1 in 4 of theirs. What is really funny is to have them guess where I am from. So far I've had US, South Africa, Denmark (clearly they've never met a Dane), Amsterdam (hahaha, NO!), UK, Germany and....Australia. My American accent throws them off a bit, but when I mention The Netherlands everyone seems have been there, knows someone there and some can even speak a few words in nearly fluent Dutch. I am waiting for them to start using the swearwords as well and then add some new ones. Yes, I am all about continuous improvement and providing service!

Another new thing is the dresscode. Or the lack thereof. Seems like everyone just does as they please, so I wear my suit and tie every day of the week to be on the safe side. Feels a bit like playing dress up, but it's starting to grow on me and it helps with the ad-hoc last minute meeting invites. When you're in a room full of directors (some in trainers and jeans and some in a three-piece suit) you don't want to stick out just yet. I might slack off later on, but for now this works. There's some people who clearly shop at Public-Servants-R-Us (we have it, as long as it's grey and brown), but ladies dress particularly nice, except for the ones in fleece sweaters. The gents could use some help on how long their ties should be (not that short!), length of their pants (not that short!!) and height of their waistband (not that high and certainly not that low). Did I mention one teamleader wears cowboy boots and a skullcover bandana? Good times!

There's more goodness around the office. We have toilets that remind me of roadside reststops. True there's no grafiti, but the stalls are open to the sides and the doors do not reach all the way down, quite the shared experience.... What I do consider smart is that all doors on all floors have the ERT safety instructions on them, gives you something to do when you're there anyway. To balance that out, we also have multiple locations of treats and sweets that you can get through a trust jar system (leave the money and take what you want) Yummm, peanut butter cups! We recycle like crazy, which leads to the annoying part where there's no bins below your desk, but a centralized bin for every 4 sets of cubicles. Sigh. We have cool watertaps that provide boiling water and filtered cool water and about 15 fridges per floor. The office itself has a great viewand enough lighting to be visible from space but they surely did not splash on furniture, which is pretty old and crappy, but maybe I was just spoiled at Rockwell. after 8 years of having a laptop, I now have a desktop computer. So convenient when you move between buildings and locations all the time. I'm giving it the remainder of the month and then start bringing my laptop or tablet because it's allready getting on my nerves. Want email on your phone, no worries, that's just $360 of taxpayer's money....WTF?! Yeah, that whole teleworking thing? They're still waiting for the memo.

My first bus experience on Tuesday was clearly the best of the week and by Friday I remembered why public transport and I just don't mix. The drivers are friendly enough, but if they wanted a career in racing, picking a job as a busdriver would be more fitting if you were planning a terrorist attack instead of providing a transportation service. The buses are on time, except when it rains, then they don't show up or smell like wet person. I do not like wet person smell. I did find out that the folding chairs are the best place to sit and also that people do not know their own dimensions. No, you cannot sit on my lap with your right but cheek, I do not know you that well, get off me!! All in all, I am seriously hoping that Yuum will accept the offer of Aspen, so we can drive to and from work together. The only thing better than getting caught in traffic is getting caught in traffic together and do a how-was-your-day on the way home.

Leaving at 7.30 and returning at 18.30 doesn't leave a lot of room for funstuff and entertainment, but I am sure that once things settle down I'll start kung fu again, seems far away now, but I am really looking forward to that. I started running  at the beginning of March and had a good time of it, but then had to quit last week due to a nasty double shinbone inflamation (hard surface, bad shoes, I know), so now we're waiting for the good shoes to arrive in another few days. Both our new furniture and the seafreight shipment are scheduled to arrive around the 15th of April, so the next post will probably be about home decoration and how happy we are to have our oven dishes and bicycles again.

Keep to the left, see you soon!