FREAKY FIRST DAY
March 26, 2009
I find the first day in a new job amusing and altogether freaky. I'm saying that even if I've already had three first days; I don't think I'll ever get used to the whole ordeal.
The first day can be quite amusing because the people you meet do not know squat about you. Ergo, you can come up with the biggest lies when you introduce yourself.
For starters, you can tell them that you’re a philanthropist. They let you go ahead with your story, so you weave this elaborate narrative about you donating an organ to this dying kid. You tell them about the difficult decision you made to give one of your livers to this patient, but then a smart aleck points out that everyone has only one liver—so there goes your cover. Anyway, the point is that you have a smorgasbord of stories/lies that can make you appear more likeable than you honestly are.
On the other hand, the whole experience is also freaky. While it is oddly exciting to traipse on unknown territory, one wrong move can give you a perpetually haunting nickname like—I don’t know—Richard Simmons or David Hasselhoff.
The good thing about the first day, though, is that it happens only once per job. On the second day, you’re not so shiny anymore—and that’s a good thing.
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And so on such days, I am a bag of nerves; I try to look for a momentary escape just to avoid a pint-sized panic attack. Yesterday, my relief came in the form of a Vienna Teng song that I heard from a laptop nearby. I instantly remembered how much I loved listening to Gravity in college.
