Hell of a day

Well I always expected my first day to be a little mental and chaotic. I was expecting uncoordinated messiness but I really wasn’t prepared for the way the day panned out.

I got up super early to beat the morning rush down the A40 (or at least allow plenty of time to sit in it) and make sure I was well in time for my 9:30 expected arrival. So I left at 7:45 and arrived at around 8:30 and found a free parking space fairly nearby which was all good. I wandered around the (predominantly closed) shops for a little while before getting cold and deciding that I would rather sit and wait inside than walk around the cold and particularly windy streets.

This is where it started to go a bit wrong. I apparently wasn’t expected at all, not least at the wrong building which I had been told to go to. Anyway, a bit of wrangling for about 20 minutes and I was directed to the right building where I still was a pretty unexpected arrival, despite now being in the right place and bang on time. After some delicate negotiations with a very large security guard I got inside and found my way to the planning department where I was (thankfully) expected although their provisions for helping me get this far left something to be desired.

Ok, fine, I'm in. Brief tour of the department, this is where you are sitting (window seat, w00t) in the east team (again, w00t, not the unreasonably ethnic end of the Borough). Computer, check, log-on, check. Here’s another new guy so you’re not the only one. Ok, things were starting to pick up.

However, the team has no team leader and hasn’t done for three weeks whilst the team leader’s boss is on leave (and has bigger troubles) and that’s where the chain of command appears to stop. So no team leader means no work allocated or any other kind of introductory niceties for the new folks. Having said that, my arrival along with the other new guy pretty much doubled the size of the team (albeit it still less than half staffed with our contribution) so its not like there is much to lead.

So I spent the rest of the day acquainting myself with the computer systems. Not least email which whilst, erm… clunky, works so succeeded in firing off a couple of emails to folks addresses what I could remember and getting some back (thanks folks, much needed) and trying to fathom the really fairly incomprehensible database and mapping systems. Of course I found out later that many of the functions I was trying to access didn’t exist, for example, any kind of meaningful electronic records. That should prove interesting for somewhere that was billed to be paperless.

So a slightly inauspicious start to the proceedings.

Good news is that the commute is way shorter than I expected, free on street parking is available, albeit limited, and there is chance that I could get a coveted parking pass. The people (mostly) seem pleasant enough and I would imagine it is certainly going to be a challenging job to say the least.

I’d like to go at the place with a bit more of a jackhammer today but get the impression that nobody seems to actually know that I am not just some temp, and really don’t want to go pissing my new colleagues off too much by appearing like an overly authoritative jerk. Perhaps I should do a memo?