The past two days at work were devoted to New Employee Orientation.
But wait, you might be thinking. Mark’s not a new employee. He‘s been at CheeseGov for six weeks and three days already!
My sentiments exactly. But because CheeseGov is a big government agency constantly hiring new people for many different departments, they space out these orientations every two months. There were 53 people in our group, to give you an example. Some of them just started this week, and I am 100% sure they got more out of the training than I did. While the presentations were engaging, most of the stuff covered I’d already gone over a month and a half ago. I mean, if I don’t know how to access the intranet by now or fill out my timesheet, I’m pretty useless. And broke.
So, when it came time to provide anonymous feedback once NEO was over, I basically said, this would have been fantastic my first week. But midway through my seventh? Not so much. I don’t mean that as a knock on the professional development specialist who ran the course (she sits two cubicles down and is super nice) or any of the presenters. I get that holding these sessions every week or two would be impractical, so I suggested creating videos of each presentation and putting together a program that new hires could access during their first week. That way, they could even go back and review certain topics if they had questions once they got settled in.
I think it’s a brilliant idea, but I may be a little biased.
The worst part was, I happened to waltz into orientation 10 minutes late today. Through no fault of my own. I left at my usual time, and in the six weeks and three days I’ve been there, not once have I ever arrived later than 7:48 a.m. This morning’s NEO kicked off at 8:00, so I figured I was golden…right up until the moment I merged onto the Beltline and came to an immediate stop. The flex lane was closed “due to weather” (we had really bad storms last night), and one less lane turned a five-minute drive into almost 30 minutes. As a result, I pulled into the parking lot at 8:07. This never happens. I’m a guy whose attitude has always been, if I’m not five minutes early, I’m late. It just figures that, on the ONE MORNING where I absolutely had to be at work by 8:00 — 15 minutes after the start of my shift, mind you — I arrive late.
THIS is why working from home rocks. Two-thirds of the new hires attended virtually. I wasn’t the only late arrival, but I was the latest arrival. Too bad they don’t give out awards for that shit.
About those storms. For several days, the National Weather Service had been warning us about a high potential for severe weather on Tuesday. A Tornado Watch was issued mid-afternoon. When I left the office at 4:30, the sky was already looking ominous.
And yeah, we had some pretty good thunderstorms in Fort Atkinson. Not a ton of rain, but plenty of lightning. The wind was the worst, gusting to 60+ mph at times. Madison was more in the bullseye and fared worse. Nothing like those poor folks in Iowa are contending with, but still, lots of downed trees, flooded roads, and power outages. Somehow, this affected the flex lane of the Beltline and made me late to work, though there were no obvious reasons I could see for the closure.
Nobody yelled at me or pelted me with heavy objects when I slinked into the room while the CheeseGov Secretary, i.e., the boss of some 1,200 employees, was in the middle of a welcome speech, so all is good. And I guess I’m officially no longer a new employee, so…yay!
By the way, I woke up last night at 11 p.m. to pouring rain, thunder and lightning, and strong winds whipping the trees into a frenzy. I glanced at my phone and saw a tornado warning had been issued for our location. I checked the radar, stared out the bedroom window for a few minutes, and…
…climbed back into bed, nodding off quickly. I never even bothered waking Tara, who slept right through the whole thing. Further proof that I’m growing blasé over this whole tornado thing.
Apparently, I am now a card-carrying member of the Midwest Complacency Club.
Luckily, we’ve got a tornado-free (hopefully!) three-day weekend coming up, ’cause we’ve got some yard work to do. Those eight cubic yards of dirt Tara had delivered aren’t going to move themselves from the driveway to her new raised garden beds.
Likewise, the fence isn’t going to erect itself, and the tomato and pepper plants aren’t going to dig their own holes.
Busy weekend ahead, but we’re also squeezing in some fun. All work and no play, yadda yadda, don’tcha know.
How do you deal with threatening weather? What about traffic jams? Got any exciting Memorial Day plans?
Mark My Words 
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