Monday, November 08, 2004

You have no idea how happy my mom is.

I graduated in May. Since then, except for the occasional odd job, I’ve been basically unemployed. That means for the past six months, I’ve been spending most of my time at home sitting on my ass either looking for jobs online or watching reruns of I Love Lucy and Hawaii Five-0.

But it looks as though my days of watching Steve McGarret track down jewel thieves and Communist spies are over.

A few weeks ago, I got a call from Orbitz.com about an interview. A week later they call me back for a second interview. And last week they called to let me know that I need to fill out a W9 tax form.

Ozzyboy got the job.

And just when I was beginning to believe that Monster.com was just a scam.

Today was my first day. Orientation was at 8:15am, which meant I had to be at the train station by 7:25am, which meant I had to be in my car at 7:00am, which meant I had to be awake by 6:00am, which meant I had to be in bed by 10:00pm the night before. Unfortunately, I was feeling a bit nervous and couldn’t fall asleep until 2:00am, which meant I was quite screwed.

I was pretty tired, but I still made it in time for the 8:15 meeting. Orientation turned out to be nothing more than a PowerPoint presentation on company history and corporate strategies. It was just like being back in Principles of Marketing class, minus Ms. Warwick and yet just as boring. All I could do to keep from falling asleep was to drink cup after cup of water. A liter or so of H2O later, and my bladder was in for a little bit of trouble.

I’ve never been one to excuse myself to use the restroom. One time at Jared Brown’s apartment, I waited a good half-hour for him to finish a political discussion with Michael Denslow before I got up the nerve to ask him where his bathroom was. And this is a guy I’m friends with. So I hope you can understand how hard it is for me to ask a complete stranger who has quite some say in my paycheck to pause his presentation, show me where the restroom is, tell me the passcode to get in, and loan me his passcard so I could get back into the offices.

The guy was on slide nineteen when the pressure started mounting, and I figured he was about done, so I opted to wait. By slide forty-four, my kidneys began to hurt. For fear of being on dialysis for the rest of my life, I raised my hand and wobbled out to the restroom.

It was the most painful piss of my life. It felt like urinating hot gravy, giblets and all.

I spent the rest of the day with the design team and got shown the ropes. I share a table with two other girls and sit in a chair that is stolen from someone else’s desk. My main job for the moment is to make these. I get a picture from the photo library, slap on some marketing-provided text, and save for web. I haven’t actually done any yet, but after all, it is my first day.

That’s second day stuff.