Back by popular demand…

Yeah, I know I said I was done posting.  But there seemed to be some interest in hearing how my first day at work went.  Fortunately, it wasn’t rearly as dramatic as my first day at work at USDA back in 1998.  That day made for quite a funny story (and yes Jo, there is a zipper involved in the story!).

Anyway, I left about 7:15 and picked up the bus.  I needed to switch buses but realized I hadn’t written the directions down properly so I had to wing it a bit.  But I still made it there by 8:30.  I soon realized that I had a slight problem.  My boss was out on Friday and she had told me to meet up with Kathleen, another staff member.  I had stopped by on Monday to fill out some paperwork and ran into Kathleen but forgot to ask what time she gets into the office.  So sure enough, she wasn’t in yet and I was told that she normally comes in around 9-10.  Great.

So I then asked if Tracie was in since I was told that she would have some more paperwork for me to fill out.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t in either.  Meanwhile, noone seemed to know where my cube was.  So I sat by the secretary’s desk, reading some materials.  Fortunately, Tracie came in about 5-10 minutes later.  Tracie was great.  She had me fill out a bunch of paperwork and also gave me a basic orientation and showed me around.

By the time Tracie was done with me, Kathleen had come in.  So I then met with Kathleen for a while.  We eventually figured out which cube was mine.  The previous occupant had left  a bunch of files behind and everyone was very apologetic over that.  I didn’t mind though since cleaning the cube gave me something to do.  In the process, I realized a bigger problem.  While there was a monitor and a keyboard in the cube, there was no computer.  By the time I left that issue still hadn’t been resolved. 

For lunch, I went out with Kathleen and 2 other co-workers.  After lunch, I spent most of the afternoon boxing up files that the previous occupant of my cube had left behind.  So far I have 14 boxes.  Eventually I ran out of boxes and will have to wait till Monday to finish the task (when hopefully the mail room will have more boxes).  Everyone that I met was really, really nice.

The one piece of bad news is that I found out we may be getting furlouged soon.  The governor is proposing 26 furlough days over the next 2 years.  That would amount to about a 4.5% pay cut.  I don’t mind the pay cut if it means extra days off.  But here’s the thing….the governor is proposing that 15 of the furlough days take place on state holidays.  Gee thanks!  So we’d get a pay cut but very little extra time off.  Of course, all this has to be negotiated with the union so time will tell what happens.

The other interesting thing is that the governor is proposing to cut his own salary by 5%.  The article mentioned what the governor’s salary is.  Get this….when I was working for USDA in DC, I was making more than the Governor of Oregon.  I knew salaries in Oregon were low, but that’s crazy!