A new world at work

I came into my new office on Monday. My boxes were all here — I don’t have enough space to fully unpack as I’m currently sharing an office. He’s a manager, and about to move to another team. Only… 8 more days. With 2 days of weekends. A week from tomorrow and he’s gone, even.

I should have known things weren’t going to go quite right the moment I saw my one machine — the only one that had travelled with me — sitting under my desk – with a piece of paper taped to it.

Rewind to last Friday. I had disconnected my machine, only to read the move-instructions and discover that any machine not connected will not be checked in the destination office. At that point, I reconnected my computer, and powered it on. I know, I know, I should have read the instructions earlier.

Back to Monday: I looked with trepidation at this piece of paper; I stopped being concerned when I read the paper; it indicated my computer had not been hooked up in my new office. I could tell that! Then I read the reason why: it was not hooked up in the originating office.

Now, I know I had hooked the computer up. The system runs — it’s now my mail computer — but it was highly disconcerting that it had been magically disconnected between when I left my old office on Friday, and the movers showed up over the weekend.

This was only the first issue of the week.

I had no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse. No development machine, either, but hey, that’s okay, I just had a meeting to go to. I just couldn’t find out where it was because my calendar is on my computer, which had no power cord, and needs a monitor to display (see first sentence of this paragraph). So… I decided to wander the halls at about the right time. I thought the meeting was in one of the open lounges on my floor. It wasn’t.

Thankfully, while I was wandering around like a lost puppy dog, less the cuteness, I ran into someone I knew was on my new team, who lead me in the completely opposite direction, to where my team meeting was about to begin.

I have next to no idea what’s going on. I have no idea what I’m going to be doing.

Over the course of Monday, some things got arranged. I received my first development machine; I got my new widescreen LCD (I think it’s smaller than the one I had in Office); I got a keyboard and mouse — and speakers which I can’t really use due to my shared office situation.

I then tried to enlist in the source code. I’ve been working at this company for four years, it shouldn’t be too painful.

I couldn’t find the documentation on how to get started.

A new teammate loaned me his print-out of the enlistment instructions, and I tried to follow the guide… except I couldn’t even find a list of projects to choose from, as I didn’t have permissions. People threw out various suggestions; one of them, it turns out, was mostly correct. However, I was still listed as being a developer in Office, so I could not be automatically approved for access. This was late Monday, so by the time I discovered this, no one was around to approve me.

Overnight, the system corrected itself, and made me a developer in the Developer Division. At which point… things still didn’t work. I was setup to get source code through one of the shared accounts, so that I might not be able to make changes, but at least I could start searching through the source to see how things worked.

Except, on my new machine, nothing worked. I could build, but I couldn’t run any test suites.

So I spent Tuesday reading some documentation.

Wednesday I realized I had neglected to install Office, which is required for some of those same tests. So, brilliantly, I installed Office — while reading more documents as I could find them. I then tried again, and the tests still failed. Apparently, I had no culture — that was the error message.

There were a few suggestions made, but none seemed to pan out.

It was hoped by multiple individuals — myself included — that the permissions issue would sort itself out by Thursday (today). It didn’t.

I finally happened across the right groups to ask, who started to suggest who to contact.

It turns out that while I had automatically been granted some permissions when I became part of this org over Monday night, the pending request that had been sent to my old manager was still required. Except he couldn’t approve it as I no longer reported to him. The request had just gone off into limbo.

SO! I’m currently downloading the source code onto the same machine, and I don’t really expect it to work. But now I’m not going to have to redo too much work… hopefully, at least.

So that’s the work part. I’ve read some documents, and accomplished nothing all week.

The rest?

The team seems nice enough. However… two of the last four days I’ve eaten alone in the cafeteria. My teammates don’t tend to go to eat together; the one time I’ve eaten with any of my teammates in the cafeteria, I had accidentally run into them in line. Otherwise… there doesn’t appear to be a normal sense of togetherness.

I like them well enough, but… I feel incredibly lonely.

If you were in my old building, you can feel missed. Some more than others, I’ll admit, but that depends on how badly I wish someone would make me chocolate chip cookies tomorrow. (Hi, Abigail!)

It was nice knowing everyone in the building — now, I know next to no one. Although my new manager was entertained by the fact that I knew almost everyone she tried to introduce me to — I had either worked with them previously, or they had interviewed me for this new job.

I’m sure things will get better — or at the very least I’ll be able to get work done. I just feel awkward.

The fact that I locked myself out of my house — and car — this morning, and therefore was 13 minutes late to a 15 minute meeting that, for a change, was going to have the upper management present did nothing to improve my comfort level.

It will get better.

Right?