Monday morning, I arrived just before
8, and the front doors were locked. I saw someone entering the building from a
side door, but I did not catch her attention, so I waited! I met a student
worker who also did not have a key before someone came to let us in. All good
so far! The first thing I had to do was get some paperwork out of the way.
Frankly, at this point everything is sort of fuzzy.
At some point fairly early, I saw the
inside of my office for the first time! It was larger than I expected, since
its strategic placement behind a large laser printer suggested that it had been
a supply closet. Turns out--surprise!--it had! But it was a roomy one, so that
meant that the primary consequence of its being converted was that it had
industrial tile instead of 30-year-old carpet. All things considered, I'm not
inclined to complain. I was told immediately to make myself at home and arrange
things however I liked, which was nice because the place was jam-packed with
furniture, not all of it serviceable. Over the next two days, arranging
furniture was primarily what I did, with various people popping in to offer
help with varying degrees of insistence. However, it is difficult to tell
others what to do when you're trying to figure out the arrangement and the
logistics at the same time! The wall to my right had a tall bookcase and two
short ones stacked. The wall opposite the door had the wooden desk that was
being used for the (new!) computer, a small file cabinet, and two desks
arranged face-to-face to make a table of sorts, the left hand wall... I don't
even remember, and the wall with the door had two full-sized file cabinets, and
a giant storage cube with another short bookcase on top of it. Now, friends,
I'm not going to go into the gory details, but it was dirty and in serious need
of organization (and still needs organization). I don't think anyone knows what
old paperwork is in those drawers, and the coffee spills I cleaned off of walls
and furniture were at least 10 years old--likely more. The only furniture I
removed, finally, was one desk and the storage cube. Everything else fit rather
nicely, and people were actually amazed when they started to see what I had in
mind!
Over these two or three days, and
really into today, I realized just how excited people seemed to be to have me
there--particularly the Editorial team. It's pretty cool how the press is set
up (all housed in one building, which needs some TLC, but is a nice space
overall): There is a hallway that more or less runs around the building, and
the offices are set up (by design) to mirror the publication process. The first
hallway is the Editorial staff, with my office at the end of that hallway, more
or less at the edge of the "public" space, which has a sitting area,
a book display, and several bookshelves of press books; there is also a
reception desk attended by a student worker who sits opposite the main entrance
(the one with the cool doors). Just past the receptionist desk is a very cool
conference room with a long oval table, wood panelling, and shelves to display
select press books. The coolest thing is that the wall that faces the front of
the building is glass, with blinds, so that the light that filters through the
front windows comes into the conference room. This is where I had my on-site
interview. Past the conference room there is the supply room, another desk for
the administrative assistant, whose office is to the left, and to the right a
hallway, with the next department's offices--this time, the design team because
after editing, the book goes to Design. Around the next turn we find Marketing.
There are also Business offices, but I'm not yet sure where they fit... I think
they're in between Design and Marketing. There is a warehouse at the end of the
hall that forms the third side of the square, and then back down the fourth
hallway to Editorial again. All of the offices that were built as offices have
natural light. Alas! Mine does not. But nor does it have that carpet...
Monday at lunch there was a potluck,
which is something that they do every month to celebrate birthdays--apparently
mine is the only in January. Monday's potluck featured enchiladas and taco
salads. After the potluck was the "All hands" meeting, which I will
always mentally call the "All hands on deck" meeting. It is also a
"launch" meeting, which is not a final book launch, but the launch of
the project by Editorial to the rest of the Press. This includes a session of
hashing out the title, which sounds like my idea of fun. Monday we were not
launching any projects, but maybe this coming Monday! As I write this, I
actually forgot that there would be another of these meetings on Monday. It is
literally a multi-hour meeting, and seems like a good way to pass the time to
me!
Editorial is still down one
person--my supervisor, whom I have not yet met, who is out on maternity leave
and expected back in May. However, it seems that the Press is almost always
down a person--not in terms of staffing, because there is very little
turnover--but simply because of people being out of the office for
Press-related business, usually marketing, but sometimes (it seems) picking up
proofs from authors? Anyway, that's not part of my job. Which is fine, really.
Maybe one day, but not today! I don't know that there has been a day--or a time
in a given day--when my whole team (minus the General Editor) has been there
the whole day. This can create some... inefficiency. Confusion is not really
the right word, because everyone else knows what should be happening. But they
don't onboard often, which means that they don't have an onboarding process,
which means no one really knows what has been explained to me. But it's not
because I'm being neglected, or because they think they need to wait until I'm
ready or anything ridiculous like that. People pop in on me from time to time,
and when they finally did give me work, I sort of had to remind me that no one exactly
showed me the processes, or gave me important information like what the folder
titles on the Share drive *meant.*
So anyway, Monday passed in a whirl,
and left me absolutely exhausted and with a bit of information overload (about
who had been where, and what they were doing re: different projects, or
profits, or what have you). But that exhaustion was also related to a BP
med--the second that I have tried at this point, at a very extremely low dose.
But on Sunday and Monday, this particular medicine made me too tired to
function on a normal level, and also gave me some little spasming pains in my
chest that freaked me out. On Monday, also, my BP spiked way above what was
normal for me without the med--maybe in part because I was panicked about the pain
and also exhausted? So I had to contact the doctor. Rather than try something
new, I went back to the first one, which unfortunately doesn't seem
particularly effective (any more--after only a month) at low doses, and at
higher doses (which for me seems to be the minimum dose, just not cut in half)
makes my heart race, which is the opposite of what it is supposed to do. I have
already had to change doctors over the matter of MP meds because the
authoritarian I had been seeing by default felt (rightly) that I didn't trust
her judgment. So Tuesday, I went back to the first med, and made an appointment
on Thursday with the new doctor to discuss options. So that was something added
to the balance of the week.
A change that my employment has
wrought in our lives is that now I do not pick up the girls from school. Also,
instead of my dropping off my husband, he drops me off after we bring the girls to
school. The girls actually attend school right across the street from the
Press, which is pretty amazing. So though he has started picking them up
from school at 4, he couldn't do so on Tuesday, so I literally walked across
the street to them and they met me, and we walked back to the Press! I had my
colleague--who was the hiring manager while the General Editor was on
leave--tell me that they were welcome any time! So they will absolutely be able
to walk over after school, if not this school year, then the next. This was an
eventful week for the girls--between the two of them, they had three
standardized tests, and got report cards today. Luckily, this meant that
homework was lighter than usual this week, which did make things easier.
In addition to letting me know that
the girls would be welcome at the Press--which is actually open to the public,
though this is little known--the many mini-conversations (and some not so
mini!) that I had this week with the same colleague and others let me know that
my arrival has been eagerly anticipated, and not simply as an extra hand.
People do seem to know things about me--so I did have two opportunities to
explain the premise of my upcoming Mythlore article! I was urged during one of
these conversations not to linger in my office all day--to get out for lunch,
in particular, though some people do lunch in their offices. I walked to meet
my husband on Tuesday and we had a picnic on campus; on Wednesday there was a
Pokémon Go event. I explained this to my new colleague as he popped in to tell
me that he attends the noon service at the Episcopal Church across the street.
This lead to a conversation about games and gaming. I suspect that he will try
out Pokémon Go at some point. There is another employee in the building who
plays casually--but whose parents are constant Pokémon Go-buddies, which is kind of hilarious. Today, I talked a bit with their son, and when I
described them as more serious players than we are, he said, "Yeah.
They have a problem." He's clearly as deadpan as his dad, or close. (They
are pretty rabid players, but they're really nice about it. Good people.)
Thursday, I had the doctor's
appointment, which went well, and I deferred starting a new medicine by a bit.
I actually seem to have left over sick leave from either my previous position,
in which I was not authorized to use it, or the one before, though I meant to
donate it to the sick leave pool Either way, it is handy because I can use it
immediately if the need arises. So I went to the doctor's, and on my lunch
break I picked up my parking permit and went home with my husband so that he could
change for an event that he hadn't planned on attending (until a potential
donor was identified--falsely, as it turns out), but that some people from the
Press were attending, so I heard of it that way. I actually helped coordinate a
meeting between a member of Marketing and my husband to investigate the contents of
some boxes of books left by the Press at Cushing Library. This lead to another
informal conversation, and getting to know another colleague who also happens
to be somewhat of a Tolkien fan!
You may wonder whether I did any
actual work this week. I'm still trying to figure that out, really--but I think
I got a bit closer to working, if nothing else. On Tuesday, I was told that I
could start checking permissions on some of the projects that will be published
in Fall 2019, not to acquire the permissions myself, but to see whether the
author had done so. I was shown some spreadsheets and how to get into the
project folders, and told that another editor might have a template for
entering the relevant information. That editor was out on Tuesday, and in
training on Wednesday. Actually, for a period of time on Wednesday, I actually
WAS the editorial department (and was told so before the other remaining member
left). In the process of going through the list of projects in a spreadsheet,
however, I was told by someone looking over my shoulder that the book I was
working on didn't need permissions, so... yeah. I began to get the idea that I
didn't exactly know all I needed to know. But I could start. Bit-by-bit, I have
taken what I've learned about what information people need to do their jobs,
and done my best to put it in an accessible format on my own. Thursday, I did,
in fact, get the template, which was not Excel but Word (much to my chagrin)
and relied on pulling images and information from the manuscript using macros.
I confess that I don't even know what that means, but that wasn't really an
issue. Rather, it was an issue that again I was told "oh, you don't need
to be working on that," and redirected, but without a really accurate (as
it turned out) picture of where to find the information I needed. Which was
frustrating.
I did realize that one of the
problems was that I didn't know enough about what I was doing to even know what
questions to ask. I didn't know what I didn't know. I found myself asking on
Thursday what, precisely, the publication process looked like, and why, when in
that process, and by whom all of the folders in the Share drive were created.
By the end of Thursday, we were getting somewhere ,but I found myself very
frustrated by mixed messages, lack of coordination, and the complete and utter
failure of anyone to orient me to the job I was supposed to be doing. The
person who has helped the most is the one who most recently vacated my current
position. So I have decided to make some documents that I'm calling
"Editorial Assistant Workflow"--to train the next Editorial
Assistant. Or for reference. Whatever.
This brings us to today. Except
actually, it doesn't. Because life still happens. And last night, life wanted
to throw me a stupid curveball. The girls were on the verge of going to
bed--literally saying goodnight--when my daughter (H) (prompted by big brother (P) told me that
she had just found a bug in her hair by looking in the mirror in the bathroom.
Oh. Dear. Lord. So I look at her, and--no, seriously--there is a bug *crawling
in her hair.* Because that's totally what I need at 10:00 at night. I picked it
out. It fell on the floor ad sort of ran around a bit while I took pictures of
it. You know good and well what it was. So I kicked into extermination mode,
combing through her hair and then second daughter (I)'s with the regulation comb while the "guys" (husband and son) bagged and vacuumed everything. After that, since brushes and
barrettes needed to be sterilized and washed and bagged and whatnot, P and
I went searching for a 24-hour store from which to procure brushes and combs
and things. At 1 A.M. or so, I was finally ready to bathe. I'm not going to
lie--I combed out my own hair, too. The plan was to call the local lice center
for free head checks for everyone. Which I did.
Today began... well, abruptly, after
too little sleep. We started the normal routine of dropping everyone off, and
as soon as the clock rolled over to 8 A.M. I called the lice clinic (a nice
place really, with nice people) and made an appointment. Then I went into work.
I was sluggish. I had a headache that just kept getting worse and worse and
worse. My stomach was acting up. But a colleague stopped by (the marketing
person) to chat about meeting my husband the previous evening, and she said how we
seemed like neat people. It's interesting to see people get to know us in our
different capacities without "ranking" us one above the other, but
perceiving us as complementary. This is new. And I like it. We talked about a
range of things (including her Dr. Martens sandals and how I, too, favor
"slightly subversive footwear in professional settings"--because I can
get away with saying things like that here). Then, I went to ask our Finance
and HR person about sick leave for lice clinic appointments--was that an
appropriate use? And she was just great. She wanted to make sure that I didn't
need anything or have any questions, and afterwards, since none of my own
department were there, she took me around the building telling me a bit about
everyone (more personal things, like where they were from and how long they had
been with the press, and about any recent marriages and births) and giving me
the opportunity to have more of those mini-conversations. It was really nice,
and incredibly thoughtful. I can tell that people like me here. And there
doesn't seem to be any petty competition. I'm not a threat to anyone. It's
great. Unfortunately, my headache was getting worse and worse, and I'm afraid
to take ibuprofen with the BP med. I sat in my office, and the heat was getting
oppressive, and my stomach was queasy, and the pain was there, and I made the
mistake of taking a sip of coffee... And I pretty much had to leave. At that
point, another member of the Editorial department did show up, and I told her
what was what (even about the lice), and I left for the day. At 10:20. :( So
now I have to put in another sick leave request.
What happened the rest of the day,
you might ask? Well, I came home and changed into yoga pants and took a 1.5
hour nap. I woke less queasy, with headache, and needed to call the lice clinic
to postpone the appointment at their request because they're swamped. Great,
right? :/ My son (P) and I had lunch, then went to Target and bought, among other
things, a slipcover for my sofa (the better to wash when needed). Then we
returned home and cleaned and washed things (a work already in progress). So
yeah... I didn't stay at work, but I vacuumed with a headache. Under furniture.
Then we watched a Twilight Zone and I drank a favorite headache remedy:
Blackberry Sage tea. That is about the time the headache started to subside,
though it was already better than it had been when I left work--MUCH better.
The girls came home; then two of us went in search of some
supplies for a meatless supper of soup and grilled cheese (since I wasn't
feeling seafood of any kind). We scarfed the meal down before heading to the lice
clinic, where everyone was checked--AND EVERYONE WAS CLEAN. I have a picture. I
did NOT invent that louse. I was stunned and relieved and stunned. Obviously I
will keep watch, but in the meantime, we went to Freddy's (at P's
suggestion) for some custard on him. And some people who didn't eat enough soup
and sandwich before the lice check had some fish fillets. And here we are. I
have literally spent the remainder of the night writing this! So... I guess so
far so good? The finance/HR person says that my colleague the hiring manager
"has big plans for me." I wonder what that means? I'm excited to find
out. If I can get someone to show me the ropes.