Monday Morning Nerves

There is no doubt that having the thought process of 'It's only a temporary assignment, it's only for 3 weeks' helped a lot with first day nerves. I hadn't been the new girl since 1986 and it was amazing how nervous I felt driving into the carpark on that Monday morning.

Everything was new to me, the people, the environment,the industry, the software I would be working with even that they did weekly accounts when I had always done monthly, the time to turn work around was so critical and on day 1 my head was spinning. But even amidst all this confusion I was able to make progress.

I also picked up on a lot of negative vibes towards the person I was working with, dealing with a lot of issues from his colleagues. That was an uncomfortable position to be in, as I didn't want to fall into the same scenario where I too had a lot of negativity directed towards me. I needed to interact between the 2 halves. As it happened, over the weeks I bridged the gap very well and actually found I could work with either set of people, but those early days were concerning while I worked out what the issues were and how best to deal with them.

By the end of the first week I felt the deadline of 3 weeks was realistic to complete the task and had started to make some real headway. Getting information from the chap I was working with wasn't easy as he wasn't the best at explaining things but fortunately my skills learned over 26 years enabled me to work out the majority of what needed doing.

By the end of the first week I was starting to understand a lot of the frustrations within the staff towards my new colleague but I had taken the view that it wasn't my place to comment and soon they realised I wasn't one to 'dish the dirt'.

By the end of week 2 we were well on with completing the task and the strange computer system didn't seem so strange, I knew where all the files were kept and had even been shown the 'stationery supplies' and was allowed to fetch my own copy paper and envelopes - apparently it normally takes about 6 months before this usually happens, I felt honoured.

I spoke to the agency at the start of week 3 and asked them to be on the look out for a new assignment as I would be finished here at the end of the week. I shortly got a call back to say would I be interested in continuing on placement for a further 4 weeks and if so, would I go and have a chat with the FD.

Intrigued, I walked through to the 'other side' (quite literally - the offices were in 2 definitive halves) and found the FD.

'Ah' he said, 'come in. We have a situation where your colleague is due to go on annual leave in 2 weeks time and, as you have picked things up so well, we'd like you to cover his holidays so we can continue to get the divisional weekly figures - do you think you'd be able to so this if you spent the next 2 weeks training?'

Although my work had all been annual reconcilliations towards the annual audit I was quite confident I would be capable, with 2 weeks training, so I was happy to accept the 4 weeks extension.

Little was I to know what the next Monday morning was to bring.