An Outlet: Part 8

16 September, 2019 - First Job Ever Begins

My first day at work!

Nervous and excited. That's how I felt when I first woke up in the morning at 6AM. I tried to have no expectations.

And then began the morning sickness. Screw you stomach.

I planned to leave by 7:50 but dad said I could sleep a little. Bad advice. Cause I got to the station alright but that frickin' station was so confusing. This station is a fairly new one. It has no road parallel to the tracks, only greens, gutter and unhygienic, kaccha roads.

I went through one of the long foot-over bridges that took to me to a shady place with no road directly leading to the highway. At first I decided to follow the other humans but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was going the wrong way. It was already 8:50AM by that time. I was supposed to reach office by 8:45.

I was anyways going to be late so I decided to head back to the station, walk the entire way to the other bridge and get connected to some proper road that, according to me, was a much more appropriate path.

It was a decent amount of walk from the station to the back gate of the office compound. I somehow convinced the security to let me in from the back gate without an ID card cause I knew that the front entrance was another good 5 min walk away and I didn't have that much time in hand.

That wasn't the only security I had to get through. There was another one of those security barricades that require an ID card. Thankfully, a good Samaritan saw my plight and helped me get to the lift area.

The lift system was a bit weird. This was the first time in my life that I had seen the "dial pad of the lift", if you will, on the outside of the lift instead of the inside. My dumb paranoid ass legit thought that you had to punch in a code to summon the lift.

I got into the first lift that came, got out on a random floor and took the stairs to the desired one. I reached office a little after 9AM. Late to first day of work? Check.

Anyway, we have a 2 day induction programme followed by a week long training session before we begin with any actual work and lucky for me, both these activities will be taking place in two of the Mumbai offices itself. So my travel time will be considerably lesser than I had previously imagined.

As soon as I arrived, they gave me a booklet filled with forms and instructions, a loaded stationery pouch, my job contract and an "Onboarding checklist". I think that's a pretty cool way to get incorporated into the system. I mean the induction programme as a whole.

Cause we had a whole day filled with different sessions where people from the company came and explained how the organisation worked, what the policies were, who the POC for different things were, etc.

We even had a session on the company values where we were divided into groups and were given tasks to perform. I felt like I was back to my college again.

To my surprise, I was very well able to talk to people around me. There was this slightly older looking woman sitting beside me. We got talking and she was really interesting and pleasant to talk to. It was only in the second half of the day that I realised that she was hired to be one of the Directors! Holy crap! I already know one of my company directors!

But it's interesting to see that new joiners across the organisation were asked to attend the same induction programme.

Oh speaking of other people, there were a good 50 new joiners present in the room (the labour turnover is REAL my friends) and we were all hired for different departments and from either of the 3 office locations in (and a little out of) town.

Okay, let me name the offices cause I have a feeling I might have to use these in the coming days.

-> Office N - the Mumbai office where the induction is taking place

-> Office L - the Mumbai Office where the training will take place

-> Office I - the out-of-Mumbai office where I'm hired from and will be expected to work out of after my training

Moving on, the other guy I was sitting next to is a CA and is based out of Office L. He seemed like an extrovert and we hit it off quite well.

There was another female who I recognised from one of my interviews at Office I. Obviously we bonded over being hired from the same office. I also met a couple others who were hired from Office I and were in the same department as me.

I had (some pathetic) lunch with the CA guy and the Office I girl and it was a good get-to-know-each-other session. Felt happy that I had someone to have lunch with.

In the last half of the day, we had to fill those frickin' endless forms that came in the booklet and good lord that took up a lot of time!

After getting some bank work done (I'm a proper adult now, shit), I left for home. The train I took was fucking crowded and I didn't think I'd be able to get off at my platform.

I came back home really tired! If this happens on the first day itself, how am I going to manage the rest?!

But, I guess it was a nice first day.