2 Years!

Friday marked the end of my first two years working full time. Over the course of this time, I've learned many truisms, some of which I am sharing below:

- If you have trouble making friends at work, try bringing candy and chocolate. It's no different than witches luring little children. It's so easy.

- The number of unread emails in your inbox is a sign of your importance to the organization. In my case, i try to compensate by sending emails to myself, lots of them.

- Listening to music at work is a borderline behavior. Passed out while listening to music is a big no-no, especially if you're an intern trying to land a full time offer.

- Companies love to keep things simple. It's a very important goal for any company. In fact, we have a 50 page PowerPoint presentation explaining why we need to do so.

- The office is to copiers/printers what churches are to Jesus Christ. You will learn everything you ever wanted to learn about the latter in the former. You will commit to memory and by rote, how to clear jams anywhere from section a to double z of the machine. It just might take a hour or two but people will see how hard you're working and how productive your are. You KNOW it's a good day when you've refilled that LAN copier next to you with paper 5 times, cleared 13 paper jams, filled up the staple cartridge, taught 11 people how to print/copy in color and to collate (since for some smart reason, it doesn't automatically collate 100 page presentations), AND reordered 3 color print cartridges since it won't print in black and white if the yellow color cartridge is empty.

- If your workspace and computer is very clean and you don't have food crumbs all over, then you just aren't working hard enough.

- For every performance review, you will ALWAYS discover NEW strengths and weaknesses. At the same time, you wonder how you can stretch out the company's limited list of strengths and weaknesses for the next 10 reviews...

- You learn many things about your co-worker at work. For example, you learn about one's eating habits, and whether someone had the taco special for dinner last night or the sloppy joe during lunch. Sometimes, the air just doesn't circulate.

- Given the fact that one can only visit the company store so many times each day, the bathroom and pantry is your refuge. It's definitely not as awkward being caught there versus the break room with massage chair, 60 inch TV, and Wii.

- Lastly, if something makes logical sense, then you probably should NOT do it. It's the way the REAL business world works, not like the rubbish you read in textbooks.