Let me tell you how it is to start a new job after working at my former job for 28 years.

First off, I had to be there at 8 a.m.  Boo!  Now, the show-up time at my old office was not entirely great, either.  I had to arrive at various intervals from 7:15, 7:45, 8:15, or anywhere between 8:30 and 9:00, depending on the day.  (This was because we traveled to various counties for 9 a.m. hearings.)  Having a set start time might be nice, since I won't have to recalculate what time I have to leave my house each morning in order to get to work on time.  But I would've liked a 9 a.m. start time a tad better.

Also, quitting time is 5:00.  Boo!  At my old job, I worked until 4:30 on occasion, but many days when The Boss finished the hearings, she'd send me home when we got back to town.  Having some afternoons off was nice, especially since my tailfeathers start dragging the ground about 2 p.m.

When I arrived at my new work site (one block up the street from the old one), I didn't know where to park.  This new work site was formerly a bank.  The Husband worked at that bank not long after we married, and employee parking was then behind the building.  I eased down that alley this morning, but the parking spaces behind the building were all filled with mail delivery vehicles, so I circled the block and parked on the town square, right in front of my building.  This made me a little nervous, for when I ran a business on the square, every two hours a policeman would come by and chalk your tires, and you'd get a parking ticket if the chalk mark was still there the next time the policeman came around.  But The New Boss's Secretary said that's where we're supposed to park.

Because I'm going to be mostly working from home, I do not have an office in the county building.  Today's work directive was to sit with one of the other employees for some training.  She's a nice person and is very willing to share information.  But by late morning, she had some work she needed to finish today, so I set up at a conference table in The New Boss's office and started a research task.  But I could not concentrate and found myself reading the same paragraph over and over without having a clue what I'd read.  The problem was the noise.  There was a radio playing.  Loudly.  Rock music, like Aerosmith and Def Leppard.  Employees talked to one another across the big room.  People came and went, and every time the door opened, a bell dinged and a disembodied voice announced, "Front. Door."  I nearly lost my mind until 12:00, when everybody in the place cleared out for lunch.  Well, almost everybody, because somebody turned the radio down a couple of notches when everyone else left.

At a few minutes until 5, I went out into the main area.  The New Boss was at his secretary's desk, gathering up some papers for a meeting he was about to attend.  When he saw me, he asked, "You're still here?"  Then he announced to the room, "Hey, y'all, she's still here."  

"And I'm coming back tomorrow," I said.