First Day OTJ

It is always very interesting to see how different companies handle a new employee starting on a particular day. I have started several jobs (full time and summer) throughout my career and I find you can learn alot about the office culture based solely how they handle your first day on the job.

At one place I worked that was fairly unstructured new employee starts were always quite interesting. First of all, the rest of the team rarely knew if/when a new employee was starting until they showed up for their first day at work! At which point, we needed to scramble to do the following:

1. Find them a place to sit
2. Clean out all the old junk (boxes, computer equipment, etc.) that was being stored in their new cubicle
3. Order their computer, cellphone/Blackberry from IT (which would have an ETA anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months)
4. Get them set up with a temporary computer, begin requesting various access logins and passwords from IT
5. Take them on a tour of the office, showing them where the washroom & cafeteria are, introduce them to people
6. Find them something to do, background info to read, etc.
7. Make lunch plans to take them out for their first day :)

One summer job I had, they were completely unprepared for me. It was actually quite funny. Upon my arrival, my supervisor found himself needing to address item #1 of the list above and find me a place to sit. But this ended up with 3 guys carrying a large old wooden desk (similar to a school teacher's desk, rectangular with drawers on either side - all wood and quite heavy!) from one lab through the lunchroom and down the stairs to the basement lab where I would be working.

This week marked the end of my first week of work at my new job. I was happy to find that my new office seems quite organized. They had a temporary laptop ready and waiting for me (my actual laptop is on order), my desk was nice and clean and the drawers had been filled with office supplies. And I had someone that was ready to train me on my new responsibilities (or is it just that he has been eagerly awaiting my arrival so he can slough off these tasks to me? hmm...). By Wednesday my PDA had arrived, pre-programmed from an off-site IT office. And the people and office culture seem to reflect this level of organization. They're quite methodical, structured and very organized. Just my kind of place. I think I'm gonna like it here!