New Normal

I’ve been at my new job for about a week now, and it’s probably too early to make any conclusions from my experience thus far, but I think I like it. It’s basically a lot of administration and paperwork, but because of the nature of it, you’re expected to not make any stupid mistakes and be precise. One might think that puts a lot of pressure on the worker, but actually… it’s quite the opposite.

The company’s motto is essentially “slow and steady”, it’s more important for them that you handle everything properly, than to speed through whatever you need to do. Sure, one has to pay attention to dates and regulations, but there’s no forceful push to finish x thing today. In fact, there’s no overtime. You work your designated hours, clock out and go home. End of story. Hell, you need to even take breaks during the day too, as it’s pretty much the norm to leave your desk and freshen up.

I’m in an open office for the first time in my life, and honestly, it’s not what I thought it’s be. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people bashing this structure and the problems it creates, but thus far I feel like none of those are true for this place. The environment is pretty relaxed, people don’t seem to ever be in a hurry and you can sometimes catch them chatting a few words in-between their tasks. However, mostly this is done briefly, let alone on a whisper level, it never really gets “too loud”. In the case that the noise increases, everyone understands that they need to drag the volume back down, so it’s been pretty quiet. But don’t be mistaken, this comes more from a mutual understanding of not disturbing anyone at their job, rather than an iron fisted rule.

I’m still in my “in training” period, but my co-workers are being very patient with me. It’s not expected of me to work at 100% right away, in fact on average it’s assumed that new recruits will perform on the required level after their trial period is over. Which is about 3 months of time, the soonest anyone has ever completely grasped their role was apparently 1 month, but they were a special case. I’m being told that I’m a fast learner, but honestly I don’t feel like that at all. I’m somewhat frustrated with myself for not being able to understand everything, yet all I get are comforting words from others. It makes me think that I might be suffering from imposter syndrome as I’m also worrying of not being able to perform up to their expectations and being let go.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this in my life, usually I was frustrated with my job itself on some level and didn’t worry about it ending in some way or another. I guess that just shows how different this one is, that I’m getting so attached to it at such an early stage. Funnily enough, I ran into this video about working in the game industry earlier this week, and it couldn’t describe my experience any better. I kept jokingly referring to my past workplaces as being the deeper end of the pool for newbie swimmers, but all they really were was being exploitative and abusive. Sure, I’ve known this for a long time, but what I didn’t know is that those things aren’t normal. I kinda thought that every job is the same, you get used until they burn you out and toss you aside. But I was wrong. I just never had a normal job before and suddenly having one after all these years makes me feel weird and also annoyed. It took me more than a decade to get to work under normal conditions, where you’re not being treated as slave labor.

Heck, I was more surprised by the bad experiences my co-workers had described as being their “bad days”. Compared to whatever I had to deal with in the past, those seemed like a walk in the park for me, in fact I would go as far as call them as “good days”, but they looked liked it was a painful experience for them, so I just shut my mouth. It made me reconsider whatever I thought about the world and also myself. Yes, I am thick skinned and there’s people who are even more so than me, but I probably already belong into the group of extremes. Reflecting back on how many times I’ve been threatened with violence and such, my reactions to these events were anything but normal.

“What do I do if you slit my throat right here and right now? Simple, I bleed to death.”

It became second nature for me to not care about such and let things go at the workplace. Sure, I went home and bitched about it, but ranting for 5 minutes practically loosened me up, so I never gave it much thought besides saying that “people / life just sucks, that’s it”. Well, it was more so frustration and disappointment than anger really. Still, it makes me wonder how much time is needed for my own self to “return to normal” if that is at all possible at this point. Probably not enough, but if I can make any sort of prediction for the future, it’s going to end up with at least my expectations being changed. There’s an old proverb about tasting the good life and never wanting to lower your standards afterwards, and I have a hunch that’s going to happen to me too. If for whatever reason I will switch jobs in a few years, I can’t see myself going down the same path I was once on.

Is that a bad thing? No, but that’s how it should have been to begin with.