First Day

Today was the very first day of my new job as an electrician. All in all I have to say it went pretty well, so I guess if that's all your interested in you can bail on the rest of this post. For the rest of you I'm going to share the story of my first day.

It started early! James and I were talking last night and he told me that with jobs like this respect is something you earn by consistently meeting and exceeding expectations. He told me his dad has been going in to work a half hour early for his whole career. I think one thing I could do in this new job really well is showing up on time. Well maybe I can do it. I am going to make an honest effort at being at least 15 minutes early every day and see how it goes. So today I left the house at about 6:30, which is about 23 minutes before I needed too. On my way to work I stopped and got some coffee at Starbuck's. when I got to work of course I was the only one there, and being the new guy, had to sit in the car and wait for someone with keys to arrive. Once I got inside I had to again wait around for about 45 minutes for the boss to show up and tell me where to go for the day. Luckily for me one of the project managers drove me out to my new location and hooked me up with the guy who I guess I am going to be working with for the foreseeable future.

The job site I got sent too is really a satellite office. It's downtown on 4th street right next door to National City Bank. Its crazy though because you go into this building and take this service elevator down into the sub-basement of the building. You get off the elevator and walk out into a cramped narrow hallway with a stained concrete floor and dirty white walls yellowed with smoke. Overhead there are hundreds of different types of cables, hoses, and wires running up and down the hallways. Numbered doors are spread every 20 feet or so down the length of the hallway all with some variation of a padlock holding them closed. Our office is room 43. The first thing I noticed when I walked in was how hot and humid the hallway had been, and how nice and cool it was inside. The rooms on that floor are all climate controlled by unit air conditioners poking through the walls. In this tiny 20x12 office is where I met the people I will be working with. Today I met 4 people; Bill, the guy I worked with all day (more on this later), Anthony who is a youngish guy that likes to laugh, at least that's what I thought after lunch today, Chris who is the downtown manager (basically he supervises all the downtown jobs), and Stanley who is the project manager for the whole company. Of these guys I got to spend my day working with Bill.

Bill is in his mid to late 40's I would guess. During my conversation with him today I learned he has a quasi wife and 4 kids. I say quasi because they aren't actually legally married, but for all intensive purposes they are married. They've lived together for 25 years or something, and when I asked him about ever getting married he said "next year she retires, and it might be nice to get her on my benefits, but we'll see." Aside from his personal life he is the best electrician on the downtown crew. He's been working Bizcom's service contracts in the city for 10 years and knows everyone in every building. Walking around with him today was like escorting a celebrity. In addition to knowing all the people he knows how to get everywhere both inside and outside buildings, and today alone took me to closets on different floors of like 6 buildings (I think anyways, I got a little lost after a while). So he's showing me around all these passages and service elevators which was amazing really because we would go from some nasty hallway to a super nice hotel lobby every time we walked through another door. One of the many things I learned today is that its going to take me a little while to learn my way around well.

After a brief tour of the work area (Cincinnati) it was time for break aka 9:00 so we walked around a little more then actually went to work. Our job today was to prep this office for some cubicle restructuring that's going on tomorrow agenda. We had to rerun some voice and data wires and figure out how to power everything from the existing breakers. It was child's play for Bill, but I was learning a lot. At one point he had me hook up these Internet jacks to some Cat-5 cable. He tossed me this tool and said very matter of factly "hook those up." I told him I had never done it before to which he responded over the top of his glasses "you match up the colors..." I felt like a jackass, but I got it wired up. After everything was prepped we had to test everything with this volt meter which was pretty cool. At lunch I some of the other guys where asking how I was doing and I think he complimented me. He said "he's not bad, not like some of these dumb mother effers they send down here." Like I said I think it was a compliment... After lunch it was more walking around and cleaning up our mess. Bill had to leave early because he was picking his car up from the shop so for the last 20 minutes of the day I hung out in the office by myself.

All things considered I thought it was a good day, daring to be great even. Bill is a nice guy and a good teacher, and I think we will get along just fine. So far I like what I think I am going to be doing, and I think I will be very good at it someday. For now though, I am just going to keep trying to stay out of the way and not screw anything up. As a side note about Bill he is consumed by excellence; I was putting some socket covers on today and he told me the screw heads are supposed to be lined up vertically. I like having a job where excellence is valued again.