A Near Miss, but Finally Employed

It was close. In fact, I missed a good portion of the required orientation due to a breakdown in communication. Nonetheless, I am employed again.

I had been offered this position about a month ago, but still wanted to explore some other options that were out there, so I asked for another two weeks before I gave an answer. The human resources guy I was working with said that would be fine, so I set a deadline of August 26th for my answer.

I called and left a message on the 26th saying that I would accept the position and requesting further information such as when to show up, where to show up and such. A week later (Sept. 1), I left pretty much the same voice mail and also emailed the HR guy with the same info request. I still didn't hear anything over the weekend.

My assumption was that since the training classes would be 3:30-midnight, that I needed to be there today at 3:30. Having not heard back from HR, I didn't have any other information to go on. I tried calling again this morning at about 10:00, left a voice mail message and emailed again. Around 10:30, the phone rang.

The HR guy said that they had started orientation at 8:00 that morning, and since he hadn't heard from me, he wasn't expecting me. I told him about the previous attempts to get in touch and we made arrangements for me to get there for the afternoon sessions at about 1:15. He also requested that I get my drug test done before I got there.

I got dressed for work, Amy threw together a lunch for me and I was off. I'm still living in Yankton which is about 1 hour 45 minutes from my employer on the northeast side of Sioux Falls. I left at 11:15 without much room for messing around. I resisted the urge to speed and arrived in time to pee in a cup (sorry if that grossed anybody out) and arrived for orientation at about 1:10.

I had to walk into the orientation in the middle of a presentation and the first impression that I gave to a room full of people that I will be going through training with for the next four weeks is that I don't have it together well enough to show up within five hours of when I'm supposed to be there. I also kept getting pulled out of afternoon sessions to do things everybody else had done in the morning such as getting my photo i.d. made and getting fingerprinted (a much less messy prospect with computer technology than the last time I did it which was probably in grade school). This was not the impression I wanted to make on people on the first day, but it is what it is. I'm hoping to improve on that impression over time.

I was relieved to miss a good portion of the orientation sessions as a lot of it was diversity and sensitivity stuff that I tend to be pretty sensitive to anyway. I did miss a lot of paperwork in the morning, so the HR guy and I stuck around after for about 30 minutes to do what it took them 90 minutes in the morning to accomplish.

My orientation was four hours long. Their orientation was eight. I don't feel like I missed out on a lot except for the free lunch.