My First Day at Work

I got up at 6.45 am and started filling in three forms, which were supposed to be handed in upon my arrival.

As I was filling in the forms, I noticed 50-page-long booklet, which every employee should read. I managed to eat my breakfast while reading quickly through the brochure. Having dressed up ) I felt a bit nervous that I would not make it for 9.30. - After a lengthy conversation with my good friend Lucia the other day, she works for RAND, I reached a conclusion to wear smart shoes, black trousers and a shirt. I was surprised, that she had been surprised that I was intending to turn up wearing bright yellow shorts and my Heron's T-Shirt. Lucia recommended to look smarter on the first day, scout the situation and dress up accordingly on the next day. - It was twenty past nine when I was leaving the flat. Fortunately, Westbrook was closer than I expected and also downhill. I was there in about five minutes without a droplet of sweat on my forehead.

I checked the names of the people who I was supposed to meet upon my arrival so that I don't have to ask for their names the first time I see them. Having done that, I entered the building. As I was walking through the door I noticed I was being followed by a bearded man.  We started chatting and he turned out to be a fresh PhD from Oxford. In the next second, Laura came and apologised that she had just came back from her holiday and that she did not have time to prepare for our arrival. She showed us around the company. When we were in the kitchen, I was tempted to ask if the notice board in front of us is the notice board that was mentioned in the Staff Manual which every member of staff is supposed to keep checking. I decide rather not to ask that because I did not want to look pedantic, and perhaps like an idiot as there were no other notice boards. I was really taken aback by the kitchen. The staff has free access to fruit (bananas, apples, grapes, pears, plums, strawberries), tinned drinks and a ton of biscuits.

When the tour finished, I was shown to my workstation. The IT guy apologised that he had just came back from holiday so he had not had time to get my computer ready. Fortunately, I brought my laptop with me. Had I not done that, I would have probably spent four hours looking at a blank wall.  So I sat down and started exploring my workstation . Some Mr Robinson had left loads of his stuff in the drawers! I noticed that other colleges had these blue hard-cover notebooks so I went and ask to get one too.  I also used this opportunity to enquire about accessing timesheets . It was written in the Staff Manual that every employee should fill in his timesheet with care, aiming for a resolution of 15 minutes, so I did not want to delay filling it in. Laura did not know what I mean, and she looked deeply puzzled even after showing her a picture of a timesheet in the Staff Manual. At that moment I realised that they do not expect their incoming employees to have read the booklet. I will be at this firm for 8 weeks but I did also read the part about maternity leave.  My image of flawless professional environment started to fall apart.

I returned back to my workstation and got to know Ian, a summer student of the same age as me who was trying to figure out how to determine a distance from a current sensor to a fault on electricity cables. “Wow,” I thought, “that is indeed an exciting problem to solve!” Andrew, whom I called Alex until 4pm, came up to me and started telling me about making the company website better for customers. I was not quite sure what he wants, because what seemed he had wanted was just very trivial, so I did it in an electronic form.  At that point all people started getting up and disappearing through little door into a meeting room.  Having asked around, I found out that they had this meeting every Monday so I joined in. When I entered the meeting room, there were no free seats and everyone was munching a burger wrapped in Al foil.  I did not get one. They don't have to shovel in my face the fact that I am a summer student so much right from the start, I thought. Then, the chairman said that there were some burgers left so I went and got one too.

When the meeting started, I felt like in CUER. People tried to update others concisely about what they had been up to.  I could not hear very well so I was scanning the room with my eyes. There was a man sitting right in front of me who had a really huge hole on his sock and his socks were not from the pair. "I am home," I thought. Most of them had non-jeans trousers with shirt. However, there were some wearing T-shirts and jeans. I realised that Lucka is not familiar with the environment of technical people, who don't give much thought to what they are wearing. Indeed, the term 'software monkey' did not come about by an accident. These kinds of people do walk around in a T-shirt and jeans - they would have had shorts had they been tough and non-atrophied, and they send their CVs as a CV.txt. As I was scanning the room with my eyes, I noticed that the man next to me crumbled the aluminium wrapping in a little ball and he was throwing it and catching it with his right hand.  In the next moment someone lifted up a napkin with something written on it and showed it to someone else. The image of immaculate professional working environment was disappearing as quickly as a droplet of water on a live un-insulated 3 phase cable.

I was trying to find Andrew after the meeting with no success. I got up and went to the kitchen to enjoy the food. I started sucking on a plum as its pip did not want to peel out easily. There were several colleagues in the kitchen so I started chatting with them. In the first two minutes of the conversation I managed to find out who organised a table football championship; they had a table football in the big staff kitchen. The conversation finished in the third so I opened a second tin of Fanta. After one hour and half I finally managed to speak to Andrew, whom I was still calling Alex. I showed him what I did. He broadened the topic of better website for customers: he started talking about licences. As he was explaining his ideas, he pointed at 10 thick folders that contained patent certificates. I understood that these folders might contain relevant information to my task. It did not seem much clearer when I was walking back to my workstation holding a couple of thick folders. I was still feeling stunned because Andrew's words were still resonating in my head: I was supposed to spend around 4 weeks on this. I was also told to look at old Westport website, because they had some licences and fees done in a very neat way. Should I not find it, I was supposed to email him.

I was unable to find the old website, so I wanted to email Andrew, whose email address was on the staff system. I came to the conclusion that I really need a computer so I went to IT manager. When I came up, he grabbed a computer tower and went to my workdesk. He managed to set everything up after 20 minutes. About half of that time was spent playing with a mouse and a keyboard because they did not seem to function properly. Once he left, I sent an email to Alex. An hour later or so Alex came up to me and asked me, if I needed help with something. At that point I realised that I did not get Andrew's name right.

I spent the rest of the day looking at different patents, examining them and trying to find when the patents expire. I have seen patents from many countries: USA, UK, Turkey, China, Columbia, Mexico, Canada, Philippines, Japan, India, Jordan, Ukraine...I was surprised that I could not see the date of issue on some of the patents. It was really comforting t hear that the people who were in charge of these folders were on a holiday for the following two weeks. This is what I call efficiency.  I just wanted to cry. My interview was so technical; they even asked me some old tripos questions (tripos is the name of the exam that students sit at the end of each year) and I was showing off with my SolidWorks skills (CAD software package). All of that for what? So that I can read through thick folders, trying to find some information that someone else had done before but because of his absence, I am doing it again. Am I a layer from Harvard or something? (I had seen first 3 episodes of 'Suits' the previous days. It shows law graduates from Harvard who spend their first years of employment by just going through folders) When I finished going through the third folder, I had a short chat with Andrew, whom I was finally calling Andrew, and I was assured that there will be even more folders waiting for me the next day.

My first day of work in a private company was finished. What else to add? It can only get better and Philippine patent certificate is so huge that it sticks out of a normal folder.

(written right after the first day of the placement)


Having finished my 8 week long placement, I must say I really enjoyed it. The first two days were horrible but the rest of it was just brilliant. I was learning Java, plotting graph using different libraries, making antennas to specified frequency, conducting testing to 0.02% of accuracy, learning about relation Databases, writing my own algorithm to fit Gaussians in a set of data points etc.

What I wanted to wear

What I ended up wearing

Westbrook Centre, the company is on the ground floor, entrance is right behind the tree on the right

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