Monday, October 4, 2010

First Day of Work

**I'll be one of the last people to go crying about hurting the environment, so don't think that's what I'm talking about here; this is about money.

I had my first day of work today at my new job. Pretty much the only thing I learned today was that the New Zealand government wastes money.

The first thing I noticed was the heating/cooling. Today's weather was about 65F (18C). The heater was on putting us well above the outside temperature (which is normally ok) but some offices/training rooms (with doors wide open) had the a/c making it well below the outside temperature. It's bad enough have your a/c system fighting the outside, but to have it fighting another machine is just dumb.

We had to make paper name plates to put on the desk, even though we were all wearing ones on our shirts, then make posters to hang on the wall about what we expect from our coworkers. (mine said "I don't want y'all to steal my stuff" which was a nice change of pace from "respect" "punctuality" "respect my culture"...)

Next, we were all given a large packet of papers. It was about 50 pages each of their code of conduct and general health/safety things. We then sat there all day while a trainer read it to us off of a power point presentation. I understand the importance of making sure your employees know what not to do but there are much better ways of doing it; like "sit down at this computer and click through this powerpoint presentation. The worst part was that it wasn't even specific information. It was all generic things like "respect peoples privacy" and "don't break the law". I was surprised to find that, disregarding the fact that my entire job is based at a computer, there was no mention of proper computer usage.

We had a trainer that didn't know what she was doing. I'm sure she is great at doing our job and she is a nice person...but it is kinda a waste when it takes four times as long to do things when I have to just figure it out and go around the room helping everyone else change their passwords. On top of that, the IT guy wasted his time with things; I kinda felt bad for him. The instructor would tell someone how to do something then the person would try and not figure it out and tell the instructor that it wont work. So rather than trying to fix it herself, the instructor calls the IT guy over.

The thing that makes no sense to me is the fact that our computers have a lock on them where you have to insert your id card to give yourself the option to enter a password. The problem is that, rather than take the card home with us, we have to take it out of the computer and leave it on the desk. Her reason for us not taking it home is that they cost too much to replace.

I could keep going on their wastefulness but I'm pretty sure most people have an idea of how bad governments are. The point is that despite how much the NZ government tries to tell you that it is saving the environment to make up for the rest of the worlds mistakes, it isn't true.


On a side note, I really enjoyed my first day and think that I will really like it there.

2 comments:

  1. Do you leave your computer at work? Because it seems to me that you have to leave your ID card behind because it costs too much to replace, but take your computer home.

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  2. Nah, they made a point of telling us we weren't allowed to take home the any of the computer equipment (or something like that, she said it with kiwi slang so I didn't quite understand it all)

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