Office life

I survived my first week of work!

The first day was mostly spent getting used to everything, getting familiar with the office layout, figuring out how and what I was going to be doing. The task I was assigned was to build a model of a mixed use university building that is being designed in the office, so that the people working on the project could have a physical model to swap in and out facades, test ideas, that kind of thing.

My first day, monday, I wore a tie and followed Chuck to work. The office is located in the seaport district, about a quarter mile from the harbor and the Institute of Contemporary Design. It's in an old warehouse or office, over a hundred years old, with a brick exterior and the interior is all massive wood timbers and wood columns. It's kind of fascinating to be on an upper floor of a commercial office building made of 100 year old wood timbers. The office takes up the entire floor, and the elevator opens directly into the office, so there's really no moment to collect yourself before you're in the office. You enter in the small building lobby downstairs, you go in the elevator, and boom, you're at the front desk.

I'm working as a kind of catch-all guy. Mostly making physical models, but I'll also be dragged into picking up redlines as the SD package gets ready to go, and then friday I had to answer phones all day in addition to working on the model, which was more than a little nerve-wracking.

My instructions were pretty simple but kind of complicated in the relationship between the instructions. For example: the founder of the firm and main principal, Mike Mikasa, has a large public profile as the face of the company, so I need to screen his calls well to keep random people, telemarketers, salespeople etc. from bugging him. But, we were also expecting to hear from a few universities as to whether or not we had won projects based on interviews, so they should definitely be put in contact immediately with him. And also his family will also call, so I got their names. On top of this, I still don't really know people's names or positions in the office, so I'm pretty much reliant on the phone chart in order to connect people to the right line, and I pretty much have no clue whether or not people are actually in the office.

The worst call was when a woman called for Mike Mikasa, and I asked her which organization she was with. She said something which I didn't catch because my handset was really bad, and so I had to ask her again. She said very stiffly and slowly, "I'm Mike's wife." I apologized and transferred her immediately, and I'm sure the first thing she said to him was "who the heck is manning the phones??"

Anyway, the office is a lot like my old firm in Phoenix. They have free coffee, a fridge stocked with cokes and beer (50 cents in the honor jar, and the beer for friday afternoons). Donuts and bagels friday morning, and a pretty casual working environment. The casual side of business casual, and I'll probably come in with jeans sometime next week.

The walk to work from the T station is nice. It's a huge business crowd of professionals going to work and it's strange to be a part of that community already in a city I've just entered for the first time. We walk by the huge and strange Fed building, cross a great old bridge, and then walk through the seaport district, which is filled with architecture firms. My office building with six floors actually has three or four architecture firms inside, as well as an office furniture showroom, and a domestic robotics company. It's kind of a design professional area. We're also pretty close to the Boston Architectural Society.

Two lunches were provided for us last week by lunch and learns. The catered sandwiches are better than they were in Phoenix, but the speakers seem a lot more worn and tired, and uninterested.

There is something in the people of Boston that I've seen that seems more tired, more worn than what I'm used to in St.Louis or in Phoenix. People seem more closed, less friendly and less outgoing. If not openly hostile, they seem to be more wary. There are definite counterexamples too, but the hustle of the city seems to take a toll.

The people in the office are a mixed group. Only a handful have come up to introduce themselves to me. One employee described the office as the largest collection of individualists she's ever seen. People tend to keep to themselves. My team seems pretty outgoing though in comparison.