🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
See🎶
Sprout📰
House Guest🐕
THE DAILY UPDATE
Three Things I’m Grateful For Today:
- A chiropractor appointment later.
- A great first in-office day at my new job.
- Free fruit.
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Connections
Puzzle #339
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The song in my head when I woke up: “If You Could Only See,” by Tonic
Favorite line from the song in my head when I woke up: If you could only see how blue/
Her eyes can be when she says/When she says she loves me
Commute Tunes: It’s so nice to have a half-hour commute instead of an hour-plus commute. But the down side is fewer tunes? Today was a mix of rap and classic rock.
- My Adidas, Run DMC
- Not Afraid, Eminem
- Godzilla, Eminem
- Lowrider, Cyprus Hill
- Gimme All Your Lovin’, ZZ Top
- You Really Got Me, The Kinks
- Bad to the Bone, George Thorogood & The Destroyers
- Runnin’ Down a Dream, Tom Petty
Something I’m looking forward to today: A second day in the office. This place is pretty dang cool.
Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: This weekend’s baseball tournament.
Something I’m grateful for from yesterday: Having Boy The Elder and the Future Daughter-In-Law over for dinner last night.
What I’m writing: Yesterday’s Two Crappy Pages involved writing for a Johnny Boy Marketing client about a woman who works at Sprout Social on user experience and product design.
What I’ve written: I write books. You should buy them. Find them here and make sure Amazon doesn’t get any of your money!
I once read something from someone who said that the first thing she does when she interviews in person for a new job is go to the bathroom. Yes, that’s weird if you don’t hear an explanation.
Her reasoning is that she wanted to check out the toilet paper. So yeah, we’re still in “weird” territory.
A company that would skimp on such a basic necessity and put the scratchy one-ply stuff in their stalls, she reasoned, isn’t a company that cares about its talent.
That still might be firmly in the weird territory, but it also is kinda brilliant. I’ve worked for too many companies over the course of my career, and I can easily separate them into two categories. There are those that value their people (two-ply companies) and those that see their people as cogs in a machine (scratchy-butt one-ply companies).
Seeing your people as cogs in a machine is sorta fine if you operate, say, an Amazon warehouse. Those employees who complain about their treatment there aren’t seeing the reality that they all will be replaced as soon as robots can do the few jobs they can’t already do. Humans are mere placeholders for those who can get your stuff to you in a day even cheaper than Amazon already does.
But when your organization is based on the highly honed skills of professionals? You better give them the good toilet paper.
I’m on Day 3 at my new company. Yesterday was my first in-office day. I’m happy to report they are a two-ply company. Not only is their toilet paper great, everything about the onboarding experience has been professional and streamlined. Technology was ready and waiting. Necessary information was provided succinctly. Paperwork was kept to a minimum. There was an actual plan in place to make sure I felt welcomed and supported.
That’s important, folks, and companies that don’t take onboarding seriously do so at their own peril. You only get one chance to make a first impression. At my last two career stops I knew within 24 hours that both wouldn’t be long-term for me.
One place hadn’t set up my username, didn’t have my computer ready, put nothing in my office and then gave me 35 videos to watch for onboarding — which I had to do on my personal laptop.
The last one had nothing. I mean, nothing. I sat down at my desk. No HR talk. No paperwork. No meetings set up with people I would be working with. I had to seek all this out myself, which was fine, but it sure as hell didn’t look good. And the toilet paper sucked and the toilets barely flushed because the water pressure was so bad.
I know three days doesn’t make a long-term happy career experience, but I’m feeling good about this place.
Would you please help a brutha out? I’ve created a weekly eNewsletter called News-B-Nuts in which I’ll be sending out news nuggets and witty commentary to subscribers. If you can, would you support this endeavor for just $5 a month via Patreon?
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