My First Day

Yesterday I went to the first event, a team meeting, for my new job as a Customer Service representative at a mall. Including the supervisor, there are six people on the team. It's a mix of ages, but I'm one of the older ones. There's a few college students, and a couple people who also have full-time jobs. They all seem very nice.

Today was the first day of training--daytime for those available, and after work for the others. I had to be there at 9:30, and despite giving myself twice as much time as I though I needed, thanks to an ill-timed rainstorm and resulting traffic jam I was almost late. Fortunately, I didn't have trouble finding a parking spot that early in the morning and walked in with a couple of minutes to spare.

One of the things Customer Service does is sell mall gift certificates, so everyone had to be trained in the proper procedures. The training is computer-based, and there was only one computer available, so one person could do it at a time. I volunteered to go first, and they set the computer up in a back room.

I'm not sure if it was because of my location, but The. Program. Downloaded. Very. Slowly. I could have gone for coffee and come back before it was finished. Even after it had downloaded there were problems. Every few slides the program would freeze. Sometimes for a few seconds, and sometimes for a minute. It made for a very frustrating experience. Finally, I got though it and joined the rest of the group for a short HR presentation.

After that I was free to leave. They were going to try to move the computer to a different location so another person could start their training. I wished them good luck as I walked away.