One week down, only fifteen to go...

Yay, I got through my first week of having a grown up job without crying in front of anyone! The funnest part of my week was realising that when the office manager gave me the tour on my first day, she  had been referring to herself in the third person the entire time, and because I hadn't caught her name when she introduced herself I thought she was talking about someone else. It took me until Friday to figure this out, but in my defence, it was an odd thing for her to do.

Let's call her...Jilly. As she was showing me around the office she kept pointing things out and saying stuff like 'here's the kitchen, Jilly empties the dishwasher', and 'here's the storeroom, if you can't find anything just ask Jilly, it's her job to keep it stocked'. But she said these things in a really bitter tone of voice that suggested a significant degree of loathing, which led me to assume that this Jilly person was a useless pain in the arse who couldn't be trusted to do her job. All week I waited for her to show up, and eventually figured she was on holiday or something. I finally figued it out when I asked Jilly where Jilly was, if you follow me, which ended awkwardly. Still, I have been much less socially ept in my time, and that was by far the worst that I did this week so I'm counting it as a generally positive week, socially speaking*.

When I wasn't making a fool of myself, this is what I mostly did this week;

• Hid in the toilets
• Made many, many cups of tea
• Washed and dried my tea cup, veerrryy slowly
• Refreshed my emails in the vain hope that someone, anyone, has sent me something useful. I have even subscribed to dozens of vaguely work-related newsletters so that I get at least a few emails every day to peruse
• Went to get coffee at the cafe down the road, veerryy slowly
• Tidied my desk. This is hard as the only things I have on it are pens and my diary, but you'd be surprised at how many different configurations you can come up with, especially when you add in a water bottle and a coffee cup. 

It got so bad that I was utterly thrilled when my wisdom teeth flared up agonisingly on Wednesday morning because it meant I had to go to the chemist, where I managed to have a lovely long conversation with the girl behind the desk about gum disease, thus managing to be away from my desk for a good twenty minutes. 

I have also perfected the art of staring at the computer screen with a slightly thoughtful look on my face, as if I'm trying to decide what my next marketing strategy will be. 

I fully expect to have been given the sack by the end of next week. 

On the positive side, because my job involves getting out to shops and things and talking to people about selling the magazine, I get to see all sorts of things that I wouldn't otherwise have seen. Like the woman in full blackface makeup I saw leaving a pub on George St. at four in the afternoon on Friday. I really hope there was a good reason for her to be doing that. I thought that as a society we had decided that we weren't going to do that anymore, but maybe she just didn't get the newsletter and couldn't figure out why everyone was staring at her in horror. 

And I saw this;

Even as a joke, this is the worst name.

And I love the area I'm working in. I went for a little explore down my street yesterday;

And finally, I have had a bit of a revelation this week about the nature of classical music. It's all a big in-joke, isn't it? I mean, really, it's all a long running meta joke perpetrated by people with filthy minds and  a penchant for the absurd. How else can you explain the things I read about this week? Did you know that  Mahler's wife was called Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel? Say it out loud. It'll cure what ails you. 

Other completely implausible classical music-related things from this week;

• I read an article that discussed the composers Titz and Scheidt
• I read an article about an instrument called the flageolet, which is a member of the fipple flute family, and they were reportedly designed to teach birds to sing. Yeah, like I believe any of that for a second.
• I read dozens of articles about performances of Bach's organ pieces that brazenly and unashamedly used language that should really only be available to mature audiences.

On balance, this was an OK week. My plan for next week is not to get fired. Aim low, that's my motto.

*Actually, this isn't completely true. I did manage to imply to the woman who sits opposite me that I thought her kids were a significantly different age to the age they actually are, but I wildly underestimated, luckily, thus implying that I thought she was much younger that she actually is, so for once it worked out in my favour.