One year ago today I started work here. I haven’t worked there for over 7 months now. Most of the readers of this blog know about my decision to pursue a life in Christian ministry instead of business so I won’t go into detail about this right now.
I remember my first day quite well even now. I showed up at 7am and met a lot of people. On Mondays we would have branch meetings. This consisted of all the sales managers on my team (most of which I didn’t know yet) and the branch manager (who I had interviewed with). The meeting started at 7:30am.
It was the first day for me and one other girl. Our branch manager apologized to us for what we were going to hear…and what began was a expletive filled tirade about how poorly the team had been performing. It was lasted 15 minutes or so. He complained not so much the actual sales results but the work habits that were permeating the office and explained that this is one of the reasons why financial advisors fail. I didn’t act shocked, but I was. I knew what I was getting into and that it was going to be a tough, no nonsense environment…but this was a strong welcome to the business world. I thought wow…I guess it has begun already. That was my first day of after college “real world.”
Have you ever had a rude awakening on the first day of a new job?