Back To Work

Started at the new job on Monday.  All this week and part of the next will be training and learning the ropes.

A lot of differences from my last security guard position.  I'll be working at a large facility that makes sports equipment, covering about fifty acres and a dozen buildings, with hundreds of workers.

And in an odd coincidence, one of those dozen buildings is one I've actually worked in before, back about thirty years ago.  Early in my career with the Postal Service, one of the stations I worked out of was a temporary station in a leased warehouse, serving the expanding areas of Northwest Phoenix.  Eventually a dedicated Postal Service station was built about a mile further north and all the postal employees in that warehouse were moved to the new facility.  The sports manufacturer, who was located across the street from the warehouse back then, tended to buy up surrounding business properties as they became available.  That warehouse was one of the properties they bought and expanded into.

(The manufacturer is planning on some major construction and renovation in the near future, and that old warehouse is one of the buildings slated to be torn down.  It was already a pretty run-down building when I worked in it three decades ago.)

The old warehouse isn't the only memory-evoking thing about the new workplace.  My dad was a machinist for an airplane-parts manufacturer for most of the years I was growing up; sometimes we'd pick him up from work if Mom needed to use the car that day, and the company's Christmas parties were frequently held at the plant itself.  So the sight and sound and smell of the manufacturing equipment is a familiar one.

(Although most of the big milling machines are now computer-controlled, and enclosed in big sound-muting enclosures.  When Dad did milling, he did so right up beside his machine; I don't recall him ever having a serious injury, but his arms frequently had small nicks and burns from sharp, hot bits of metal coming off the pieces being milled.)

The other thing the new workplace makes me think of are the trips I made to the Parmaount Studio lot back in 1990, when I pitched the story and wrote the script for the "Clues" episode of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION.  Both places hold numerous buildings of various sizes, built over decades, many refurbished and re-purposed over the years, with hundreds of employees and executives going from building to building in a hum of activity, either on foot or in golf carts.

The new workplace seems to have its act together better than the old one, too.  Policies, instructions, and responsibilities are pretty straightforward and clear.  At my previous workplace, you never knew from day-to-day what you might be yelled at for, because policies there could turn on a dime and change at management's whim.  (One of the major reasons I didn't stay when they converted to an in-house security department.)

So, so far, I'm pretty happy with the new job.