Nervous about starting new job Monday

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Anglewannabe

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I am starting a new job Monday as previously posted. I am very nervous because in Canada for the first 3 months they are allowed to fire a new employee for no reason at all. There is NO job protection

I went on line and googled how to behave at a new job. I found some of the suggestion sounded good in theory but totally ignored the aspect of company culture.

For example, they said to sit with the boss and ask to set a 30/60/90 day plan ie what I should know by those dates. Honestly, the guy who interviewed me seems like the ‘avoided discussion’ type of guy. IOW I think he would feel put on the spot and annoyed that he would have to think about goals. Also, I doubt he will be the person to train me. I suspect I will be trained by a peer.

Also, I was let go from a job once after 2 months because I insisted the only way I could learn was to take notes and study them as I perform tasks. The lady training me hated that I took notes so they let me go.

So, my plan is to take notes (because it is the only way I can learn), hopefully I will get some alone time to study them, and just go along with the procedures. After a few weeks, when I know the drill, then I will try to make suggestions to improve procedures (if I have any that I think are good)

Thoughts?

Angie
 
Small, digital tape recorder, and ask for permission first.
 
Chill.

First, wait to see what their training plan and methods are. You aren’t even there yet. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Just wait to see how the first few days go. I agree with the PP that a small recorder could help if needed, if they allow that.

Also, as to offering improvement suggestions, I would not do so in the first few weeks unless asked or unless that is why you have been brought in. You are learning, you won’t know all the up and down stream parts of the job after only few weeks.

So just chill out and don’t start over thinking things.
 
1ke said:
Chill. .
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Thank you 😉
1ke said:
First, wait to see what their training plan and methods are. You aren’t even there yet. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Just wait to see how the first few days go. .
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Good idea
1ke said:
I agree with the PP that a small recorder could help if needed, if they allow that…
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Even if it was allowed, I would NEVER be able to pull that one off in a tactful manner
1ke said:
Also, as to offering improvement suggestions, I would not do so in the first few weeks unless asked or unless that is why you have been brought in. You are learning, you won’t know all the up and down stream parts of the job after only few weeks.
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I have often been in situations where people will spend all day doing things in Excel that I could write a macro that would do it in 30 minutes and be reused over and over again. Some people are grateful for the suggestions, others are not. However, if I am on a time constraint (since this job is deadline driven), I may have to resort to that.

Honestly, the real one I am worried about is taking notes. It floors me how many offices I have been in that are against it

Angie
 
O Mother of men and peoples, you know all their sufferings and their hopes. You maternally feel all their struggles between good and evil, between the light and the darkness which shake the world.

Receive our cry, directed in the Holy Spirit straight to your heart and, with the love of the Mother and the Handmaid to the Lord, embrace the individuals and peoples which most look for this embrace, together with the individuals and peoples to whose trust You attend in a particular way.

Take the entire human family under your maternal protection. With outflows of affection, O Mother, we entrust it to You. May the time of peace and liberty approach for all, the time of truth, justice, and hope. Amen.
  • St JPII
 
Anglewannabe said:
Honestly, the real one I am worried about is taking notes. It floors me how many offices I have been in that are against it
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I suppose one of the casualties of a postmodern culture that too quickly frowns on traditional methodology of learning. A good many people out there are more kinesthetic and tactile oriented, but many of us also do naturally lean towards the traditional methods: pen, paper, and words. Many workplaces have probably erroneously overcompensated.

Just do it. If it really, really seems like it’s deeply upsetting somebody (which is unfair, but such is life) I would jettison the practice and do the best you can without. I would do whatever you can to make your employer happy in so far as you’re not violating your conscious.

There is nothing that you can do at the moment to make your nervousness go away, and that might be a good thing. Pray, exercise, and make yourself as prepared as possible, and then face tomorrow. Each day will get a little easier than the previous one. Time will do its work.
 
I hope you do well. 🙂

I will say this: I also like to take notes when learning a job, and never really ran into an issue with it in an office environment, personally. There was one time when* I* took issue with it, but it wasn’t so much the trainee’s notetaking as her total inability to perform the simplest tasks of her job after a month of hand-holding, despite giving her step-by-step instructions on each task several times, complete with pauses for her to write the stuff down. 😛 Ditto higher-level management; they didn’t really care how you learned, as long as you learned reasonably quickly.
 
Anglewannabe said:
I am starting a new job Monday as previously posted. I am very nervous because in Canada for the first 3 months they are allowed to fire a new employee for no reason at all. There is NO job protection

I went on line and googled how to behave at a new job. I found some of the suggestion sounded good in theory but totally ignored the aspect of company culture.

For example, they said to sit with the boss and ask to set a 30/60/90 day plan ie what I should know by those dates. Honestly, the guy who interviewed me seems like the ‘avoided discussion’ type of guy. IOW I think he would feel put on the spot and annoyed that he would have to think about goals. Also, I doubt he will be the person to train me. I suspect I will be trained by a peer.

Also, I was let go from a job once after 2 months because I insisted the only way I could learn was to take notes and study them as I perform tasks. The lady training me hated that I took notes so they let me go.

So, my plan is to take notes (because it is the only way I can learn), hopefully I will get some alone time to study them, and just go along with the procedures. After a few weeks, when I know the drill, then I will try to make suggestions to improve procedures (if I have any that I think are good)

Thoughts?

Angie
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What kind of job is yours?
 
UbiCaritas said:
There was one time when* I* took issue with it, but it wasn’t so much the trainee’s notetaking as her total inability to perform the simplest tasks of her job after a month of hand-holding, despite giving her step-by-step instructions on each task several times, complete with pauses for her to write the stuff down. 😛 .
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Well, it sounds like that person totally missed the point of note taking. As much as notes help me learn, it is also something I refer to in order to avoid constantly disturbing others.

This is no joke. The office where I was forbidden to take notes was a customer service center. I was expected to have another girl hooked to the phone so that she could hear but not speak. When the client would ask me a question, I would flip through my notes. The girl would nudge me and start making the silliest of hand gestures expecting me to know what it meant. She started to ‘air play piano’ with her fingers. I got into trouble for not knowing that meant ‘tell the client to write an email’:rolleyes: I probably would have found that in my notes had she given me 20 seconds but instead she created a 60 second annoyance while a customer was on the phone:eek:
 
1Ke is right. You need to step back a little and relax. Your first impressions of your boss are not something you should really base this on. The company will have a way to train you. Please do not get a head of yourself.
 
1ke said:
In YOUR business world, which seems to be substantially different from the one I and some others reside in.
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Not really. A new employee who asked to record anything electronically would be dismissed faster than a security guard could collect the stuff from their desk. It presents not only legal issues but trust issues as well. Any manager worth anything would run as far away from that as possible. I worked in an industry where intellectual property and corporate espionage were very very real. Actually most business are like that. Grocery stores, call centers, or in my case Ag Sciences. Not to mention that a manager may not even have the authority to ok outside electronic recordings. I personally would dismiss a new employee who even suggested that immediately. Corporate business is based on trust and confidentiality. The fastest way to a lawsuit should things go bad with an employee is to have allowed that employee to actually tape anything. This puts the business at a liability risk that a business should never do. Ever.
If employee “A” loses a job later and wants to either give information to a competitor or sue the company imagine how damaging a library of recordings could be. Imagine if someone recorded anyone at work!? The risk to your own job is too great. \

Several years ago my wife hired (accidentally) an environmental terrorist who had many lawsuits pending with the company. He misled my wife and her team in the interview and was bent on getting information to damage the company. Luckily my wife just happened to be having lunch with the lawyer that day that the new employee was just hired. My wife casually mentioned the name of the new hire and the lawyer went white.

That was the shortest career ever. Which also ended in a restraining order. These things happen. Recording work training is one of the riskiest things an employer could do. It is strait up bad business… And one could not stay in business too long before that reared it’s ugly head and bit you…
 
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