This is part 2 of a series of blogs about my career change.
I feel it is necessary to establish my employment situation at the General Services Administration (GSA) both to be clear and for legal reasons. I was never a Federal employee. I started doing contract work at GSA as a full-time employee of the Greenbar Corporation. This wasn’t your stereotypical contract job. First of all, the job was for an indefinite period of time and many contractors work in the same position for many, many years as was the case for me. While contractors work side by side with Federal employees on Federal projects and in Federal space it is important to note that contractors are explicitly instructed to never allow themselves to be mistaken for a Federal employee (hence, the legal part). It makes for an interesting workplace dynamic for sure when a good portion of the staff are identifying themselves in the following manner: “I’m a contractor for so and so company, my name is so and so and my job is what not.”
Admittedly, I took this job out of necessity rather than desire. I had no intention of working for the government, especially as a contractor. But, I figured the pay was good and it would give me time to look for my “real job.”
So my first day was Monday, October 30th, 2000- the day before Halloween. I remember meeting my Program Manager from Greenbar, Willie, in the lobby of the office building I would be working in. He led me upstairs and into a small office where I met Sally, the Team Lead for the GSA department I would be working for. Willie said a few more words and departed soon after. Sally then gave me a tour of the enormous office building I would be working in. The building housed over 300 employees working in an ocean of cubicles. We stopped by office after office working our way through the maze of space so I could meet droves of people. Attempting to remember names was futile. By noon, I was thoroughly lost and afraid to go to the restroom for fear I would never find my way back. Eventually I was led to my workstation and right away, I was impressed. Keep in mind this was the year 2000. The technology at my disposal was astonishing; my computer had not one but two monitors and triple the amount of memory of my home computer. I certainly had the hardware necessary to get the job done. The software situation was not so bright, but I’ll provide details about this later.
At the end of the day, Sally informed me that she would be out of town the rest of the week and that I should contact our co-worker Dana (not her real name) when I arrived at the office the next day. Tuesday arrived and I reported to work at 8 a.m. I was lost. I couldn’t find my desk or Dana’s desk and I must have wandered the building looking for something familiar for at least 15 minutes. Finally someone took notice of my confused state and offered to help. We located Dana’s office but she wasn’t there. Great, now what?
I finally found my desk and called Dana from my desk phone. She didn’t answer. After leaving a message, I did the only thing I could think of. I sat at my desk and surfed the Internet…all day, as Dana never arrived and never called me back.
Wednesday morning, Dana stopped by my desk around 10:30 and apologized that she had been out sick the day before. Dana didn’t have a technical background and didn’t really have anything for me to do. I spent the rest of my first week surfing the Internet and trying to figure out where everything was in the office.
Yep, I was certain I wouldn’t be working here long.