Business as usual

Oh, Monday.

You did not quite treat me right, did you? You were superhot and stuffy. Not cool, man.

You see, today was my "pre-employment tasks" day. Meaning I had my hands full of paperwork and red-tape stuff. And for a person coming from a tiny university in a tiny town, all the structure and level of automation of the whole process was quite overwhelming. And made me feel quite the idiot on more than one occasion. Plus, it provided enough material for yet another superlong blog post. 

SOTD: Green Day - American Idiot. 

An important thing to note is that my new work place is HUGE. Not only does the main campus occupy 2 whole blocks on the UES, it also has offices and support services scattered around the neighborhood and way down into midtown. Yay. 

First up on the agenda was my medical. I passed with flying colors and got cleared for duty. But still I made sure to cause a moment of awkwardness, thanks to my ancient vaccination card. You see, in Slovenia, the nurse at my doctor's office refused to print out a fresh record of my vaccination history. It is all stored in my electronic file, but she just didn't feel like reading my insurance card and printing it out. Instead, she suggested I just take a copy of that cardboard card that I got when I was born. 31 years ago. With information typed onto it with a typewriter and dates of vaccines stamped onto it, some of them crooked, some faded. Needless to say the nurse who examined me chuckled a little and then needed my help deciphering the information she required. She had translations of the required vaccinations in Slovakian, Serbian, Croatian and Russian. But not Slovenian. Does that mean I'm the first PhD from Slovenia to go to work there?

My second appointment of the day was with Human Resources, 40 blocks downtown from the Employee Health Services. That went smoothly as well, but again, I managed to stir the routine a bit, since that's just who I am. And again, it's because I'm from Slovenia. A country in which every resident is required by law to have medical insurance. I'm covered until the end of this month, but after that, my current insurance will be suspended. So I need a letter form HR confirming that I will have said insurance and I need to send it back to Slovenia so they don't send rude letters to my mum demanding me to get insured. The nice lady at HR said that she will see to that, but still found my request kind of weird. 

My third appointment was for mandatory drug testing. 46 blocks uptown from HR and 14 blocks uptown from home. It was just the basic pee-in-a-cup thing that's required by law for all new hires. I was not the least bit worried about the results. I'm a good girl. What freaked me out was the whole pee-in-a-cup process. The test goes like this: you're given a cup and need to pee 60 mL of pee into it. But after you do that, you're not allowed to flush the toilet or wash your hands. You first need to give the cup to the lab person and only after she decants 30 mL of your pee into a fresh vial, you are allowed to pour the rest into the toilet, toss the original cup into the biohazard bin, flush and finally wash your hands. Needless to say, that was one of the grossest things I ever did. Can you imagine? Hundreds of people pee in those cups and then touch the doorknobs, taps, you name it with those pee-splattered hands. Yuck, yuck, yuck. Yuck! I went home and showered and then took a nap.

My fourth and last appointment of the day was later in the afternoon at the Security office. I was instructed by HR to to go there ASAP in order to get my ID badge. That is one of the things I am really excited about. I had a bit of trouble finding the Security office, as the building where it is located is some sort of maze. But when I did, the first thing I was asked was when was my start date. I said next Monday. The guy said "no can do". Then he kindly explained that HR insists on sending people over to him as soon as they're done with the hiring process, but for most of those people, their information doesn't get uploaded into his system prior to their first day. And uploading people's data is one of the things HR is responsible for. So, no ID badge for me today. Bummer. 

He was very nice and genuine and told me that he's been trying to talk sense into HR for the past 6 months, but to no avail. Actually, I felt like he was the only TRULY nice person I dealt with today. Everybody was nice and helpful, but mostly they were "professionally" nice, as being nice is clearly part of their job description. This guy was just plain cool. I guess I'll have a blast with him once we get to the point of getting me that ID badge.

Now I'm sitting at a coffee shop having a double espresso relaxing after this rather mad day. 

Tomorrow is IKEA madness (delivery + assembly day). And on Wednesday, my New York vacation can finally begin. Well, after I manage to apply for a Social Security number. 

Oh, well…

Jules