adelaide

Once upon a time it only happened once. Now it happens half a dozen times for most people: that first day in a new job. Once a career lasted forever: you worked in the bank, or the school, or on the farm, and finished there 40 years later. Of those half dozen careers our first job not only ends, it disappears, and our last is yet to be invented.

My new employer hires me because they think I know something. But on this first day I know nothing. I’ve met two people in the organisation, the two who interview me, one from Adelaide and the other from Sydney.

Corporate social policy dictates that I not refer to my employer in casual blogs, so they are now just PAI, and I work in the MM program. When I accept the job I also accept that my very first day is to be PAI’s national one-day staff conference in Adelaide.

People ask when I begin work. I tell them at 4:10pm yesterday. That was when my plane touched off at Tullamarine for Adelaide.

I dose myself with anti-cold pills and throat gargle and cart my sick self into the hotel dining-room for breakfast. I make to sequester myself at a corner table, but Tracy, my Adelaide connection, summons me to the most populated table in the room. I plead contagion but she’ll have none of that and urges me to come and meet everyone.

And so it begins. I put on the professional hat of sociability; its personal counterpart has never sat comfortably. I chat and well-wish, even schmooze.

We ascend to the conference room on the sixth floor where I seek refuge at a table of unknown faces. Over 120 PAI staff assemble and the show gets under way. Jo, our MC, is a local, big, blowsy, boozy by her own admission, and full of good cheer and wit. The in-jokes scud over my head.

Some major player is introduced. She busts into tears. She’s a stand-in for the CEO who fell out with the board and departed only hours ago. The first hour’s reporting on finances, board decisions and the impact of government decision-making is a blur.

We break into smaller workshops, then morning tea, then more small workshops. I go to Tracy’s and start to feel at ease. I chat with Maryanne, my New South Welsh counterpart, who’s been in the job four years. It’s her dream job; I tell her it’s mine too.

After lunch MC Jo asks me judge a best ideas competition, seeing it’s my first day and I’m untainted. She announces my judge-hood to the room and suddenly I’m known to everyone and required to not only sit in judgment but present my rationale and the award. Mr Anonymity is dead.

The MM team finish the day together and six of us go out for dinner. I like them. I’m a lucky bastard. 

   

Rock on.