How to Deal with Your First Week in a New Job

(Top photo: Mac Hackett)

I don't know about you, but I am absurdly incompetent, as a human. And that's the tricky part with The First Week of a New Job: hiding that incompetence from the people who just hired you. You need to present a face that says: you have made the right decision, here, in hiring me. You need to be able to say: please match my pension contributions, for I am a competent man. You need to avoid embarrassment and, wherever possible, make the new place – those new places, those new offices, those unbreakable cliques and impenetrable office in-jokes you need to navigate – know you're there. You, the new guy, with the stink of newness on you, an alien seed in a place of otherwise calm, need to make that new chair your own. But also you really want to go home at 5PM on the dot and you're still not 1,000 percent sure of your new commute. It's tricky. It's hard to get that balance right.

I've been on the first week of many a job, because I have been let go from a number of jobs, due to the aforementioned incompetence. I have been where you are, multiple times. And here, with years of wisdom gleaned, is some advice to get you through these tricky times. Come, take my hand, as I show you where the bathrooms are and give you the quick tour of the office, then get you quickly into HR just to sign some forms and give you a notebook with an embossed logo from your new place of work on it and take a quick scan of your passport, just for our files.

Welcome!

Friends, I once turned up in a full suit for an interview at Zoo magazine. I'll reiterate that one: I once turned up in a full suit for an interview at Zoo magazine. Zoo magazine, in case you were unaware, was a small glossy pamphlet that came out every week, and contained anywhere between 35 and 56 individual titties, and four pictures of a supercar with the caption "Phwoar!" underneath it, and a letters page that always had a vivid photograph of some reader's leg injury, two adverts for hair transplants and one for Lynx. It was exclusively bought by 14-year-old boys at motorway service stations during a school coach trip to the Imperial War Museum and overseas-stationed members of the Army. That's it. Nobody else bought this. It is no longer published in any way, shape or form.

Now imagine me, in a full, grey, ironed suit and shirt, and shoes, sat in a small meeting room trying to say I'd be a good web writer for that. Ridiculous.

Similar for the first day of a new job: you want to look smart, sure, but you don't want to overdo it. What if you turn up in a full suit when everyone else is on more of a "shirt and jeans" kind of vibe? What if you turn up in shirt, tie 'n' shoes when everyone else is in tees and trainers? What if it's a cardigan kind of place? Lord help you if it's a cardigan place. My advice: during the interview, when you walk in and out, try to get a good read on what the office people are wearing so you don't stress it too much on the first day. See what shoes they're wearing. They rolling the sleeves of their shirts? What's the blouse situation? How casual, on the ten-point smart-cazj spectrum, is this office? How long do they wear their ties? Just simple stuff. Simple stuff to ease you into the first day.

Listen, nobody quite knows how you've done it, but you've done it now so no point discussing it: you – actual you, you – you have a new job. Which is crazy, because the interview process these days is just so absurdly involved: they are always "calling you back to do a presentation", aren't they? There is interview day after interview day, and there are just so many opportunities throughout to crack the facade of dignity. Also, two out of the three people you interviewed with kind of wanted the other candidate more. But listen, you've done it now so no point discussing it.

Is now really the time to turn around and look at the interview process that elevated you here and start questioning it? I dunno. But I'm going to err on the side of "no". Especially if it means exposing one of your new hires – the weird guy in the corner who looks like he gets most of his nutrition from gnawing his own toenails down to the bed – as being unfit somehow. I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud! I don't know. It just— it seems like a bad idea! To me!

The first half of your first day at a new job is basically spent setting up a new email and just staring at the inbox as it fills up with exactly three messages from HR ("New form I forgot to get you to sign! Thanks!") and literally nothing else, because nobody trusts you enough to do any work yet and nobody knows your surname so they can't type an email to you, so you just sit there, clicking idly, behaving yourself enough not to blatantly look at Facebook at your desk (that's some real "week three" shit) but not, actually, having anything to do. This is a good time to get IT over to set you up with a printer, to give the illusion of you having work to do but not being able to do any because you can't print yet. Also, it's good to have IT on-side for when you click on an email phishing scam or accidentally tweet your password, or something like that.

Should be in the documents HR gave you on the first day, but if you need a refresher page eight has a whole bit about how holding Theresa May's hand in a death-like grip is one of your three strikes before they have to hold a meeting with you and recommend you spend a day at a sexual harassment training seminar.

It Happened to Me: I spent my first 18 months of this job discretely G-chatting the only person in the office whose name I knew, repeatedly asking them what the person who just came to my desk and spoke to me was actually called. And let me tell you: it is not worth that kind of aggro. Keep a notebook. "Blue shirt, keeps going to the vendo for Kit Kats, think he works in sales??? JOHN" – that sort of thing. "Got on the same piss cycle as me one day, made weak joke about Brexit, BEN," &c. "Stood in kitchen together for five entire minutes before saying 'uhhh… this toaster! WENDY". Keep notes.

A lot of people quite liked the guy who had the job before you and you're still trying to adjust your desk chair so it's no longer built for the dimples of his particular body, so try not to make a big deal of slagging him off really loudly in front of everyone while taking a shit – a near-literal turd – on some of the work he did do. Do your own thing, maybe, first! How bout dah!

1PM: You've done no work yet today. Stretch your arms out. Yawn. Stand up at your desk. Make a show of picking up your wallet, your phone, your keys. Slowly pull your coat on. Look up to the person opposite. "Hey," you say. "So, uh… where's good around here for lunch?" Don't do this.

The only answer to "where's good around here for lunch?" is just "someone very slowly describing to you where Pret is". That's it. That's the only option. They could describe to you the Chinese buffet place a few people go to every Friday, but that's not really a Monday kind of meal. They could tell you about the shop a few roads over that does cheap curry boxes, but honestly it's not worth hand-drawing you a map on the back of an A4 envelope. Just go to fucking Pret like everyone else, then eat it, alone and scrolling through your phone for an hour, sat on a bench by a canal, desperately avoiding going back to work until every minute of your lunch hour is spent up because you have nothing to do.

(This one doesn't really apply to Trump because he's almost certainly got White House chefs doing charred-black steaks on the regular, but I'm trying to hide some actually useful information in this here fun goof. This is about Trump, by the way. This article. Donald Trump. The President of the United States.)

I dunno, man! The worst I fucked up in my first week of a new job was when I didn't know how to mute someone on the telephone when I was passing them over to a colleague, so they heard me say "there's some woman on the phone to you, are you here or nah?" and had to formally apologise in a follow-up email, and in the grand scheme of things – the scheme of things now ranging from "minor landline related fuckoo" to "barring the citizens of seven countries and let's face it one religion from the US for 90 days, no questions asked, chaos reigns" – doesn't, now, in hindsight, feel quite so bad. I don't know. Listen: I'm in no position to talk. I just feel like if there are two international protests within ten days – ten days! – of you starting, then maybe it's not going so well. Ten! Days! That's one every five days! That's so many international protests to happen to you! More than one a week! How hard are you fucking up that people are marching the streets in countries you don't even reside in to say how bad you are at your job and that is happening more than once a week!

Other things to note: don't spit chewing gum in the urinals (the Office Manager had to send 25 separate all-office emails about this last year, don't start it up again); don't bother asking about the 10 percent Fitness First discount advertised on the office noticeboard (nobody actually knows how to activate it); if you need a wrist rest you have to fill out a form; and sometimes people knock off early with a beer at 4PM on a Friday, but you have to wait for the email to go round before you can drink it. Oh! And try not to start any wars. Okay now. Good luck and have fun!

@joelgolby

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