The latest... work and other things.

So it's official, I'm a working man... for how long? Who knows. I'm a little worried that DCX (that's DaimlerChrysler for all you that aren't in the know) is going to sell the "C" and drop funding to my program, in which case I would panic, go into a little more debt, then hopefully bounce back with an engineering job somewhere else. Anyway, here's how things have gone over the first week or so:

Monday - I get to CTC early, not knowing what to expect for a commute. I run into Andy in the hallway and we get to chat for a bit. I think kill time at Omar's desk until the orientation stuff gets started. Usually the group is 15+, but this time it was myself, Rahat (another intern from last summer), this contract-to-permanent employee, and the orientation leader. We talked about the usual orientation things: what work should be like, not to be a racist or sexist, how you should conduct yourself, how bad I am because I drive a Honda, etc. I guess the one useful tidbit from the whole thing was that to work effectively as a company, good personal relationships are key. That's something I agree with, and figured as much already, so luckily the orientation ran short. After signing my life awa... I mean filling out some paperwork, I thought it might be a good idea to pop in the group that took me in for an internship to see how things were going. Unfortunately a few people were sick but I still got to say what's up to some of the folks: Andy, Sean, and Susan (the names mean nothing to random folk reading this, but whatever, this ain't yo' blog foo). I sat down with Sean for a bit and caught up on things. One of these things being the death of two co-workers and friends. It was a tough subject to discuss (the vibe I got last summer was that they were a tight-knit group) but we agreed that work shouldn't consume your life and what's really important is the impact you have on the people you interact with; especially family, friends, etc. That's real shit and it's good to hear that coming from someone that used to be your boss. We talked for a while about other stuff too... where I was living, tips on how to work with people, the importance of retirement (this one makes me feel old yet happy to be making career money), and other random items. It was good seeing some familiar faces on my first day because I knew that like any job, the first few weeks you run around not knowing wtf is going on....

Tuesday - After being picked up by my new boss, Dan, I'm taken to my new work area and introduced to some of the people. I wound up in the wheels and tires department for my MCM (think: cost savings) rotation which is apparently a good thing because it's more involved than other MCM rotations which have you crunching numbers at a desk all day. Not having anything to do yet however, I'm dragged around to a couple meetings throughout the day, infinitely clueless and therefore struggling to stay awake. The group is cool though... Dan seems like a cool boss and Ana is my former roommate Omar's current roommate, she seems like a down ass chick and quite helpful with getting me broken in.

Wednesday - Probably the highlight of today was a "tech club" meeting. Some guy from the design office went to SEMA to check out current wheel trends. His observations were that multi-piece wheels were in style, as with the "bling finish" on the lips of wheels, Rota's tuner-style wheels, and various machined / polished finishes. I had a hard time not laughing because some of the things he pointed out have been timeless styles for years (...the Racing Harts on my car right now are 2-piece with a "bling lip") or were just outright ridiculous. I understand the need to report on everything there, but I got a good bit of silent chuckling from the pictures on his powerpoint presentation. It's not his fault though, people are releasing some dumb ass shit these days.

Thursday - Either this day or the day before, I started doing work with Ana and kinda getting a feel for how things operate in wheels and tires. So now I'm starting to feel less lost...

Friday - Kinda getting more work to do and struggling to understand some of the more technical things behind the job. Dan gave me a link earlier in the week to a database we've got so I was able to read up on some of the more popular issues around our wheels and tires. Most of my personal knowledge comes from being a car guy, so it was good to compare to how these guys see things. I also got to chat with Pete, another guy from last summer that I worked pretty closely with. We'll be hopefully grabbing lunch or a beer in the future... if I can get some checks rolling, haha.

Today (Monday) - Met my executive sponsor, Richard, who sounds like a really good dude. It turns out he knows Leonard, Tom, and Keefe (the UW recruiters)... small world. Anyway, the guy was very interested in being able to pass on any advice that he could and forming a very informal mentor-type setup. A couple signs that this guy is down to help: he gave me his home phone and address, is the type of guy that will tell you what worked for him but won't say that his methods are the only right way, and let me know that if I have any issues, I can ask him for advice without worrying about him narcing on me. Sweet. Oh, I also met Brett, the guy listed as my supervisor on my welcome packet who's actually Dan's boss. It turns out things work better with the way they choose to place CIE's. Sounds like a cool dude.

So that's the intro to the working world for me... more to come on my thoughts about working here and working in general <-- soon to come!

Oh, and if anyone actually reads this tripe and cares to say something, you don't need a blogspot account to leave a comment... I've got it set up so anyone can. Later everyone.