11.5 First day at a new job...
As they arranged the details, Celeste was jumping up and down inside. She might have a job! And eleven an hour plus health benefits worked out to – twenty-three thousand dollars a year. Ok, that wasn’t quite so much, but it’d pay her rent while she looked for something better.
Celeste couldn’t wait until Jeanne got home from work to tell her the news. She called Jeanne’s work number, and got her voice mail, “ I know you don’t like it when I call you at work, but guess who got a job today!”
Then she called her parents. They, also, were at work, so she left a message on each of their voicemails as well.
Eventually, she plopped down on the couch and flipped on daytime television, intending to enjoy her last day watching Jerry Springer and All My Children at their proper times. She woke up from her daytime-television induced nap by the telephone ringing. It was Jeanne.
“Hey, you got a job?”
“Yup, it only pays eleven an hour, but it has full benefits including cheap classes at NU.”
“What are you going to be doing?” Jeanne sounded skeptical.
“It’s not very nice to sound so doubtful that I’d get a decent job. I’m going to be a research assistant for a poli-sci professor and his grad student assistant at NU. It sounds like I’m going to spent a lot of time reading fairly dry history books, and indexing the information in them.”
“Which is right up your alley,” Jeanne said, sounding more positive. “How did you get the job?”
“Through some networking that I’ve been doing,” Celeste said evasively. She didn’t want to tell Jeanne how she actually got the job, because Jeanne would call it nothing more than luck. And really, sometimes just being nice to people was enough, but it wasn’t luck.
“Well, we’ll have to go out tonight and celebrate. Where do you want to go?”
“Actually, I start tonight at six. Maybe we can go out this weekend, though, if I don’t have to work.”
“Oh, it’s not nine-to-five?” Jeanne sounded vaguely condescending, as if working outside of the typical office timeline made it somehow less of a job.
“No, I get paid for doing the job. It sounds like I’ll have deadlines to get each book done, but I can do it whenever and wherever it fits into my schedule.”
“That’s not so bad then – actually that sounds like a better way to work than just nine-to-fiving. It sucks to have to stay here when all your work is done.”
As they were talking, Celeste glanced at the clock on the VCR. It was ten after four.
“Oh, shoot, I’ve gotta go, Jeanne. I can’t be late for my first day!”
She quickly changed clothes into a skirt and blouse that weren’t sleep rumpled, and tracked her purse down to where she dropped it just inside the door. Finally, she rummaged through her desk drawers looking for a notebook that wasn’t fully written in, and didn’t have kittens or unicorns on the cover.
She finally left her apartment, and ran to the bus stop, only to realize that she had forgotten her T-Pass in the house, and she didn’t have any cash at all on her. She ran back and picked up the T-Pass, and made it back to the bus stop just in time to miss the bus.
Fighting down the nerviousness that comes with being late to anything important, Celeste rummaged through her purse for a recent bus schedule. Phew, there should be another one in eight minutes.
While she waited, she started making notes in her notebook about questions that she could ask if it was an interview-like situation.
Excpected deadlines – check.
Format – index cards, computer, notebook – check.
Hmm, what else?
Where to get the books, or how to get an NU library card – check.
How long the trial period would last – check.
Did people ask about pay and benefits during a trial by fire interview like this?
Finally the bus pulled up to the stop, and she climbed aboard and found a seat in the very back next to the wall, so that only one person would be able to sit next to her, and no one could jostle her in front because her knees literally rested against the seat in front of her. She pulled out her cell phone and called her mother’s office.
Her mom’s secretary answered. “Hi Marie, it’s Celeste. Is my mother busy?”
“Hey, Celeste. Congratulations on the new job. Your mother rushed right out to tell me after she got your message. She’s actually in a planning meeting right now, is it urgent?”
“No, no, but maybe you could answer a question for me. I actually start my new job tonight, it’s as a research assistant to a professor at Northeastern. Now rather than a real interview, I’m basically having a week-long “trial by fire” to make sure that I can do the job, and that I like it, and that they like me. What I’m concerned about is how I find out tactfully about pay and benefits and stuff like that. I don’t really want to work for a whole week, and find out that they don’t like me, and then not get paid for it.”
“Well, here’s what I would do if I were you,” Marie said. “If they have you fill out a W-4 form when you go in, then they’ll pay you. If they don’t, I’d wait until you come in the second day, and then ask if they need you to submit a W-4 or copies of your license or anything like that. That way, it’s more like you’re trying to be a contientious employee than that you’re money-grubbing and desparate for a paycheck.”
Celeste laughed. “Well, even though the desperate for a paycheck part is true, I guess I wouldn’t want them to know that, would I? That sounds good, though. It’ll eliminate a lot of the awkwardness that I was worried about, with bringing up pay and benefits and all. Thanks for your help! Could you also tell my mother that I’ll call her at home when I’m finished tonight, to let her know how it went?”
“Of course. Good luck, Celeste. I’m sure you’ll be great.”
Celeste got to the Northeastern library at five minutes before six, and there was the grad student sitting on the steps just outside of the library talking on his cell phone. He nodded hello to her, and gestured for her to sit down on the steps with him.
After he got off the phone, he turned to Celeste, “That was professor Marcos. He says he won’t be able to make it today – he has a faculty function or something like that. Anyway, he said for me to give you the researching 101 rundown.”
He got to his feet and offered her a hand to help her up. They walked inside the library together and over to the security desk.
“Hey, Matt,” the security man greeted him, “what can I do for you?”
“Hey, Andre, this is Celeste,” he gestured toward her. “She’s our new research assistant. We’re going to need… let’s see… a W-4, an ID application, a security pass for her to get in after hours – can you think of anything else?”
Andre shook his head. “It’s great to meet you, Celeste. Matt and the professor are here all the time – maybe you can pressure them into taking a break now and then.”
She laughed politely in response.
While he was talking ot her, he was pulling papers from drawers. “I’m going to need your license, and social security card, and if you could fill these out?” He handed her the sheaf of papers.
Celeste nodded and retrieved the pen that she had used to make her checklist earlier. “I’m just going to go sit down and fill these out,” she said to Matt. “If you have something you need to do, go ahead, just tell him where to find you when I’m done.”
“Ok,” Matt agreed. “I’m in a cage on the fourth floor. It’s cage number four-sixteen, and you want to take the east elevators up, take a right out of the elevators, then your first left, and your third right. I’m the sixth cage in that row, down near the end.”
“four-sixteen. East elevator. Got it.”
Celest was relieved now to have to bring up the issue of getting paid – and if they were giving her all these applictions for IDs already, this wasn’t going to be much of a trial period. That worked for her, thought. Even if she hated it, it was a paycheck. And if she did hate it, she could always look for another job while collecting the paycheck from this one.
When she finally finished filling out all the required paperwork, she handed it all back to Andre and he gave her a temporary campus ID and security pass. “Until your background check clears,” he said, “you’ll have to sign in and out of the library if you come in after hours. After that, you can just swipe your id to come in.”
“Great, thanks!” she said. “And to take books out of the library, I use this?” she held up the campus ID.
“Yup,” he said. “I believe most of the books that you’ll be using – except the ones in the archives, of course—can be taken out for ninety days at a time, and renewed twice. So you won’t be stuck here all day, every day. I’m jealous, let me tell you.”
She smiled and said again, “Great, thanks!” She carefully put the ID into her purse.
“East elevator’s that way,” he directed her with his chin. “After you get out of the elevator, there’s a map of the floor directly across the hall from the bank of elevators. Matt’s in four-sixteen.”
She smiled her thanks, and headed off in that direction, occassionally pausing to examine this or that in the display cases lining the library.
Matt’s cage overlooked the [### not sure what – the Charles would be best, but I don’t remember if NU is on the river ###]. It was small, just enough room for a desk, a chair and a bookcase. The bookcase was as full as it could get, books stacked two rows deep on the shelves, piles of papers clipped with large binder clips stacked on top of the rows, piles of books neatly stacked on top of the bookcase. An older style radio was on the floor just next to the door, and what appeared to be the only outlet in the room had a power strip attached to it, that branched into three other power strips, each filled to capacity with plugs for the various computer equipment set up on the desk. A desktop computer, a laptop, printer, scanner, fax, mini photocopier. Everything one might need for a reseach library within a research library.
The radio was playing something classical at very low volume, Celeste didn’t recognize it. Matt was sitting behind the desk, a book propped up on a lectern in front of him. He was focused on the book, one hand ready to turn the page, the other hand holding a pen that he was tapping against his front teeth. Celeste cleared her throat to get his attention.
“Hey,” he said, smiling, “you got all your paperwork finished?”
“Yes, all set. They apparently need to do a background check, so I get a temp ID until I’m cleared.”
“Ok, well, are you ready for into to Research 101? Here’s the book that you’ll be working on first.” He handed her an older looking book, that had been re-bound in a heavy red carboard cover.
Studies in Government, she read. She flipped open the cover to see that it was originally written in 1761 by Guillaume de Tours.
“And if you happen to read French?” he looked at her with eyebrows raised.
“I took a few French classes in high school – I’m certainly not fluent, but I can usually puzzle out what’s meant.”
“Good.” He handed her another book, this time the cover was slightly cracked brown leather. “This is the original, the other is the translation. What we want you to do is to index the translation, but if you have any questions about meaning, refer to the original. The best way to start, in my opinon., is to photocopy the entire book. It’s long since out of print, so there isn’t any copyright to worry about.
“Once you finish doing that,” he continued, “spend a day or two reading quickly through the book, so that you get some idea of what it’s about. After you finish reading through it for the first time, start reading through the photocopy more slowly. Take a yellow highlighter and start highlighing keywords as you read. That’ll probably take another five days or so. Then read through it a second time with a yellow highlighter, and make sure all the keywords are highlighted. Next, go through the keywords with a pink highlighter, and highlight all the detailed relevant explanations with the pink highlighter. Leave passing references highlighted in yellow. Last, enter all the words in pink and yellow into the indexing software I’ll give you. We have a website online meant for storing stuff that I’ll give you the web address for and access to. And then, move onto the next book and start the process over.”
She nodded. “Good, I was afraid I might need to do this all with index cards, which would be a little more, um, time consuming because not only would I need to sort out all the information, but it takes me forever to hand-write things so that they’re legible.’
“No, we’re all up-to-date technologically, here. It’s just that most of the books that we need to use aren’t in common use, so no one has ever indexed them.”
“I undestand, “ she said. “What kind of deadlines are we talking here?”
“Well,” he said, “how long do you think it’ll take you for, say, the book you’re holding right now?”
“To be honest, I don’t really know. I’m a preatty fast reader, if the book isn’t too difficult, so it shouldn’t take me longer than most people to read it, and of course, I’ll get faster with each re-read. But then again, this is my first time doing this. Say maybe three weeks to a month for this book, and I’ll improve with more practice in terms of time?”
“Three weeks is a reasonable amount of time. We’ll give you a month, though, on each of the first two books, so that you can get used to this. After that, we’ll say three weeks, and we’ll give you a bonus of – say an extra $11 a day under the table, if you finish indexng earlier than that.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
“All right, then. Oh, just let me give you this,” he reached into his back pocket, and pulled out his wallet. He flipped it open, and pulled out two cards: one, a business card, the other, a Staples credit card. He handed them to her. “The business card has my number on it. Give me a call a week from today to let me know how things are going. The Staples card is linked to the bank account associated with the book. Use it to make the photocopies, buy highlighters, whatever other supplies you need related to the project. Just make sure to keep the reciept, in case we need to know the specific items that you used the card for. Oh yeah,” he slapped his hand to his forehead, “the indexing software would help. Its pretty intuitive, but if you have any questions give me a call. I can use this program in my sleep, so it’s not a problem to answer any reasonable questions about it.” He handed her a cd with the program name and access password written on it.
“All right, then,” she said, tucking cards and cd into her purse. “Do you want my phone number or anything so that you can get in touch with me if you need anything?”
“That’d be good, wouldn’t it?” he shook his head, “apparently I’m a little more tired, or out of it, or something, than I usually am.
Celeste couldn’t wait until Jeanne got home from work to tell her the news. She called Jeanne’s work number, and got her voice mail, “ I know you don’t like it when I call you at work, but guess who got a job today!”
Then she called her parents. They, also, were at work, so she left a message on each of their voicemails as well.
Eventually, she plopped down on the couch and flipped on daytime television, intending to enjoy her last day watching Jerry Springer and All My Children at their proper times. She woke up from her daytime-television induced nap by the telephone ringing. It was Jeanne.
“Hey, you got a job?”
“Yup, it only pays eleven an hour, but it has full benefits including cheap classes at NU.”
“What are you going to be doing?” Jeanne sounded skeptical.
“It’s not very nice to sound so doubtful that I’d get a decent job. I’m going to be a research assistant for a poli-sci professor and his grad student assistant at NU. It sounds like I’m going to spent a lot of time reading fairly dry history books, and indexing the information in them.”
“Which is right up your alley,” Jeanne said, sounding more positive. “How did you get the job?”
“Through some networking that I’ve been doing,” Celeste said evasively. She didn’t want to tell Jeanne how she actually got the job, because Jeanne would call it nothing more than luck. And really, sometimes just being nice to people was enough, but it wasn’t luck.
“Well, we’ll have to go out tonight and celebrate. Where do you want to go?”
“Actually, I start tonight at six. Maybe we can go out this weekend, though, if I don’t have to work.”
“Oh, it’s not nine-to-five?” Jeanne sounded vaguely condescending, as if working outside of the typical office timeline made it somehow less of a job.
“No, I get paid for doing the job. It sounds like I’ll have deadlines to get each book done, but I can do it whenever and wherever it fits into my schedule.”
“That’s not so bad then – actually that sounds like a better way to work than just nine-to-fiving. It sucks to have to stay here when all your work is done.”
As they were talking, Celeste glanced at the clock on the VCR. It was ten after four.
“Oh, shoot, I’ve gotta go, Jeanne. I can’t be late for my first day!”
She quickly changed clothes into a skirt and blouse that weren’t sleep rumpled, and tracked her purse down to where she dropped it just inside the door. Finally, she rummaged through her desk drawers looking for a notebook that wasn’t fully written in, and didn’t have kittens or unicorns on the cover.
She finally left her apartment, and ran to the bus stop, only to realize that she had forgotten her T-Pass in the house, and she didn’t have any cash at all on her. She ran back and picked up the T-Pass, and made it back to the bus stop just in time to miss the bus.
Fighting down the nerviousness that comes with being late to anything important, Celeste rummaged through her purse for a recent bus schedule. Phew, there should be another one in eight minutes.
While she waited, she started making notes in her notebook about questions that she could ask if it was an interview-like situation.
Excpected deadlines – check.
Format – index cards, computer, notebook – check.
Hmm, what else?
Where to get the books, or how to get an NU library card – check.
How long the trial period would last – check.
Did people ask about pay and benefits during a trial by fire interview like this?
Finally the bus pulled up to the stop, and she climbed aboard and found a seat in the very back next to the wall, so that only one person would be able to sit next to her, and no one could jostle her in front because her knees literally rested against the seat in front of her. She pulled out her cell phone and called her mother’s office.
Her mom’s secretary answered. “Hi Marie, it’s Celeste. Is my mother busy?”
“Hey, Celeste. Congratulations on the new job. Your mother rushed right out to tell me after she got your message. She’s actually in a planning meeting right now, is it urgent?”
“No, no, but maybe you could answer a question for me. I actually start my new job tonight, it’s as a research assistant to a professor at Northeastern. Now rather than a real interview, I’m basically having a week-long “trial by fire” to make sure that I can do the job, and that I like it, and that they like me. What I’m concerned about is how I find out tactfully about pay and benefits and stuff like that. I don’t really want to work for a whole week, and find out that they don’t like me, and then not get paid for it.”
“Well, here’s what I would do if I were you,” Marie said. “If they have you fill out a W-4 form when you go in, then they’ll pay you. If they don’t, I’d wait until you come in the second day, and then ask if they need you to submit a W-4 or copies of your license or anything like that. That way, it’s more like you’re trying to be a contientious employee than that you’re money-grubbing and desparate for a paycheck.”
Celeste laughed. “Well, even though the desperate for a paycheck part is true, I guess I wouldn’t want them to know that, would I? That sounds good, though. It’ll eliminate a lot of the awkwardness that I was worried about, with bringing up pay and benefits and all. Thanks for your help! Could you also tell my mother that I’ll call her at home when I’m finished tonight, to let her know how it went?”
“Of course. Good luck, Celeste. I’m sure you’ll be great.”
Celeste got to the Northeastern library at five minutes before six, and there was the grad student sitting on the steps just outside of the library talking on his cell phone. He nodded hello to her, and gestured for her to sit down on the steps with him.
After he got off the phone, he turned to Celeste, “That was professor Marcos. He says he won’t be able to make it today – he has a faculty function or something like that. Anyway, he said for me to give you the researching 101 rundown.”
He got to his feet and offered her a hand to help her up. They walked inside the library together and over to the security desk.
“Hey, Matt,” the security man greeted him, “what can I do for you?”
“Hey, Andre, this is Celeste,” he gestured toward her. “She’s our new research assistant. We’re going to need… let’s see… a W-4, an ID application, a security pass for her to get in after hours – can you think of anything else?”
Andre shook his head. “It’s great to meet you, Celeste. Matt and the professor are here all the time – maybe you can pressure them into taking a break now and then.”
She laughed politely in response.
While he was talking ot her, he was pulling papers from drawers. “I’m going to need your license, and social security card, and if you could fill these out?” He handed her the sheaf of papers.
Celeste nodded and retrieved the pen that she had used to make her checklist earlier. “I’m just going to go sit down and fill these out,” she said to Matt. “If you have something you need to do, go ahead, just tell him where to find you when I’m done.”
“Ok,” Matt agreed. “I’m in a cage on the fourth floor. It’s cage number four-sixteen, and you want to take the east elevators up, take a right out of the elevators, then your first left, and your third right. I’m the sixth cage in that row, down near the end.”
“four-sixteen. East elevator. Got it.”
Celest was relieved now to have to bring up the issue of getting paid – and if they were giving her all these applictions for IDs already, this wasn’t going to be much of a trial period. That worked for her, thought. Even if she hated it, it was a paycheck. And if she did hate it, she could always look for another job while collecting the paycheck from this one.
When she finally finished filling out all the required paperwork, she handed it all back to Andre and he gave her a temporary campus ID and security pass. “Until your background check clears,” he said, “you’ll have to sign in and out of the library if you come in after hours. After that, you can just swipe your id to come in.”
“Great, thanks!” she said. “And to take books out of the library, I use this?” she held up the campus ID.
“Yup,” he said. “I believe most of the books that you’ll be using – except the ones in the archives, of course—can be taken out for ninety days at a time, and renewed twice. So you won’t be stuck here all day, every day. I’m jealous, let me tell you.”
She smiled and said again, “Great, thanks!” She carefully put the ID into her purse.
“East elevator’s that way,” he directed her with his chin. “After you get out of the elevator, there’s a map of the floor directly across the hall from the bank of elevators. Matt’s in four-sixteen.”
She smiled her thanks, and headed off in that direction, occassionally pausing to examine this or that in the display cases lining the library.
Matt’s cage overlooked the [### not sure what – the Charles would be best, but I don’t remember if NU is on the river ###]. It was small, just enough room for a desk, a chair and a bookcase. The bookcase was as full as it could get, books stacked two rows deep on the shelves, piles of papers clipped with large binder clips stacked on top of the rows, piles of books neatly stacked on top of the bookcase. An older style radio was on the floor just next to the door, and what appeared to be the only outlet in the room had a power strip attached to it, that branched into three other power strips, each filled to capacity with plugs for the various computer equipment set up on the desk. A desktop computer, a laptop, printer, scanner, fax, mini photocopier. Everything one might need for a reseach library within a research library.
The radio was playing something classical at very low volume, Celeste didn’t recognize it. Matt was sitting behind the desk, a book propped up on a lectern in front of him. He was focused on the book, one hand ready to turn the page, the other hand holding a pen that he was tapping against his front teeth. Celeste cleared her throat to get his attention.
“Hey,” he said, smiling, “you got all your paperwork finished?”
“Yes, all set. They apparently need to do a background check, so I get a temp ID until I’m cleared.”
“Ok, well, are you ready for into to Research 101? Here’s the book that you’ll be working on first.” He handed her an older looking book, that had been re-bound in a heavy red carboard cover.
Studies in Government, she read. She flipped open the cover to see that it was originally written in 1761 by Guillaume de Tours.
“And if you happen to read French?” he looked at her with eyebrows raised.
“I took a few French classes in high school – I’m certainly not fluent, but I can usually puzzle out what’s meant.”
“Good.” He handed her another book, this time the cover was slightly cracked brown leather. “This is the original, the other is the translation. What we want you to do is to index the translation, but if you have any questions about meaning, refer to the original. The best way to start, in my opinon., is to photocopy the entire book. It’s long since out of print, so there isn’t any copyright to worry about.
“Once you finish doing that,” he continued, “spend a day or two reading quickly through the book, so that you get some idea of what it’s about. After you finish reading through it for the first time, start reading through the photocopy more slowly. Take a yellow highlighter and start highlighing keywords as you read. That’ll probably take another five days or so. Then read through it a second time with a yellow highlighter, and make sure all the keywords are highlighted. Next, go through the keywords with a pink highlighter, and highlight all the detailed relevant explanations with the pink highlighter. Leave passing references highlighted in yellow. Last, enter all the words in pink and yellow into the indexing software I’ll give you. We have a website online meant for storing stuff that I’ll give you the web address for and access to. And then, move onto the next book and start the process over.”
She nodded. “Good, I was afraid I might need to do this all with index cards, which would be a little more, um, time consuming because not only would I need to sort out all the information, but it takes me forever to hand-write things so that they’re legible.’
“No, we’re all up-to-date technologically, here. It’s just that most of the books that we need to use aren’t in common use, so no one has ever indexed them.”
“I undestand, “ she said. “What kind of deadlines are we talking here?”
“Well,” he said, “how long do you think it’ll take you for, say, the book you’re holding right now?”
“To be honest, I don’t really know. I’m a preatty fast reader, if the book isn’t too difficult, so it shouldn’t take me longer than most people to read it, and of course, I’ll get faster with each re-read. But then again, this is my first time doing this. Say maybe three weeks to a month for this book, and I’ll improve with more practice in terms of time?”
“Three weeks is a reasonable amount of time. We’ll give you a month, though, on each of the first two books, so that you can get used to this. After that, we’ll say three weeks, and we’ll give you a bonus of – say an extra $11 a day under the table, if you finish indexng earlier than that.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
“All right, then. Oh, just let me give you this,” he reached into his back pocket, and pulled out his wallet. He flipped it open, and pulled out two cards: one, a business card, the other, a Staples credit card. He handed them to her. “The business card has my number on it. Give me a call a week from today to let me know how things are going. The Staples card is linked to the bank account associated with the book. Use it to make the photocopies, buy highlighters, whatever other supplies you need related to the project. Just make sure to keep the reciept, in case we need to know the specific items that you used the card for. Oh yeah,” he slapped his hand to his forehead, “the indexing software would help. Its pretty intuitive, but if you have any questions give me a call. I can use this program in my sleep, so it’s not a problem to answer any reasonable questions about it.” He handed her a cd with the program name and access password written on it.
“All right, then,” she said, tucking cards and cd into her purse. “Do you want my phone number or anything so that you can get in touch with me if you need anything?”
“That’d be good, wouldn’t it?” he shook his head, “apparently I’m a little more tired, or out of it, or something, than I usually am.
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