A Mommy Story

Today was Aaron’s first day at his new job. He had to get up earlier than normal to be there by 8am (an hour earlier than the old job), which left me on my own with Cordy for the morning routine. No big deal, really. Especially since she gave me the beautiful gift of sleeping until 8am.

As expected, in learning more about the job today, there were some up and down moments.

Up: The pay is better than his old job!
Down: They hold paychecks back two weeks, so no first paycheck until the first week of August. Ouch. July is officially sucking.

Up: 2 weeks vacation (same as old job), but also 4 personal days and 2 weeks sick time!
Down: Can’t use vacation for the entire first year.

Up: Better, cheaper health insurance!
Down: Insurance doesn’t go into effect until Aug. 1, so we’d better not get sick this month.

Up: They may be raising the pay for everyone there soon. (Which is above and beyond regular raises.)
Down: We’ll need it to pay for parking – the job is downtown, in the land of “Nothing is free.”

Luckily, all of those down points are temporary ones. Aaron spent his first day knee deep in papers. Not paperwork – newspapers. Part of the job involves scouring the newspapers for topics related to the agency and clipping them, and well, the job had been vacant for months, so there was a lot to catch up on.

Aaron would also probably tell you two more down points that are annoying but he’ll get past: first, it’s a dress shirt & tie environment, so no more going to work in jeans and t-shirt. Second, this bump up to a higher dress code also means shaving everyday. Now, I generally wear capris in the summer to work, but I still don’t shave everyday. Luckily the hair on my legs is light in color, so I can get by a few days. But Aaron is Mr. 5 o’clock Shadow at half-past Noon, so shaving every day will be necessary.

He’s also not sure how strict they are on the No personal use of the Internet rule, so he’ll have to wait and see if he’s allowed to check his personal mail at work or not. Ah, new jobs – they’re like first dates. You have to carefully feel the other person out to see just how far you think you can go. Hopefully for him, this new job will at least put out to 1st base – Gmail and Yahoo mail, and maybe even go as far as 2nd base – blogs and message boards.

Tomorrow is orientation day, so we’ll find out more about his benefits at that point. Until then, he’s still happy he left his old job, and he says the people at the new job are really nice, and many seem to have young children as well. Maybe we’ll make some new parent friends?