An Open Letter to New Employees

Dear New Employee,

Welcome! We’re excited to have you on board. This is an open letter to new employees because we want to make sure your first few days are as pleasant as possible. Then we’ll start throwing work on you. But for now, welcome! Coffee is in the break room, and if you made it yourself, it’s fresh.

Here’s what you need to know to make your first few days as wonderful as possible:

Please Wander Around

Sure, we went over your benefits package with a fine-tooth comb in orientation, but we didn’t tell you where the bathrooms are. While we know it’s unlikely you’ll catch pneumonia in your first week of work, we want to make sure that’s covered. The bathrooms? Well, if you’re not shy you can just ask someone. If you are shy, run around looking frantic until someone figures out your problem and directs you.

To keep reading, click here: An Open Letter to New Employees

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8 thoughts on “An Open Letter to New Employees

  1. Very funny story of actual events that occur in real world of employment. End of story point, don’t expect life to give you roses, be prepared to do your job without having everything go your way. You will have people around you that work in their own world and don’t include you unless it benefits them. If you try to change the overall pattern of workplace to suit your lifestyle expect negative reaction. Sometimes you have to give to get. So adult up and face the real world.

  2. We’re also not going to tell you when to go to lunch, when to take a break and for how long, and when you can leave.

    And sorry, we forgot to alert Technology, so we’re going to start piling work on you, but you won’t actually have computer access for the next two weeks or so. But expect us to raise our eyebrows that you’re not getting any work done. You can also pay for street parking for the next month and wait outside for someone to let you in every morning, because they won’t have your access card ready any time soon.

    We’re also too busy to train you. So here’s a stack of 7 handbooks and manuals to just read. They’re about 200 pages each, and at least 4 years out of date, but jump right in.

    1. This is SO TRUE. It really should be part of the offer letter process, but for some reason it’s not! Here’s your desk, but no computer. Good luck! Also, no chair.

    2. ” . . . because they won’t have your access card ready any time soon.”

      Yep, I was once hired at a place where all that happened. And, they felt bad about having me wait outside – so, they tried to give me the access pass of someone they just fired, yet hadn’t deactivated his pass!

      They couldn’t understand why I refused to even take it from them; especially after they told me to make sure that none of the other employees saw the card since “they were all friends with him.”

  3. Sadly, in my 13 years, I’ve only started one job where everything was ready for me on my first day. Arrived that first day, and there was a beautifully constructed onboarding plan, computer, access to every program I would need, everything we all lament not having on that first day.

    Ironically, that job also happened to be the worst I’ve ever had in terms of fit, boss’s management style, and just generally the employee relations philosophy.

    On the flip side, the best job I’ve had to date is the one where I arrived and had no computer, phone, or office for the first three days.

  4. How about this one: “We’re going to forget to tell you a bunch of stuff you’ll really need to know – stuff that’s not covered in the employee handbook or written down anywhere – you know, those “unwritten rules” that make life working here so interesting and fun. We’ll let you know when you break one of these unwritten rules, so you won’t do it again.

  5. My favorite — TRUE! A new employee was sent to “shadow” for a shift at my work site. I showed her how we go over all the documentation at shift change to make sure it’s complete, and we count the on-site cash together to make sure the count is accurate.

    She then said that during new employee orientation the mangement told the new hires that many work sites don’t do their jobs right and don’t count the cash for weeks on end, just signing off on wrong amounts. So to solve that problem, new employees will shadow for two weeks instead of one day so that they’ll learn to do things correctly. She expressed bewilderment as to how watching screw-offs screw up for two weeks is going to teach anybody how to do the job right. I just said, “Welcome to our world.”

    (BTW, they eventually settled her down at one of the screw-off work sites, and she’d been trained well! When I swung by to pick her up for a meeting, she was smoking a cigarette, yakking on her cell phone, and eating a sandwich. She made eye contact with me in the company vehicle and then just continued her conversation and her smoke and her sandwich, clearly intending to make me wait until she was finished, even though this meant both of us would be late. The two weeks of shadowing at the eventual work site did the trick!)

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