O is For Operations
“Congratulations, Tom. It’s exciting to have you aboard. You’ll see right away how things are around here. You’re gonna love it. Uncle Sam does take care of his workers. Put in your 20 and you’re golden. Not a lot of chance for getting canned either. I saw someone got busted for stealing. He got promoted, can you believe it? So, your first assignment, my friend, is to memorize your cubicle location. Yours will be, let’s see, here it is: O3D64B.”
“All right.”
“O is for Operations building. Pretty simple, right? Let’s see then, we have A for Administration, O for Ops, L for Lab, and E for Executive. You will mostly be running around in Ops and Admin, well, that is Operations and Administration.”
“Got it.”
“The number 3 is the floor you’re on. Simple enough. All four buildings have five floors. So far then, you’re on the third floor of the Operations building, which, if you think about it, is exactly where you are. Get it?”
Tom said, “Roger that. I’m on the third floor of the Operations building. Simple enough.”
“The next is letter D. D is the section you’re in. If you look around you’ll see the letters of the sections on those huge white pillars. They go from A to Z.”
“Yep. I see them. Pretty well laid out. Straight-forward so far.”
“Good. Now let’s recap. You’re on the third floor of the Operations building and if you look just behind you, you’ll see the letter D. Section D. What’s next? Oh, 64. Gotta warn you. This is where it gets a biiit tricky. The even numbers are on the East side of the buildings. The odd numbers are on the West. Even – East. Odd – West. Let’s see. Within each section are numbers from 0-98 or something like that.”
Tom nodded.
“Last letter is the side of the aisle you’re on, kind of like airline seats.”
Tom squinted; he was confused by the reference.
“It’ll take you a couple weeks to get it all straight in your head. Do some work, take a walk, eat, do a little more work. Boom, go home. Do it all over again the next day. By the time you get used to all the cubicle numbering, you should be ready for your first assignment. Oh, almost forgot, don’t go anywhere near the Exec Building. They have Messiah complexes over there. Hey, we’ve been talking too long now. I think we need a quick donut break. The cafeteria is between Ops and Admin. You’ll probably want to familiarize yourself with that place because you’ll have meetings there, coffee breaks, lunch, more coffee breaks, and on occasion they’ll allow us to sit down there while they have the quarterly All Hands with the Big Kahuna. Let’s get that donut. I’ve been rambling too long. Got any questions? I know this is a lot to process on your first day and all, but with a little time, it’ll be second nature to you. So, walk with me to the cafeteria. I promise I’ll let you talk. Questions?”
“Yeah, could you point me to HR? This job’s not working out for me.”
“Uh, really? Suit yourself. Admin building, third….”
“Never mind. I’ll find it.”