I’m the New Guy, Please Don’t Hurt Me

Where’s the bathroom? What’s that guy’s name? Where’s my cubicle? Why am I in this meeting? Where did my chair go? What do all of these acronyms mean? What do all these people do here?

As a first-time intern about to start my sophomore year in college, these are all questions that I have had in my first week working at Starmount and although I don’t have answers to all of them, yet I am beginning to learn my way around the hallways and remember the names and faces of my fellow employees. For me, this is my first exposure to an office setting and a full-time job and it can be overwhelming at times.

For every project assigned to me a thousand questions come with it. I don’t know if I should go out on my own and just go with my instinct or if I should be asking for clarification at every turn. Should I email someone or go and find them the old-fashioned way? Is this a Sir, Ma’am, Mr., Ms., kind of company or first names only? These questions may seem silly or simple to the veterans of the corporate world, but they are all serious considerations that I have had and I don’t want to get anything wrong for fear of being looked down upon as a lowly intern.

This is the first time in my life that I have truly been at the bottom of the totem pole. In every other activity I have been involved in, I could claim superiority over someone, whether through experience, intelligence, or physical ability, but the business world is a new and foreign realm to me and I don’t know how to approach it. I find solace in the fact that I’m in the marketing department and that my job is to create videos for Starmount, which is something I have some experience with.

When I arrived at Starmount for my first day, I was welcomed by Will Portales from HR and he gave me, Candice, and Patrick (all new hires) a tour of the building and made sure to introduce us to all of the executives that we ran into on the tour. This was the first point in which my fears began to feel misplaced. These men and women are in charge of the company and yet they were friendly, cordial, and seemed genuinely interested in meeting all of us.

As my day continued, I understood that this friendly and welcoming environment wasn’t just a façade put on in order to lure new employees into an Office Space type of corporate nightmare. As I sat at my desk on my first day, I had numerous people come by to welcome me to the Starmount family and ask if there was anything they could do to help make me a little more comfortable in this previously-alien world.

Now, for full disclosure I do have to say that I am the son of Jerry Rightmer, President and CTO of Starmount and the thought did cross my mind that maybe these people were just being friendly for fear that I might complain about them when I got home. I didn’t want this to be true and like any good scientist, I began to do research to try to disprove my hypothesis.

In preparing to write this blog post I met with multiple new employees at Starmount and asked them about their experience thus far. The responses they gave me were universally positive and my concerns were  quickly alleviated. I spoke to interns, developers, managers, and engineers who were all new to the company and all of them had many kind things to say about their co-workers and the business environment at Starmount.

I have only been in the business world for a week now but I can already tell that it is the people that make the company. Without good people, a company is reduced to an organization that is made of individuals that feel that they have to be at work rather than wanting to be there. Many people say that positivity is infectious; now I don’t know if that is true, but if it is, call the CDC because there’s been an outbreak at Starmount. I look forward to spending my summer here, and for the new employees that have been hired on full time, I wish you luck, but I know you don’t need it because you are already in good hands.

Post by: Justin Rightmer | Jun. 15, 2012 5:19pm EDT | Permalink