Monday, December 13, 2010

First Week of Work

My feet hurt. No surprise there -- LOL. And last week there was a lot of sitting in the training room, with only a couple hours a day on my feet. This week will be lots of standing.

I managed not to become dehydrated. I usually do that when I get out of the house instead of living in close proximity to my stove, fridge, and kitchen sink, with occasional forays to the washer & dryer.

The disadvantage of being older is that I don't bop around the computer screen at a high rate of speed, finding links to click to give me the information I need to take care of a customer. And then there are a gazillion different user-id's and passwords to remember for work. The advantage of being older is that I have a lot more understanding of how a bank works, how the whole economy works, and what sort of products banks have available (especially ours, because I've been a customer there for a year before becoming employed there).

There were five of us being trained last week. Two had been tellers before. Three of us had never worked in a bank. It was SO comforting to know that the other two newbies were struggling as much as I was to follow directions and remember procedures. The scariest part is going to be learning to identify counterfeits. Right now, I suspect every check I see of being faked and want to examine it closely. I can just see myself with lines of 20 or 30 people, waiting impatiently to get their turn at Miss Pokey-Teller's window.

Last week was training in a meeting room. The next two weeks are training in a real bank, with real live customers depositing & withdrawing real live money. The one delight in seeing my schedule for the next two weeks is that I don't work Saturdays yet (because my mentor doesn't work Saturdays) ... so I get to go to Lessons&Carols rehearsal next week and sing and sing and sing. Singing Christmas hymns can be antidote to whatever is wrong in life.

5 comments:

  1. Were you able to make a pretty good choice on a pair of shoes - and did the returning go okay?

    They surely have a single line waiting for the next available teller, don't they?

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  2. I think working in a bank would be fun. Pretty soon you'll be very good at it. You will learn a lot of interesting things about the economy and financial industry. Also, all you have ever learned about the Lutheran view of sinful human nature will be confirmed. Let me know how it goes.

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  3. I deal with lots of codes too and they change...it took me a loooong time to get them down. Be patient with your self. This is all too funny...dealing with people's money, you and me...I do buys and sells, move money into people's banks and out...and you work at the bank working on that end of things. Who would have thought 2 years ago we would be where we are? It sounds like you are surviving...even blogging! : )

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  4. Regarding shoes: I ordered from three companies online. The four pairs I have returned to two of those companies have already refunded me the money. The other box (with 7 pairs of returns) wasn't shipped until this past Saturday, but I expect to receive a refund for them in about a week.

    The one pair of shoes I kept hurt my feet all last week. They didn't hurt as badly as the pair of Danskos I wore on my first day (a pair of shoes I bought just so I'd have something while I was still shoe-shopping).

    Today I tried something different. I used my inserts (the OTC ones, not my Rx pair) under the insoles that came with the shoes instead of under the insoles I'm supposed to use with the inserts. That was a huge improvement! My feet still hurt a little, but they hurt more like I'd expect from being on my feet all day. The improved arch support helped, but more importantly, that adjustment did something that affected how my bunions fit in the toe-box and where they rub against the leather. Hooray! We're movin' in the right direction now!

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  5. Well, Chaplain, that encouraging word was almost like a cyber-hug. ;-)

    Laura, for the most part, the blogging gets done on the weekends when I just can't hold in the words any more and they explode onto the computer screen. Then I set them up to post throughout the week. I suppose I should have been sweeping or editing or sorting laundry when I was typing; I will call this my mental-health break.

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