Little Things

A wise man once posited that it's true what they say. Things happen for a reason, but your time's coming around.

Today was probably the first day of the rest of my life. I exposed myself (no, not like that) to a new company, a new culture, and on day 1 I got whistled off to an induction day, when I was induced along with a few dozen of my peers. A disparate and bizarre bunch in many respects, but that's not important right now. Here's what's important.

I flew business class there and back. My old company was a firm economy company. I don't need to fly business class, far from i, but I am writing this from a business class lounge - something I couldn't have done in my old company.

I got to my hotel and I got a nice letter saying that I'd been booked in at a table for dinner, but if I arrived later I should just put my dinner on room service and the company would pick up the tab. In my old company there would have been a polite reminder that overnight out-of-pocket expenses would have to be met from my own pocket.

This was then followed up by a day of HR puff talking about the company culture. There were some actual members of staff there, who actually seemed to believe the message. In my old company, those people would have been far too busy to attend, so it would have been a mass of trainers.

The fact that the message from the HR day was backed up by the comfort of the travel and everything that I've seen anyone from this company say or do, actually made me think that maybe it was heartfelt. Obviously, I was working for the old company for so long that I developed a hard cynicism due to the carousel of HR policies. Here, I am cautiously optimistic.

This comes across as a company where they expect the staff to behave professionally, as opposed to a company where they expect the staff to be thieves and fraudsters. I dare say that they'd clamp down pretty hard when you stepped out of line, but it's a different approach and one I value.

Of course, this may all change when I actually have to do some work.