The Wonderful World of Human Resources

Things I got to do in my first week of work:

1. Process paperwork for a new hire
2. Call an employee's doctor about faxing short-term disability paperwork to our office (note to the cranky lady on the other end of the phone line: I don't know what your problem is, but it wasn't me that caused it)
3. Process paperwork for a termination
4. Program my phone
5. Program the voice mailbox of one of the guys in accounting (Incidentally, he shares an office with another guy who is also in accounting and they are, surprisingly, the two funniest people in the building. I blame my father--the erstwhile CPA and computer geek--for any and all stereotypes I had of accountants. Although now that I think of it, he doesn't fit his own stereotypes. Curiouser and curiouser. Anyway, the aforementioned accountant requested today that I call to make sure he set up his voice mail greeting, complete with a statement of his name. It was a trick, of course, because he didn't use his name as his message. He used a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.)
6. Fill out a mountain of new hire paperwork
7. Spend precisely one-fourth of my first eight hours of work at the drug screening facility
8. Make faces at one of the girls training me whenever her back was turned (It would seem that, alas, I'm at least as smart as she is; it's something that she views as a travesty . . . she told our boss today that I couldn't possibly be learning things as fast as I said I was. And I quote, "Nobody is that smart." I wanted to quote her some statistics.)
9. Go to lunch with my boss
10. Stay in my office for lunch
11. Enter a mountain of paperwork into Excel (The girl I don't like was adamant that she needed to train me on the specifics of it, and I must say that I want to know what she was going to tell me. "First you type in this cell, then hit tab . . .")
12. Write poetry on my lunch break

This is by no means a comprehensive list. But it's number 12 that sets me apart from other individuals in the department and causes all professionals in the building to look at me with raised eyebrows. I have already, unwittingly, firmly established a reputation by just being myself. I am now "the new girl--you know, the one who writes poetry at lunch."