The New Guy

I like the new job, but I'm struck by how much there is to learn. Not because I lack experience, I don't. I just didn't realize how specific experience, all experience, is.

I mean, on many levels, the type of print I'm now working with is incredibly complex compared to what I did for ten plus years. And at the same time, there's lots of details to my last job that only seem obvious to me because I did them so long.

It's frustrating on some levels because I want to hit the ground running, and every job is a bit of a mystery at first. Even if it's three lines of simple typesetting, the material it's to be printed on might look like Greek. Or the stock, the machine it's to be printed on, etc.

And there's the occasional conflicting instruction from people who seem equally established. They're nice enough, it's just that one person's pet peeve ('never do XXXX') is another person's casual instruction ('just do XXXX'), so I occasionally feel like a dog named Stay.

In a lot of ways, the new job is the opposite of the last. In the same industry, but where my last employer saw simplification of the printing process as a sort of grail, my new one will print (or hire out if they lack the equipment) pretty much anything you could ask for. It's a shift from a focus on volume to a focus on customization. Which works for me: in my last job, despite it's cookie cutter tendencies, what I specialized in were custom dies and other unusual requests. It's what I prefer, figuring out how to get the customer's wishes fulfilled.

Three days in, it's too early to be worrying about whether I'm fitting in. Yet I do. Because in my mind, I should be knocking out ten times as many jobs in the same time. But that's in an environment where I already know all the stock, printing techniques, technical limitations, etc.

My insecurity probably isn't helped by the fact that I let a job get to the press room with an error I should have caught on the plate. Where I come from, an error like that getting into the press room is serious business, and I think it is here too. It's one of those mistakes that's so dumb I can't believe I missed it. I'd think I had hired a dunderhead if I saw this plate.

And I'm tired. Eight hours in a new job is like twelve or more in one I've done for years. But a good kind of tired: it feels tons better than the tired of writing a dozen cover letters.