My mum parked the car and we walked off to the entrance of the building. The building was very modern with it only being made out of steel and glass. It was shaped in the form of a W, for its owner Mr Wang. My mum and I walked out of the wet and windy weather to the ambient temperature of the reception; we walked up to one of the receptionists.
“Hello there welcome to computer associates how can I help you?” the women politely enquired.
“Yes, hi, erm I am here on work experience” I stuttered.
“Name please” I told the women my name and I was told to wait. At this point my nerves were killing me, and my mum told me she had to go now as she was late for work. This didn’t help me that much, she said bye and wished me good luck. I was now on my own, ready to face the rigour of the work place.
5 minutes passed and no one had come to collect me, and show me my work place. I was watching people come in and out I was playing a game, could I guess which people I would be working with and who would come and collect me. Another 5 minutes passed and another and finally at 9.15am someone was walking over to me. At first I didn’t notice him, as I was still playing my game.
“Hello, are you here on work experience?” the man asked. He was a rather fat man but quite tall and had a strong Scottish accent, which I was finding difficult to understand.
“Err, yes” I replied. We shook hands, told me his name was Graeme and he told me to follow him. I was relived to move out of the reception, but I even more nervous, as I was being taken to my work area. I was now in the actual working area where I will be spending the best part of 8 and half hours a day for a week.
Inside the building it was very modern, and very spacious. I looked in every room we went past; there was a massive Xerox machine and quite a few coffee machines, which I thought I will be spending most of my time in.
We came to my work area, there were 4 other people I will be working with in this section, but I will come into contact with a lot more. Graeme, who I met in the reception, showed me the work area and introduced me to everybody and their names. I must of shook hands with a least 25 people, how was I going to remember all of their names? I asked myself. We spent about 30minutes talking about what the company does and showing me the ropes.
At about 10.30am I finally sat down in my working area, I was knackered and I had only been at work for an hour and a half! Today was going to be tiring but, I told myself that I would show any tiredness to my colleagues and towards my work as I didn’t want to make the wrong impression. It was about 11.00am when someone asked me to come along with them, so I obliged, I thought I was going on another tour of the building, when I realised it was only to the coffee machine. The person introduced himself to me and told me to call him H, so I did. He showed me how to work the coffee machine, which wasn’t exactly rocket science.
Lunch time came, I went with H and who I later met Russ. I was told that I had a lunch voucher, so I didn’t have to pay for my meal, which was ok, as I wasn’t planning to stuff my face on the first day. I walked into the dinner hall and it was massive, there were lots of different stalls where you could get whatever food you wanted from Indian to Chinese to salads. I opted to one of my personal favourites, burger and chips; I took a drink and joined the queue to pay for my meal, I showed the lady at the till my lunch voucher, found Russ and H and sat down and ate. I quickly got the impression that lunch time was a time to savour. There was about 500 other people eating lunch when I cam to have mine and more and more people kept coming in and gathering their lunch. At about 12.45pm Russ, H and I went back to our work area. They both quickly got their heads down and worked, where I on the other hand was in my own world as I went on my own computer and surfed the net.
Russ and H told me about the other work experience people they have had in the past, and they told me how they sent one boy about the same age as me to ask someone for a long wait, which I thought was well funny, which made me realise that I had to keep my wits about me.
“Jon, can you ask Stacy for some skyhooks” Russ asked me. Remembering who Stacy was, without a thought I obliged.
“Stacy, Russ wants to know if you have any skyhooks?” I enquired.
“I think they are pulling your leg” She replied. And at this moment I felt like an idiot. How could I have fallen for it?
Finally it was 5.30pm; I was shattered to say the least. I walked out of the reception to find my mum in the car park, I was ready to face the usual line of questioning, how was it? Did you enjoy it? What did you do?
I got in the car and we drove back home, when I got in I fell asleep. Overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable day, and week.
