Well, I think I'm going to start a Journal on this site pertaining to my Adventures in Cubicle Land, over the course of my Summer internship (which is now half over, but I can give a recap).

Now anyone who knows me better than me just posting randomly in a forum topic here or there (esp. my fellow 1st Responder Trainees), knows that I can be long winded, I love to type, for some reason it's a buzz for me I just like hearing keys click and click (see i'm doing it already), but that's not the main point of my story.

Now for a little bio: My name is Heath, I'm a Washintonian (Washington State), but I currently Reside in Maine (Yeah we drove across). I'm 19 years old and I'm going to be a Sophomore @ Susquehanna University (http://www.susqu.edu) this coming Fall. I'm a Summer intern at a Banknorth (recently rated #1 Best Managed Bank in North America by Forbes Magazine), and I work in the Marketing Dept. For those of you thinking to yourselves "Marketing is such a vacation compared to other depts." Your right, it is, this I've had 2 jobs before this one; one in retail, and one in the Collections dept. of a bank (I wish that fate on NOBODY). This is the most laid back place I've ever seen.

Tell you a little about my Co-Workers. They are quite the diverse bunch, and boy what a name game. My supervisor's name is Keith (Heath, Keith, Heath, Keith, You can only imagine the "What?"s being thrown around), he's a very down to earth guy, very soft spoken and is really friendly. Ted is basically Keith's 2nd in command, and he's a Giant...I mean a GIANT, he's about 6'5" and I stand a whopping 6'0". He's extremely nice and funny, but for some reason (I think it's the height) I'm so intimidated by him it's silly. Jen is the Executive Assistant but also works on all the projects so she’s technically one of the team, and I work almost directly for her. She’s probably the nicest person I’ve ever met, and we always get into the most zany conversations about odd things. Mara, Kelly, and Pat are known around here as “The Girls,” they are the Database group (whom I am a slave to), I do tons of projects with Access and Excell, writing formulas and such to appease them (all nice people really). Maura is another project manager who lives down in Mass, but commutes up to Maine every couple of days for meetings and to work up here (Mara, Maura, Mara, Maura, does the drama ever stop?). My Original cube, used to house another person who was in the group name Miriam (I can only imagine Mara, Maura, Miriam…*sigh*), but she just had a baby and is out on Maternity leave (more to come). Oh and then there’s Orman, who is basically our group’s personal IT guy…Ok I’m gonna sound like a jackass here but don’t misinterpret this, Orman is a stand-up fella: Orman is probably the closest thing to THE cliché dork I’ve ever laid eyes on. I mean seriously people, you would have to meet the guy, pocketprotector, thick glasses, same IT guy shirt, makes IT references and jokes and finds them HILARIOUS, the laugh…oh he has the IT laugh it kinda sounds like Goofy on Adrenaline.

Now, when I first started here at the beginning of my Summer Vacation (end of May, Early June). I thought it was going to be work, work, work all the time…My first day here, no scratch that, my first 4 days here, I browsed the exciting world that is…….Windows Explorer (on a freshly formatted computer, which broke on me the first day so they had to upgrade it to XP [one plus out of it]). So I got to meet Orman the first day, after that I was taken on a tour of the place, rather I was lead to the cheese at the end of the crazy maze of cubes, felt like I was in Dilbert. I met people on our floor (2nd floor) the 1st floor and the 3rd floor. I remember nobody from up or downstairs (this is one of 8 Buildings the company has here, I’m in the newest one), and there are some people on my wing of my floor that I don’t remember their names…

Ok on to the fun part. Oh about a week in I discovered CCSP and spywarewarrior and finally had something to do with all this free time. So as most of you know for a long while I spent my time lurking, then gradually bolstered the nerve to start posting and talking to you nice people . So finally I get my first big, ongoing project and I feel good! Jen and Maura tell me that this project that I’m doing took the last intern they had near month to complete it, and input all the data and do the calculations in the table. A day and a half later I had finished it, had redone every entry with formulas in Excel and made it so that next time they had to do this only 11 of about 150 different entries had to be filled and then it would do the rest for them.

So now I’m back to boredom, waiting for my next project. Jen tells me there’s an ongoing thing that they all participate in called “clippings.” Now let me explain to you what clippings is, A woman named Tausha gets about 30 different Newspapers a day, she then saves them for a week, and distributes them around to the various people in the Marketing Dept. to go through, and cut out EVERY bank ad, ours or our competitors so she can do something with them. Now I hope I’ve foreshadowed enough to let you ALL know what’s coming next. Yes, now that they know I’m efficient I now do every…single….paper….myself. I don’t think anyone except those people who collect newspaper clippings knows the everlasting hate I have for this weekly project. But I can’t complain that much it keeps me busy.

Now I get lots of other, more exciting projects, I have to redo databases in Access, find matching entries in lists of over 50,000 entries, organize, staple, fax, copy, put together binders, etc, etc. The joy on my face all day when I’m doing these projects can be seen through the mighty walls of the cubes all around. But I don’t complain, just makes it worse in your mind and you have even less fun doing it.

Oh, one escape (besides helping people on the forums) I do have is the weekly staff meetings on Tuesdays, they’re a joke (which all staff meetings are, just a way to stop work for an hour and have an excuse), but we have fun shooting the proverbial $#17. Last week we talked about Keith building an outhouse in his camp up north. Then got into an hour and 15 minute (That’s 75 minutes people!) discussion about how Outhouses were the sign of a true Mainer, and customizing your outhouse.

Now I promised more to come on the Pregnancy thing, so I’m gonna fast-forward to the present, and tell you that ever since I’ve been here Mara has been pregnant. Her due date was 1 month (yes 1 month) from now, and she just had her baby on Monday. Now when her boy was born, he was full size, so they must have gotten the due date wrong or something, but ANWAYS, she’s now gone on Maternity leave thus solving the name game for Maura. But, now they have a new hire coming in, and this women wants Maura’s cube, who is then pushing me into Mara’s cube. So basically I’ve gotten the pregnant ladies cubes every time…Although Kelly assures me she won’t get pregnant I’ll believe it when I see it!! So now I’m getting ready to move allllllll my stuff to the next cube over. I’ll spend a few days packing the boxes with my Joke of the day Calander and ok well that’s all I own here, and the electric stapler I stole from Mara. But they are keeping my computer here and giving me a laptop, which I cant take home (seems the defeat the purpose of a laptop eh?). So I’m waiting to be moved and I’m fixing logs, doing projects quicker than people can give me them. So I think I’ll start doing this journal (lots of my adventures trying to navigate the cube maze upstairs have been left out due to I forgot how a lot of them got setup, which takes away the funniness factor) at the end of every week to record my adventures here thus far.

*Rand Mode Ended*