I've been at my new workplace for three days now and, as with
any workplace, as I get to be a familiar face to my co-workers, I will get to know the gossip.
When I'm on a temp assignment, I measure "good" versus "bad" workplaces by how long it takes for people to start telling me gossip--an umbrella term for backstabbing, nasty comments, breaches of privacy, etc. In other words, crap I don't want to know.
When I worked at the federal courthouse in New Westminster, it took exactly one day for my boss to share with me how, in her opinion, lazy and useless someone else in the department was.
During a 6-week-long assignment at a stock trading dot com company downtown, it only took three days for the Human Resources Manager to tell me that the CEO was an idiot.
And while working a 3-month-long assignment at a multi-national accounting firm in the financial district, it was only three hours before my trainer told me my new boss was notoriously difficult to work for. He'd been through three assistants in less than nine months. (It should be noted that while I found him to be lazy, he was not difficult at all. He really just wanted his laptop on and his coffee waiting when he arrived in the morning. Piece of cake.)
At the new place, the most I've heard is that the assistant I'll be working with may be a bit sensitive in coming weeks because her mom just passed away. This was said, I'm sure, as a way to protect her.
I'm not saying this new workplace will be perfect, nor do I expect or want it to be. But, my gut is telling me that I will find it a mostly supportive environment. I like being somewhere I can say, "No, really. Please don't share that sort of information with me. I don't want to know."
So, I've decided, for the purposes of this blog, I shall refer to my workplace as NKL:
Not Knots Landing.
