First Morning - So Far, So Good

First MorningSo Far, So Good

After quite a few years and many jobs, you get a pretty good feel about a place on your first day. This job started off terrific .

There was plenty of free parking in the company parking lot, and my programming manager welcomed me warmly and escorted me to my large and very well equipped private office. My office was near the coffee area, where the company provided free coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and bottled spring water for our convenience.

My new manager introduced me to my programming peers (who all smiled) and to the other managers in the IT department and spent considerable time reviewing my job responsibilities. I was now responsible for the support and enhancement of a comprehensive warehouse distribution Radio Frequency (RF) bar-coding system, where hundreds of packers in warehouses scan bar-coded items into cartons for shipment to major retail chains nationwide . That seemed to be an exciting and interesting application, especially since I had never worked on that specific application before. I did a little quick math (division) and estimated that the company packed and shipped about $1 million of goods every hour of every working day.

My programming manager said that he was really glad that I was there because they were having some trouble keeping the system running smoothly, and that they had many required enhancements that had to be put into the system to keep up with constantly changing customer shipping compliance issues.