Worst first day of new job

I should title this post: Murphy's Law because that's the tone of how the entire day went from the moment I woke up to the present time (now).

This morning, I left 30 minutes earlier than I needed to, so that I could drive around the downtown area near my new work building's location, to try to find $7-8/hr parking. I totally misread a parking ramp sign for the ramp in my work building, and found out when I left work, that I owed $26.00 for parking in the ramp...b/c that is the ramp's daily rate (if you can believe it) and they offer $7/hr parking after 4 p.m. Clearly, I need a new prescription for my eyeglasses.

This company doesn't reimburse their employee's parking. Nice, huh?!

I was hired to believe this was a front desk/admin position. NOPE, nopeety, nope, nope. It IS a front-desk position but 90% of it deals with UPS and USPS mail and packages. Now, if I wanted to work in a mail room full-time, I would have applied for THAT job. I was misled in both of my interviews by the COO and front desk person to believe that this would be a senior receptionist position with administrative duties. Not.Even.Close.

Sure, it still pays more than $15/hr BUT ITS A HORRIBLE JOB.

The president of this company is so OCD, that he frequently walks around the office to correct his employees on how clean their cubicle areas are. He also demands that each conference room be sprayed down between clients, chair heights kept low and pushed in straight across from each other. If you have power cords from your computer sticking out underneath your cubicle HE YELLS that it makes the entire office look tacky.

The front desk person training me, got promoted after working there 2 years already (she's 23; I'm 48, so I already feel like a total loser). She warned me that if I didn't overspray the conference room tables with glass cleaner between meetings, push power cords back underneath the front desk, dust the lobby furniture multiple times daily that he would become irate and probably fire me.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Today, the large conference room was used 4 times. I'm pretty sure I inhaled toxic glass cleaner for 8 hours straight today and will probably develop black lung because of it. The 23 year old whose job I'm taking over, wrote up a few pages of instructions but she kept yelling at me that I wasn't doing anything right.

Um, it's my first day. What the hell do you expect?

Also, the hours are 8 to 5 p.m. with a 60 minute lunch but no morning or afternoon 15 minute break WHICH IS TOTALLY ILLEGAL btw!! Do you think I'm going to complain to the COO about this? Nopeety, nope, nope. I decided I am just going to take 15 minutes in the morning and afternoon ANYWAY and use the excuse that I was delivering mail "upstairs" to their other floor.

Also, very spartan place probably because it's a life insurance company. They want the place to be so devoid of LIFE that you mistake it for a mortuary. No plants allowed, no public talk radio allowed.

I think I'm going to die. But I don't want to buy their life insurance.

And, because of my age, their health insurance premium is the same as a car payment. I checked my county health insurance programs for income based eligibility and a single household can't make more than $24,000 or they are ineligible. So, I make more than that at this place, and thus, am ineligible for a lower monthly premium. I called around some health insurance companies and was quoted monthly premiums in the $330-$500 a month range.

I have until Nov 1st to choose their health insurance or go without. I'm considering going without ANY health insurance just to save money. I am in grad school but already have accrued student loans, so once I finish next year, if I'm still employed at this place, my income based repayments will be as high if not more, than a car payment. The alternative: pay-off my car that I owe $3500 on, and get rid of that monthly car payment. What choice do I have?

My biggest gripe is that this job will inevitably kill my spirit. I know that the 23 year old survived it b/c she's young and so she didn't have the age bias to deal with, like I do being 48 years old. If I stay at this mortuary, I mean, life insurance company, I will suffer psychologically from the sparse, toxic, work environment.

My resume reads like a 3-hole punch as I have spent the past 28 years effing up with job-choice, and failing to land jobs that are applicable to my interests and skill set. Job hopper galore...but not by choice, by circumstance. Can't erase history even though I can reformat it on my resume, but recruiters hate the 'functional format' resume.

How the hell am I going to get out of this cycle of bad job after bad job. I need this job's income for at least 2-3 years so I can support myself. I don't know if this is a rant post, as much as it's a reaching out to everyone to ask for advice when you are stuck like I am. I only have myself to blame. So, you don't need to beat me up about my past job choices. I've been doing that since I got home today. I really don't know how I am going to survive this job. It's toxic to my well-being.

Well, the pay is pretty good, you dont have to deal with customers or hot grease like in a restaurant, i assume its air conditioned? Yeah it sounds kinda boring, but can you listen to headphones or will you be answering a lot of phones?

I did a temp job assignment stuffing envelopes once and they complained i was too slow. I thought i had done alright! When i was a nail tech, i did clean the shop - i was pretty good at that, but again very slow.

Oh, but I do have to deal with customers. They come in to meet with their life insurance broker or agent regularly. I can't listen to any talk radio on headphones. I wish. The job is a glorified mail room job that requires the person to sit at the front desk and it's in a high rise building and takes up 2 floors with 2 different front desk coordinators.

Yes this job is boring but the office environment -- the no plants, no talk radio allowed, no breaks allowed -- is going to be hard to adjust too.

Sorry to hear you were criticized for being too slow in your two jobs. Thanks for responding to my post though.

Yeah. that is weird. I've done my share of admin temp work while job hunting and a company large enough to take up two floors always had a dedicated mailroom with 1-2 employees. The most I had to do was, if I was covering the front desk, as to sign for FedEx or whatever. The mail guys would pick it up and make sure it got to the right person. It really sounds like they misrepresented the position.

And, wow, the president sounds like a piece of work, some sort of OCD/germ phobia going on there it seems. I am not sure what your state laws say, but when I worked those types of jobs, there were always 15 minute breaks. I would often be asked to cover for the recepcionist so she could go on her break, go to the bathroom, get a glass of water, etc.

That said, yeah, I think you are going to have to stick it out for the time being. It sucks, I know, but from what you say above you need to establish some more stable work history. As much as I have wanted to quit my soon to be former job, I had to do the same for months because leaving without severance pay would have been very bad financially. Big hugs! Hopefully you will be able to find something better in the near- to mid-term.

Hey rechu. Sounds like you had a better role as an admin then what I am -- lowly front desk coordinator aka mail person. Yes, again, the newly promoted front desk coordinator warned me if I didn't wipe down the glass toped conference room tables, pull the power cords back from sticking out underneath the desk, and clear off the front desk coordinator area that the president would get irate. I met him for the first time today and he was very stoic.

I didn't get a wink of sleep last night either. This morning, the newly promoted front desk coordinator was curt with me yet again, because she's so young and doesn't know how to balance her new job's responsibilities with training me. It's not really her fault that the office expects her to do two people's jobs -- so I emailed the COO and asked her to have some of the recently promoted front desk coordinator's new job tasks handled by a colleague so that she could properly trained me.

I wrote it very nicely as a request, "it would help me if you could lighten her load so that she trains me properly the first time around," kind of wording. It worked. The COO halved her work responsibilities for her -- she still ignored me 90% of today b/c the brokers she supports would come up and have "meetings" with her and interrupt our training. I just would give them my stink eye about it, b/c it's sabotaging her and myself.

But I muddled through the morning and then had a nice teary eyed break-down when the COO asked me to check in with her. So, I'm definitely on the chopping block, day two, already, possibly?

I can't help that I have all this transition YET AGAIN happening to me; my roommate's mental health breakdown, my deadline to find an apt., in 2 weeks so I can move out (set by the roommate), my fall grad school course and financial aid warning (since my summer instructor wouldn't extend my course to an Incomplete, I had to withdraw, so that automatically puts the student on financial aid warning where if they get lower than an A, the lose their financial aid, or something like that, PLUS my mom fell and fractured her tailbone last night and had to be taken to the hospital b/c she fell as a result of having a nasty UTI which can cause her to fall and get really confused as it did all spring when I lived with her -- I posted about her falling at 3 or 4 a.m. and I'd wake up and find her on the floor).

The COO said she understood, but isn't that just a cover up for what she really thinks, which could be, "Great. Now i have to hire another front desk coordinator." And it's only day 2 for me. I have a LOT on my plate. I couldn't "fake it til you make it" today on zero sleep.

Oh, then I came back to my roommate's house and she told me that she skipped her psychiatrist appointment and then demanded that I not cry hysterically again like I did last night, after I got back from having a horrible first day.

What do you all think? How can I salvage my first impression since I NEED this job for the income until I can get hired by another company doing a job I love.