Breaking In A New Co-Worker

It's tough when you need to train someone new.

Mind you, it's better than being short-handed, but it still sucks. To start with, as the trainer, you are personally responsible for every mistake they make. Or, at least, that's how I feel.

Maybe it's why I do so much of the training.

I don't talk much about my job here. I complain about aspects of it from time to time, but I don't actually talk much about What I Do.  It's because my job is honestly pretty boring. I work on the order desk for a warehouse. It's part data entry, part receptionist, part customer service, part tech support, and it often feels like I'm someone's executive assistant all at the same time.

I'm responsible for every freight quote out of our warehouse. There are two other people on the desk, and one of them gave notice today.  Six weeks of notice, but notice nonetheless.

This means that we're now hunting for a new person.

Someone I'm going to train.

The job itself isn't all that difficult - but there are a lot of details, and you can very easily get tripped up on one of them. A large part of the training is teaching what to do when you screw up, because our corporate culture is unique.

My first week there (more than four years ago), I was shocked when one of the sales reps told me (in front of his customer no less), "I screwed up. It was my fault."  He didn't try to shift the blame onto me (as the new person) or anyone else on the desk. He had screwed up and accepted responsibility for it. And that's been (mostly) the pattern at the office. I don't know about our other location - I can only speak for the Seattle office on that one. But it takes some getting used to.

The first hurdle in training? It's not the job. We have zero privacy. We're not in cubicles - we're all on the same desk. There is no sound separation between us. Hurdle number two? I have been known to swear like a sailor. J, the co-worker who is leaving, also swears like a sailor.

Once we pass those hurdles, then we start with the basics. Order entry first, followed by the phones, and so on.

Training sucks. Its repetitive and includes a lot of "This is the mistake you made and here is how to avoid it in the future." And if I miss a step, then a mistake will be made down the road that will be my fault for not covering it in training.  There are enough details to stress over that several people have been here more than a year before a gap in their training was discovered.

And that's just the breaking-in for the desk. The new person will have to mesh with the warehouse and the sales reps and our management and the customers and ...

Getting used to the environment and the people is actually harder than the job itself. And it's rough on all of us for the first few weeks.

I'm not looking forward to it.