The Office

Well I started my new part time writing job this week. I have to admit I was all fired up about starting work and bowled in on the first day full of beans. I got the tour of the office, met all the other people that worked there who seemed nice and then I was shown my desk. Then my new boss gave me a few interesting projects to get working on, disapeared, and then no-one pretty much spoke to me for the rest......of.........the.........day.

At first I thought maybe it was me, but after a few hours of silence I realised that no-one talks to each other in this office! In fact it is more than a little bit like working in a library. After working for 7 years in a rather famous white pointy building in Sydney where the staff were more dramatic, entertaining, selfish and theatrical than the actors in the shows this has come as a bit of a shock. I have a gasbaggy nature and a very loud voice (should have been an actor) and now I feel like my voice is reverbing off the silence all around me. I mean this place is primarily for people who write all day for a living and the rest of the people are from the more nerdy scientific side of the fence so their social skills aren't that strong so I understand it should be a little more quiet than my old office, but it feels very weird. I mean they seem to be nice people, the types that rescue baby birds from the road, have environmental and RSPCA posters up and don't look like serial killers but the no talking? It's weird.

One hilarious thing about my new employer is that they keep a database of every staff member with a photo and a little paragraph about each person. Eg: "Hi I'm Julia and I work in accounts, I like windsurfing, drinking wine and watching movies. Make sure you come and say hi when you are near my desk" it's all pretty typical stuff. But in one of my quieter moments during the day I did some delving and discovered office folk who like dressing up in Medieval Costumes, bellydancing, Historical Sword fighting and one guy who loved nothing more than the company of his "prize winning spotted mist cat". I almost snorted coffee out of my nose from laughing. But I will treat this knowlege like a precious code that will force people to talk to me, how could you possibly ignore an opening line like "how is your historical sword fighting going?" at the water cooler?

Ps: my new career as an extra is going from strength to strength, one week concerned high school teacher this weekend concerned bank customer - oh the glamour!