intel

When I worked in the accounting department for Intel Corp a friend and coworker of mine, Irfan Khan, came up with a great idea for a skit. Recon Dew!

Here I am sitting at work on a dull gray Oregon day. I am still training on the 30+ accounts that I will be taking over in less than a month. The person training me on the accounts is the current owner of the accounts, a woman that has been here for so long that she knows the entire history of the account, the people attached to the account and other tidbits of information; none of which is helpful to me.


Now come into my world:

I am sitting at my cubicle, which is one of several hundred cubicles in the 250+ person one-level office building. When you walk in the door the only thing you see are cubicles. This farm of cubicles is so drab and boring that you must use post numbers in order to find someone in a similar fashion to locating your car in the Disneyland parking lot. My cubicle is located at MickeyMouseA2, uugggh. Technically I am at EY2-G2, which is even worse.

My laptop is plugged into an office standard beige 17? monitor and my trainer is sitting next to me. On my monitor is a large Excel file with 15+ tabs each containing several pages of numerical data. My trainer is controlling the mouse as I sit in my comfortable office chair with my legs outstretched, arms crossed and my eyes in a deadlock stare-down with the monitor. The numbers are scrolling up and down the screen as she explains, in her oh-so-soothing monotone voice, the purpose of the numbers. It takes about 2 minutes of this before my mind wanders into space.

My training started at 9am this morning and by 9:03 my mind had entered the stratosphere and was headed into space. I began to think of how best to jig saw a new design on Jake?s Shelves and how I am going to sand it down. Voting, woman?s rights, gentrification and a few other topics also crossed my mind during the next 20 minutes. Thirty minutes later my mind was drawing close to the moon and the slight gravitational pull of the moon-like excel file switching tabs almost grasped my mind?s attention. My mind prevailed and continued deeper into space and the topic shifted. The new topic was purchasing a home. My mind considered all sorts of home-buying questions. Which lender should I choose? How large of a down payment will I need? How large of a loan can I be approved for and what do I feel comfortable taking on? Where do I want to buy this house? The questions went on and on in my head for about 20 minutes until a statement was uttered

?Ok go ahead and do that?

A solid 30 seconds went by as my brain tried to process the statement. What was my mind trying to tell me? Go ahead and do what? And then it hit me, I unlocked my stare on the monitor my mind came back down to earth and I noticed my trained staring at me and restating the statement ?Ok.. you can go ahead and do that?.

I had absolutely not a clue what she was talking about. Do what? I noticed the location of the cursor on the Excel sheet and, making an assumption based on prior training sessions, I figured that she wanted me to sum a few numbers. I reached over and clicked the ?sum button?. Fortunately my job is so completely and utterly lame that I was correct and she merrily continued on with the training. Less than one minute later my mind rocketed back into deep space passing the moon and headed straight for Pluto. It may be deadly cold on Pluto but anywhere would be better than here at this moment.

The next topic my mind began to ponder was my decision to change careers. This is a question that I have been asking myself quite a bit lately. It took me 5 years to obtain an undergraduate degree in accounting and another full calendar year to obtain a Masters degree in Finance. I have personally spent over $25,000 on tuition and I have another $18,000 in student loan debt for a total of approximately $43,000 in tuition, of which $31,000 went to PSU. All of this has been or will be paid personally by me. Now what did I receive in return? A 33% pay cut, yes a pay cut.

My current projected ROI is not looking good. I am depressed, annoyed and bored out of my mind. Luckily, however, my mind finally reached deep space around 11:45 so I am oblivious to it all.

This is what I looked like on my hire date. I was the only person wearing a tie that day. Oh ya this is my badge photo (I would get in trouble if I posted a picture of my badge)

Today I began my tenth working day at Intel where I was hired to work in the high energy, ultra-stimulating field of accounting. The past two weeks have been fun-filled and packed with hours of online training and seminars, a plethora of meetings, and many one on one meetings with my coworkers. The group I am working so far seems to be pretty nice and fun. A few of them surf some of them snowboard or ski, many of them have kids or are married but I am not the only young one here. It is quite different than what I am used to, however.

In previous jobs the average age was well into the late 30s and usually in the early to mid 40s. The majority of my coworkers were male and I was just a young pup in a big dog?s world. Now the majority of my coworkers are female and the average age has fallen down into the mid to late 20s although many are in their late 30s. It will take me a while to adjust to the change but as of yet the change is good and I am enjoying my new work environment.

?I?ll write again when I actually do some work.