My First Day at Work

Daniel arrived at his new office twenty minutes early. He was wearing the blue shirt he had chosen the night before and carrying a small notebook. His welcome email said that the team would meet in Room B at nine, but the building was bigger than it had looked in the interview.

He took the lift to the second floor and followed a sign towards the meeting rooms. Two glass doors stood next to each other. He opened one, stepped inside and discovered a storage room full of old chairs and cardboard boxes. At least nobody was there to see his mistake.

Daniel went back to the lift. He could have kept searching, but he decided to ask the receptionist downstairs. “Excuse me, could you tell me where Meeting Room B is?” he said. She explained that it was behind the blue wall, not beside the storage room, and walked with him to the correct corridor.

When Daniel finally entered, two colleagues were preparing the screen for the meeting. He introduced himself and admitted that he had taken a wrong turn. “Everybody does that in their first week,” one of them said. “Last month I ended up in the kitchen during a client call.”

Daniel arrived on time and took notes as the team explained their projects. Before lunch, he added one more note for himself: if you don't know where to go, ask. It was a useful first lesson, and it had nothing to do with the job description.