And We're Off!

From 8:45am (I was 15 minutes late. Thanks security guards and me initially forgetting my wallet.) to 5pm I was being trained to work at ESPN. You'd think this would be a fairly basic introduction to the company and then they'd send us off to our respective departments (there were about 10 people, most around my age, from all different departments being "oriented"). Wrong.

The morning started off pretty good. My roommate and I (By the way, his name is Jason as well, oddly enough, hence why I keep referring to him as "the roommate".) rolled into the HR building at around 8:45 to which we had to go to a conference room and take pictures for our ESPN and ABC ID cards. And there was free continental breakfast! So a coffee and two OJ's later, my fellow new hires and I were ready for some orientation.

First let me clarify that upon entering said conference I did the standard roomscan for hotties, or as my once college roommate called it, Slut-dar. I did come across one newbie who tickled my fancy. And believe you me, I laid some foundation with my quirky anecdotes and general know-how. Translation: I smiled awkwardly and made lame jokes some of which were taken well. I'm also probably being modest here.

Anyhoo, for the next 3 hours or so we covered everything from how to fill in your electronic timecard to expense reports to learning that The Mouse is now making us its bitch. If you didn't know, ESPN (and ABC) are under the Walt Disney umbrella.

This is all well and good right? Yea, fine. I had no problem with this as I learned a lot of valuable info about working at such a huge television company. Most of which I have forgotten and will subsequently ask my supervisor about who will give me the eyeroll along with, "Mooove!".

After our free lunch, which was quite tasty and bountiful, we went on an extensive tour of the ESPN campus. I, having interviewed a month earlier, had already seen 90% of what they showed us. So I knew exactly where and when to make certain anecdotes and other vague attempts at being witty. Some worked (on said hottie especially) and some I covered up quickly because they didn't.

(I was also glad to see that there is a good amount of hotties throughout the station. Oh, and intracompany dating is allowed. According to the HR lady, "We'd have to close down if we didn't [allow intracompany dating].")

A couple things I learned on this tour were that I have free access to a state-of-the-art gym with free towels, brand new machines, and locker rooms with free shampoo and soap! Also, and this is key, they have an ESPN Store inside the same building that only employees (and their guests) can shop at and everything in the store is exclusive to it. This means that products I purchase in there are not sold anywhere else in the world...except their dvd's and, most importantly, their line of video games. I'll be picking up my copy of NHL 2k5 with my employee discount very soon. Hey, it's the only hockey I'm gonna see for months.

Upon returning from the tour we were then subjected to the last three or so hours of rules via Powerpoint slideshow. They failed to mention, however, that these would be the most useless three hours of orientation ever. They talked to us about how we needed to "always save on the H: drive!" and how to attach our parking stickers and we can't forget to dial 9999 for an emergency. On top of this, we went through an "Ethical Procedures and Fair Practice" slideshow and booklet in which we learned the following (and more):

1. Insider trading - It's bad and we shouldn't do it.

2. Sexual harassment - It's bad and we shouldn't do it.

3. Making gay jokes - It's bad and we shouldn't do it.

4. Viewing porn on company computers - It's bad and we shouldn't do it.

That's basically the gist of those three hours. It's all the stupid common sense stuff that we should all know but that they have to teach us to be able to cover their asses in court. I love how they wasted three hours of all of our time for this when we had already received papers and booklets prior to coming to work on which we had to sign claiming we understood Disney's and subsidiarally (definitely not a word), ESPN's rules. Oh and our main HR lady that was going over these policies had a mustache. In the words of Eric Cartman as A.W.E.S.O.M.E.O 4000, "Weeeeaak."

Anyway, that was my first day at the Worldwide Leader In Sports. Exciting huh? Day 2 begins at the crack of 2pm. If anything exciting happens I'll let you know. Most likely I'll make a gay joke and be terminated. Check back to see if I get fired!