A friend once told me that the first week of a new job inevitably suck. Why, then, did I decide to take two jobs this summer?
My first job begins today, working at the Justice Department. My day began auspiciously with me being woken up at 6 AM by my apartment's carbon monoxide alarm. It hadn't been activated by actual carbon monoxide; it was merely informing me that its batteries were near expiration. The alarm has been designed with security features to prevent tampering by tenants, so I have to get maintenance to replace the batteries. This is problematic, since that requires filing a formal maintenance request which will be acted upon any time between three days from now and never. I put on sweatpants and an undershirt and trudged downstairs to fill out the necessary paperwork to get the battery changed. There I learned, much to my delight, that even with the door closed and my apartment being on the third floor the alarm's beeping can be heard quite clearly from the building's lobby. If I'm lucky, this may annoy one of the maintenance workers in my building into fixing my problem.
Justice wants me to wear a suit for the first day. For some reason they are playing hide-the-ball with the summer dress code; I've been told that I need a suit for the first day and that my unit head will tell me what the summer dress code is for the rest of the summer at orientation. I've a sinking suspicion that the answer is going to be "Surprise! It's still suits!"
Now I have to pick out a pair of underpants for today, ideally lucky ones. I have a pair of heart-print boxer shorts that I previously wore when I took the LSATs. I got a good score, but now in retrospect I'm not sure if that's indicative of good luck or bad. My inclination is to go with my Nintendo Logo boxershorts; they seem to be trending upwards these days. Maybe their good luck will rub off on me.
