First Day at Staples

Needless to say, the work morning came early on Monday given that I haven't had to wake up for work in almost a year. However, it came with an air of excitement as it would be my first week at Staples, and my first week as a big bad MBA.....

The first half of the first day was spent in an orientation session with all the other interns. There are seven MBA interns and about 18-20 undergrad interns. We went around the room introducing ourselves and giving a "fun fact." Low and behold, intern #2 at this game uses the fun fact that "I will be turning 21 in two weeks." Awesome....I remember that happening.....6 years ago. All the older interns feel sufficiently ancient, but at least we don't have to fill out timecards.

After orientation is over, we all have to wait for our managers to come get us. This feels a lot like elementary school when you waited on your parents to pick you up. I am very nervous that my manager will be last...luckily, somebody shows up to grab me very early on the in the process. Josh, a coworker on my team, has been assigned to buddy up with me this week and show me the ropes.

Lucky for me, Staples has their quarterly financials wrapup meeting today as their Q1 is February - April. As a result, I will get to meet the whole finance team here on my first day. In addition, the CFO actually shows up to sit down and rap with us for about an hour. He lets us ask questions about anything we are interested/concerned about. He is really engaging, and very intelligent. I get the chance to introduce myself real quick (and let him know I will be in his seat in about 15 years). I am very impressed already. Senior management in this company is extremely accessible.

We then head back to my desk to talk about what I will be working on this summer. It seems like a very interesting and exciting project in which there will be results that I will be able to actually see in the Staples retail chain. Retail is very new to me, so there are a lot of things I have to learn, but this project will give me an excellent chance to do just that. It definitely will be a great thing to speak to in the future.

All in all, a great first day! I really like everybody I have met, and the culture here is great. My time in Boston so far, and specifically today, has revealed an unfortunate personality trait. I am a sense of direction autistic. I remember with amazing accuracy how to retrace routes I have seen before, but I am straight up retarded with new routes. I have gotten lost in Boston a couple times already. If that isn't bad enough, I actually got lost in the Staples building about 4 times on my first day. In all fairness, it is one of the biggest, most complicated buildings in the northeast, but still.....not good. People on my team see me wandering and grab me to point me in the right direction. There are 3,000 people in this building, so I guess it is understandable......

Loving Staples!
Drew