Sunday, October 01, 2006
HAS THAT CLOSET ALWAYS BEEN THERE?
When my wife first moved to Maryland from New Jersey in 1999 (when she was still my fiancée), she worked a series of temp jobs at first. She had worked in a farm store for seventeen years, and wanted to find something that would be a good fit. By sheer happenstance, several of the temp jobs were in the same business park where I worked. One day, my boss walked into my office and asked me if I knew anyone who would be interested in working in Customer Service. I knew that department was looking for people, but it took some prodding for me to realize that he was specifically suggesting my fiancée. Shortly afterwards, we found ourselves working for the same company.
While the company does have rules about interoffice relationships, relatives can work in the same office so long as they have different supervisors. It was tough not expressing overt public displays of affection, but we maintained a professional decorum at all times. The only possible exception was that we arranged our schedules to always eat lunch together. Not a big deal, but new employees always looked strangely at the couple eating off the same plate until they found out. After a while, my wife was encouraged to apply for an Assistant position that had opened up in the Sales department. She did so and got the job, with fortuitous timing as Customer Service was downsized two months later. Plus, her office was now right next to mine.
While that lasted a few years, recent events have caused another change. One of our competitors has bought a segment of our business. It's kind of a strange corporate America deal, but the turnout is that my wife works for the segment that didn't get bought but I do. So we've turned one of our bedrooms into a home office, and that's where she'll be working from now on. As of Monday, I will be an employee of a different company. On Friday we conducted a final Inventory of our warehouse, so that all counts would be official and the new company would know exactly what they were getting. At one point towards the end of the day, my wife asked for an item from the supply closet and I showed her where it was. As we looked at each other in the small confined space, we shut the door and started kissing. It was a fine end to a busy day, and a nice final chapter to a way of life we had gotten used to enjoying.
While the company does have rules about interoffice relationships, relatives can work in the same office so long as they have different supervisors. It was tough not expressing overt public displays of affection, but we maintained a professional decorum at all times. The only possible exception was that we arranged our schedules to always eat lunch together. Not a big deal, but new employees always looked strangely at the couple eating off the same plate until they found out. After a while, my wife was encouraged to apply for an Assistant position that had opened up in the Sales department. She did so and got the job, with fortuitous timing as Customer Service was downsized two months later. Plus, her office was now right next to mine.
While that lasted a few years, recent events have caused another change. One of our competitors has bought a segment of our business. It's kind of a strange corporate America deal, but the turnout is that my wife works for the segment that didn't get bought but I do. So we've turned one of our bedrooms into a home office, and that's where she'll be working from now on. As of Monday, I will be an employee of a different company. On Friday we conducted a final Inventory of our warehouse, so that all counts would be official and the new company would know exactly what they were getting. At one point towards the end of the day, my wife asked for an item from the supply closet and I showed her where it was. As we looked at each other in the small confined space, we shut the door and started kissing. It was a fine end to a busy day, and a nice final chapter to a way of life we had gotten used to enjoying.
# posted by Renfield @ 3:50 PM 
