Page 6 of It's Only Make Believe

“Are you ready for the tour or do you need a moment first? It’s a lot isn’t it, that first few minutes in a new job,” Mel says.

“It is,” I agree. “But I’m ok. I’m ready for the tour.”

Mel nods her head, and I follow her out of her office, down the hallway and to the elevator car. Mel presses the call button, and we wait. I hear the rattling sound of the car getting into motion and soon enough, the doors ping open, and we get into the elevator.

“You’ve obviously seen the lobby and met Elenor, the receptionist there?” Mel says, and I nod.

“Elenor introduced herself to me when I told her who I was and why I’m here,” I confirm. “She seems nice.”

“She is, but seeing as you’ve already met her, there’s not much else to see on the ground floor, so let’s start on the next floor up then,” she says and she reaches out a perfectly manicured, purple colored nail and presses the button marked one. We reach the floor and get out of the elevator. This floor is very different from the fifth floor. Where that floor has a long corridor and lots of offices, this floor is mostly an open plan with people working in cubicles alongside each other. Mel points to the right. “That’s the customer services team.” Then she points to the left. “And that’s the sales team. Half of them sell advertising slots on the site and the other half try to boost up the number of site users we have. To be honest, I don’t think you’ll have much need to be down here unless you want to try your hand at sales?”

“God no,” I say with a shudder and Mel laughs.

“My feelings exactly,” she says.

Mel leads me back to the elevator and we get in and go up one floor. This floor is more like the fifth floor with individual rooms, although the rooms here are larger, and each have multiple people working in them. Mel leads me to the first door, and we go in.

“This is the HR department,” Mel says. She leads me over to a desk where a woman smiles a greeting at us. “Susan Hall, Louisa Sanchez, our new intern.” I smile and Susan and I shake hands and exchange pleasantries. “I’m sure you won’t need to, but if you do ever need to lodge a formal complaint, Susan is your point of contact.”

“I’m sure I won’t need to lodge a complaint,” I agree. “Unless of course I don’t get long enough lunch breaks.”

I risk another joke, smiling to show it’s definitely a joke and this one pays off. Both Mel and Susan laugh.

“You will get long enough, as long as five minutes at your desk, eating with one hand and typing with the other one is enough,” Mel says.

“Obviously,” I agree and the three of us laugh some more and then Mel leads me out of the room and to the next one. “This here is the payroll department. I’ll show you later how to complete your time sheets and when and where to send them to.”

We head back to the elevator, and we go to floor three.

The first part of the hallway shows a decent sized room with two men working in it, beside a huge, glass walled room filled with servers.

“That’s our IT department,” Mel says. “Obviously everyone here is pretty tech savvy, but these guys know more about the workings of computers than anyone, and if there is a problem with any computer that you can’t fix, call down to them. They also set up new employees on the systems and stuff, which again, I will go through with you later.”

We are still walking, and the corridor opens out to a large open space where five people sit around a good sized pod of desks with dividers between them that are low enough to still be able to speak to each other. One desk is empty.

“This here is the web development team. I believe that’s your main focus?” Mel says. I nod, and she smiles. “Well, that empty desk might become yours if you can prove yourself.”

“I really hope so,” I reply.

Mel introduces me to the team. I know I will never remember all of their names, but it’s still nice to be introduced to them. They seem like a friendly enough bunch, and I definitely think I would fit in here with these people. When we’ve chatted for a while about my degree and what they are working on and a few other things, Mel clears her throat.

“I think it’s time for us to head back up,” she says.

“Oh, sure, sorry,” I reply.

“It’s ok,” she says, and we say our goodbyes and she leads me back to the elevator. She presses the button for the fifth floor. “The fourth floor is all conference rooms where we mostly hold team meetings, but sometimes potential advertisers and what not want to come in and have meetings. That all takes place there. I won’t show you yet because there’s really nothing to see except a bunch of empty rooms. There will be a meeting later on though so you will see the conference rooms then and at least now you know where to find them.”

We get back onto the fifth floor and Mel walks over to a desk that was previously empty but now has a woman sitting behind it.

“Rachel, this is Louisa, our new intern. Louisa, this is Rachel Whittington, Luke’s personal receptionist,” Mel says.

Rachel and I greet each other and then Mel continues down the hallway with me behind her. She points to a few closed doors as we pass them.

“That’s the men’s bathroom, and that’s the ladies’ bathroom for this floor,” she says. “And that there is the breakroom, and beside it, the kitchen. There’s a fridge, coffee machine, and microwave in the break room for the use of staff. Please don’t use the kitchen for personal use.”

“Ok,” I quickly agree.

“That’s the mail room for our floor and that one there is for photocopying, scanning and shredding. We also keep all of our current files in there. And that one is where all of the old files are archived,” Mel goes on, pointing at more doors.

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