Your Loss, My Gain

I went to a "get-together" for my new job tonight. There are six other people starting the same time as me because the company is beginning to consolidate all of its accounting work in StL. We were all invited by our manager to get some drinks and take a tour of the office.

I was the only one out of all of the new people who is going to be a senior accountant. The way I understand it, some of the people I hung out with this evening will eventually be reporting to me. When the manager announced this I could feel about 12 eyes looking at me and thinking, "She might end up being my boss." I've been in positions above others and helped with performance reviews, but I've never had official authority over employment decisions before. While I know I can handle being someone's supervisor I must admit it's a bit daunting.

Something I'll need to find out when I start this job is who MY boss is going to be. When I got the letter officially offering me the job, it said my supervisor was going to be the current senior accountant, who interviewed me along with the manager. But tonight the manager said that I would be senior accountant along with the current senior accountant, which makes me think we are going to be on the same level. I'm sure it will all be clearer on Monday.

The reason we got together for a tour of the office after regular working hours is because the company hasn't yet announced that they are moving this accounting work to StL. So when we go in for our first day on Monday morning, no one but a few select people in the company will really know who we are. They are supposed to announce the changes Monday afternoon, and on Tuesday morning we will be trained by a person whose job we will be taking and who was just notified of that fact less than 24 hours earlier. If that isn't awkward I don't know what is.

I'm really excited about this job though, and the people I met this evening all seem pretty nice. I must say that the company is doing everything they can to make it as painless on the other office as possible by announcing the change a few years before the transfer will be completed. But it's still weird knowing that this job is available to me because someone else will be losing theirs.