Typical Office Beginnings

by Matt

I had previously planned to write my first blog on my adjustment to working at MMI Associates, Inc. I wanted to speak on how the smooth transition was preparing me for a stellar career in the public relations world.
Things didn’t exactly go that way.
I began on June 27th ready and willing to perform, and as I’m sure you’ve heard, our server was struck by lightning the night before I began. It was as if I walked into the office on Wednesday with a black rain cloud directly over my head reminiscent of a Doug episode on Nickelodeon. It’s safe to say my first three days weren’t traditional. Thankfully, the staff here is awesome and they, especially Ryal, gave it their best effort to train me — Mr. Miyagi style.
In my second week, we were back in the technology age, but it was a week with the July 4th holiday right smack in the middle. I started churning out press releases trying to learn the MMI style, and was getting good feedback from my helpful co-workers.
Then came the dreaded weekend of July 7th.
Unbeknown to me, I had developed Swimmer’s Ear on July 4th — out on the beauty that is Jordan Lake while playing Tarzan on a rope swing — and had failed to properly treat it. Saturday night came around and the pain in my ear bothered me enough to have my girlfriend drive me to Harris Teeter around midnight, in the middle of the movie Breach (which was quite good), to get some ear meds. I was able to sleep ok but Sunday my ear began to hurt more and more. I was woken by an awful burning on Monday at 5 a.m. and knew it was finally time to suck up my pride and head to the Rex Wellness Center in Cary. Of course, my negligence had caused my Swimmer’s Ear to create a bacteria-like infection in my middle ear called Ottis Media. I was prescribed pain killers, antibiotics and antibiotic ear drops. I laid around all day in pain, missing what would’ve been only my eighth day of work, and hoped to get back to the grind Tuesday.
I was wrong.
Around 8 p.m. the right side of my face began to swell profusely and the pain was worse than ever. I spent the night writhing in pain and squirting tears like a woman after watching the movie Beaches. Let’s just say 30 consecutive hours awake didn’t make it easy to come to work.
Fast forward to today where I’m up from 26 percent healthy to about 71 percent. I came into work this morning — and despite everyone saying I look like death — thought I could make it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to perform up to par, so I’m going to go home to work from my bed in hopes that my equilibrium has a chance to even itself out and I won’t fall over.
All in all, an extremely strange few weeks has shown me what great coworkers I have and that I’m part of a new extended family. I promise one of these days I’ll work a full, normal week.

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1. great stuff and I know that you will give your work everything you have. your a natural

   
   — Michael Bremer    Jul 11, 08:52 PM    #

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