You Get To Experience Your First Day Twice

(It is my first day in a new job. Just to illustrate how much this job means to me, I had to turn down a guaranteed part-time job just to attend the interview for this one. The office is 29 miles away from my house, and I don’t drive. I’ve just been let in.)

Security Guard: *to me and another guy who is starting the same job* “Can you guys wait here a minute? I need to check something.”

(Ten minutes later he comes back.)

Security Guard: “Sorry, but I’m going to have to send you home. We have nothing saying you should be here today, and the guy who hired you isn’t here, either.”

(We were both pretty floored by this, but there was nobody else we could talk to, so we didn’t have much choice. Luckily, the other guy offered me a lift back to my house, so I didn’t have to wait for a bus. I got back home, took off my suit, put my PJs on, and prepared for a lazy day. I was sitting, checking my emails, when I remembered I had some brief correspondence with another guy from the company about a training course we’d been sent on, and he had a phone number listed, so I tried calling him to see what was going on. He basically described the whole situation as being down to an “overzealous security guard,” assured me that I did in fact start that day, and asked if there was any way I could go back in. Cue a mad rush of me shedding pyjamas and throwing my suit on like I was Superman in reverse. Thankfully, I managed to get a lift to a town halfway there, and there just so happened to be a bus back to the office as I got into town. Luckily, the manager was there at that point, as were the other three people joining my team. We laugh about it now, but honestly, when it happened I was absolutely terrified that something had gone horribly wrong and the person who told me I’d gotten the job had been playing some kind of awful prank.)