A Whole Different Ballgame

I want my mommy...

The first day was kind of rough. I went in with only the little bits of knowledge that I had managed to collect over the years about natural gas trading and private wealth management... so you can imagine how ill prepared I was for the daunting task of learning corporate finance for an airline. There were GL accounts, waterfall charts, and Excel formulas I had never seen before. My boss said, "hopefully the learning curve won't be too steep." Too steep? It's like I'm facing a sheer rock wall the height of the Eiffel Tower equipped with only some flip flops and a coconut.

There is definitely a big difference between a company with 7,000 employees and one with 70,000 employees. For one, I can already tell that the quality of work is a lot higher here. Things are organized - computer files are neatly labeled, procedures are documented, processes are streamlined. There is also less of a battle with heritage systems and data since ExprєssJet is relatively new. Translation: there is less room for error and no place for incompetent people to hide. All of a sudden, I feel extremely vulnerable...

I spent the entire day nodding like a bobblehead doll while they showed me file after file and binder after binder of forecasts and budgets. I felt like I was watching a Cantonese movie... like this stuff kind of sounds familiar (since I speak Mandarin), but I really have no idea what they are talking about. I don't think they were fooled by my constant nodding either. There were long pauses where they were just staring at me, probably waiting for me to ask a question... but I didn't even understand enough to ask a question. Most of the time, I was just thinking to myself, "what the hell have I gotten myself into...."

Now I know all of you nice, supportive people out there will kindly say that I am overreacting... and that I will learn everything in no time. I really am not at all convinced of that at this point. Accounting is my Achilles' heel... and, unlike Brad Pitt, I don't have the good looks to fall back on when I crash and burn here.

It's been one day, and I already miss the bloated, mismanaged, inept bureacracy that was JPMorgan. At least in a place like that, they would never fire anyone... only move them to a dead end position. Damn these new companies with their efficiency and standards.