Tomorrow is my last day at work. My first day at work was June 13, 2005. I can remember as if it were a month ago. I can even remember what I wore that day. It was cloudy in the morning but still a tad muggy. By the end of the day, it was blazing sunshine. I got taken out to lunch for my first day. It was Joe (now studio head), Dan (who helped me get the job), Ron (who would later advise me on race relations), and myself. We ate at the Papaya Hut. Later on, Greg would find a maggot in his food and the Hut quickly lost its popularity around the office.
The great thing about a blog is that you can go back and read what I wrote that day.
So a little over a year afterwards, I am departing. Part of me still can’t believe I’m leaving. I’ve developed such a routine that it will feel a bit weird knowing that I no longer work near Granville Island. I will, above all else, miss the people I work with. These are some incredibly smart, creative, and good people. I hope I have half as much camaraderie at EA as I did here.
I will leave you with a small anecdote. I mentioned this before but everyone at the company receives a caricature of themselves when they start their jobs. About six months into my own tenure, I noticed people who quit the company would leave their caricatures behind. I began collecting all of these caricatures. I then put them up in my cubicle with a red “X” through each of them.
In the old office, everytime someone quit, I would just slap their caricature up on the wall. When we moved to the new place though, I began arranging the caricatures in neat rows and columns. I even printed out a title sheet which I placed above the pictures. I called it “The Wall of Fallen Heroes”. I’m not sure why, since it doesn’t really make any sense. Anyways, people would give me caricatures of people who had been fired but I would toss it back at them. “The Wall of Fallen Heroes” was only for people who left voluntarily.
People would sometimes comment on “The Wall” and its possible effects on morale but management never talked to me about it, and I knew they had seen it. “The Wall” has quite a few entries in it now, about nine or so.
There would be times where I would stare at “The Wall” and wonder if I would ever make it there. Tomorrow, I will move my own caricature with the rest on “The Wall of Fallen Heroes”. People have volunteered to continue my work after I leave. One guy wants to make a picture book out of all the caricatures. Another wants to continue it in its present form.
So, when the day ends, I’ll be looking towards a new beginning and new opportunities. And I’ll be soon writing another “first day at work” post.