Today, a good friend of mine starts work at Electronic Arts in Burnaby. By my count, this will be his third tour of duty at good old EAC. My buddy and I actually started at EA Canada on the same day. That was our first day of employment with EA, which turned out to be many, many more days of working for them.
I’m not sure if any of my loyal readers have had the pleasure but it’s always weird to leave a workplace and then come back to it again for another employment stint. I’ve had three “first” days at EAC: first job at a tester, second stint as a tester, and then returning to Burnaby with the rest of my skate crew in 2009. I’m not sure how my friend will experience his first day but I can give it a good guess. There will be a lot of familiar faces for him but many others he knew will have left since he was last there. The cafeteria might seem the same to him but they changed the food service provider while he was gone, so some of the menu items will be new to him. What won’t be new is the massive, heart-attack inducing breakfast burrito that will always be part of the breakfast ritual. There might be a new coat of paint here and there but the facilities will be pretty much how he left them. Oh, they might have moved some cubicles around but there’s no getting rid of the football pitch or the beach volleyball court.
Coming back to an old workplace is a very unique feeling. For me, it meant thinking back about the things I enjoyed when I was there last. I also can’t help think about the things I didn’t enjoy, which was probably why I left in the first place. I’ll have to ask my friend how his day went when it’s over. I wonder if he got the burrito for breakfast.