Dandelion Lover

My town would be considered quite small with around 130 000 population, more or less. Located in the North of the country, most of the people were already acquainted with each other. I personally added hundreds of people, on my SNS however, I barely kept in touch with most of them. These were ex-colleagues, friends I haven't seen in years and even friends I made while playing online games. Few of these were actually "real" friends. Couldn't really complain though as I had quite a passive personality.

One morning I was browsing through the list of jobs available for me when one caught my eye. Since I have once worked writing articles, I got the hang of using keywords to help the websites reach the top of search engines. I found a job that was asking exactly for this, creating short articles and incorporating certain keywords to help the website grow its online presence. Although my qualifications weren't so great, I decided to apply since I didn't have anything to lose. To my surprise, I was called in for an interview.

And here I was, dressed in a white t-shirt, with a small flowery jacket and black straight jeans. I wouldn't usually go out unless I got things I needed to do, but this time I had to make sure to look the best. The interview took place at a restaurant from one of the city hotels. I arrived there fifteen minutes before the time I was scheduled because I knew tardiness is never a good sign. After introducing myself and having a short conversation with the recruiter, I felt quite confident when the interview ended and smilingly I shook hands with him and went back home.

After a week had already passed, I was already growing restless because I hadn't heard from them yet. My great confidence dissipated and I was left to mull over my failure to get the job. There weren't many job offers which I liked so I was really hoping to make a good impression and get called back. To my surprise, I received the awaited phone call a little after that. I had two days to get my papers in order and to show up at work the next Monday.

I quickly made a small list of what official papers I needed to prepare and went out decided to finish as fast as I could so I could relax over the rest of the weekend. In a couple of hours, I had managed to get everything I needed for my new job.

Monday morning, my stomach was clenching and turning and I couldn't eat anything because of it. I tried to calm myself down and to appear more professional that I actually felt. I took extra time getting ready for my first day of work. I dressed in a knee-length brown skirt and a white short-sleeved shirt that fell loosely on my shoulders.

With a darker green jacket in my hand, I put on my black pumps which were less comfortable than they looked, and was ready to go. A thin layer of makeup for that first impression and I was ready to go.

I reached the location I was told about and slowly looked around the office building feeling nervous and shy. The building was actually a two-story house transformed into office space. It was one of those older houses where you would like to move to once you had a husband, kids, and a dog. All it was missing was the white picket fence. The house was not far from the center of the city so I could only imagine how expensive it must be to rent it.

To my relief, I managed to find the right way and entered the office eager to greet my new colleagues.

"Good morning!" I said almost shouting as the office was large and spacious with only a few desks spread around. I felt like my tongue was in a knot nevertheless, I somehow was able to speak properly.

"Morning!" a response came from the back of the room and several people turned towards me and watched with increased interest.

The man moved towards me to shake my hand and I accidentally used my left hand in response to his right one extended in front of me. After a whole second I realized what I did and switched hands while at the same time, a chuckle was heard behind him.

"My name is Robert Lytton and I will be your direct supervisor.", said the man in a calm and proud voice while smiling warmly. "No need to be nervous, we're all friends here."

"Nice to meet you, my name is Katelyn Ross," I said, smiling relieved at his statement, a feeling of calmness came over me. I did it, I introduced myself without stuttering or tripping over stuff. Let's just hope the rest of the day continues in the same manner.

"Let me show you around for starters and get you settled in", said Robert, placing one hand over my shoulder and slowly guiding me in the direction of my new colleagues.

Robert was one of the project managers in charge and he was usually working together with web designers, copywriters, and developers, taking care to assign work and deadlines so each project taken by the company would be done in time.

He was quite a handsome man in my opinion; he was tall but his face seemed small, making him look younger than he probably was. His hair was ashen black and extremely curly that would barely listen to his attempts to style it.

"Thank you!" I managed to reply as his touch was making me overly-conscious of the proximity between us. I really wasn't used being all touchy-feely with people, especially men. Who can blame me, I had only had one boyfriend back in high school before I had become so introverted. Even that didn't end well. But that's a story for another time.

"You can just call me Rob as everyone else does. Let me introduce everyone, " he said while turning to the other people in the room who were already on their feet and coming towards us.

"We have another copywriter with which you will work with, Anna." He said that and a cute young girl who didn't seem more than 17 reached out her hand to me. She had a small stature and a youthful gaze. She wore a simple red dress that made her black, curly hair that framed her face stand out.

"Hey, nice meeting you. I'm so excited that we finally get another girl with us," she said while exposing a perfect set of white teeth like you would only see in commercials.

"Then we have the two PHP programmers," Robert pointed towards two young men waving at me in short moves.

"Hey, I'm Adrian and this is my brother Jonny." the seemingly younger one said while energetically patting my shoulder, while the other one grumpily looked at me and nodded. "If you have any problems with your computer just ask, we'll try not to make it worse" Adrian whispered with an amused tone of voice.

Both Adrian and Jonny had blonde hair and you could see the resemblance between them as they had the same bony nose, slightly bigger than what's considered normal. I silently thought it suited them as men because it made them seem more m.a.t.u.r.e.

"You should also meet our client manager, but she is not here at the moment. " Rob said while looking slightly irritated at the big clock near the door I just came in. "Enough of the introductions, let me show you to your desk." Saying so, he gently urged me towards a small desk with an orange office chair in front of it.

The desk was placed near all the others, while at the side it had a small hallway that led into another room. The whole office was equipped with colorful chairs and every desk had smaller decorations on them, each pertaining to the desk owners.

You could tell what everyone liked from these small additions, such as little robots at Adrian's and Jonny's desks, and the flowery decorations that adorned Anna's desk leaving almost no room for the monitor and keyboard.

"If you have any questions you can ask Anne. Your assignment for the first day is to get to know the company products. The breaks are every 2 hours and everyone usually goes out to lunch at 12:30."

I was still thinking of what to do first when Ann, as she liked to be called, approached me. "Let's have some coffee first, " she commanded and grabbed my hand to pull me towards the kitchen. She prepared two cups of coffee at the espresso machine and we took our time discussing the various ongoing projects while enjoying a few laughs among ourselves.

Afterward, I did as recommended by her and looked over the books in the break-room. They were all books about programming, copyrighting and even business management. I took one to browse and got lost in the extensive amount of information I was going through.

In no time at all, my first day was over without too much fuss, between chatting with colleagues, asking questions, learning new things and feeling nervous. I was dead tired when I got home and after having dinner, I simply dropped onto the bed and fell asleep while pondering over what to decorate my own desk with.