I’ve been at my new job for three weeks now.
Somehow, in that time, I’ve gotten a reputation for being smart.
I don’t know how that happened. I spent most of the first week wandering around asking stupid questions. A lot of them were questions to clarify something I’d already been told, because I wanted to make absolutely sure I understood what I was supposed to be doing. And yet by the second week, people were coming and asking me how to do things.
Last week I helped someone with a Word formatting problem.
Earlier this week I showed some co-workers how to move a folder in Windows.
Yesterday I assisted someone with Roman numerals.
Today I helped another co-worker fix a file association for a spreadsheet she was trying to open.
It’s not like my co-workers aren’t smart. In every case I was able to explain to them what I was doing to fix their problem, and they understood and will be able to do it themselves next time.
And it’s not like I always have the answer; frequently they’ll come ask me if I know how to do $THING, and I’ll look blank and say I have absolutely no clue about $THING. And together we’ll go seek someone else to show us how to do $THING (because now I’m curious, too).
Nonetheless, in three weeks I seem to have become the office fix-it girl.
Not that I object, mind you. With any luck this will make me indispensable.