I used to have to be at the office for 7am, and was supposed to go home at 4pm, but being me, and everyone busy, I always stayed till the 6pm mark, when everyone who had begun their day at 9am went. I know; I'm an idiot. I'm just not the sort of person who can walk out when there's work still to be done. Well, I was. **** those guys now. :)

The good thing about being first in was that you got to put on your own music (NOT the crappy radio), put on the kettle, have some toast and relax a little before the paperwork arrived and you had to start actually doing some work. Nice to be there when it was dark too, watch the dawn slowly breaking.

what did you do for work, TH?

I'm like this too tbh. Work ethic is a gift and a curse.

I also quite enjoy this aspect of being in first (except I'm in a hallway and I just use headphones for tunes). I sit next to salesmen and starting the day off amidst yammering is weak sauce.

I used to work (almost thirty years, my only real job) for a freight firm. I'd have to be that early as a flight would arrive from Japan (not direct; nobody flew direct from Japan to Ireland, and they still don't. Think it was a KLM flight which came from Schipol) about 6am. I would have to prepare paperwork for Customs so that one of our larger customers could collect pallets of semiconductors at 8 and be on his way back to the plant in time for 9. It was all office work, but a lot of pressure. You were dealing mostly in Yen, so if you were tired or not paying attention, it was easy to overpay Customs duty to the tune of thousands or more. You really had to watch those zeroes!
Yeah, the trouble with being known for a good work ethic is that people take advantage of you. Happened all the time with me. Every day I'd say "I'm going to go at 4 tomorrow". Never did. Not once.

That's interesting, TH. I have the same question for Frownland too; what do you do?

Me = up at 5:30 most mornings to start work at 7 a.m.

That feeling when... you spend ten fumbling minutes trying to tie a knot in two ends of string that you knew were too short before you started....

I'm going to have to ask ... why? :confused:

Oh my job was great for the cold sweats. Like, most of our customers didn't pay VAT, legitimately, as they had a thing called a VAT Exemption granted them by the government. But in order to get the computer system at Customs and Excise to recognise this you had to ensure a certain code and number was input when you submitted the details of their shipment. If you forgot, it just assumed you were liable and took the VAT! Imagine having to go to your boss and say, "You know the way [company name redacted: hah!] have a VAT exemption? Well - and now, you're really going to find this funny, I promise! - I've sort of kind of paid the VAT by accident. Hmmm? Ah, about thirty thousand Euro...."
:shycouch:

Ah, the sleepless nights! The worst bit was when you realised A SECOND AFTER YOU HAD PUSHED SEND that you'd forgotten, and there was NOTHING you could do. The only thing you could pray for was that you had made some other error which would result in the "entry" getting "rejected", therefore not completed and allowing you to quickly insert the code before resubmitting....

Ah well luckily I'm a dick on top of it and will be blunt with them.

I run the marketing for a mid-sized mortgage company that's trying to become a big bank. I know I know, super predictable for my personality....

So you get to act smug and superior and get paid for it, and people have to suck up to you if they want to get a house. You must be in Heaven, if it existed.

Nah it's a buyer's market for lenders and I'm not just saying that as a sales tactic. Anyway I only talk to our B2B clients, not our actual borrowers.