Wasting away… Those are the only words I can describe the feeling of having to come to Target for work everyday since I was hired by The Honeymoon Registry a week ago. Initially, I was a little excited last week just because I got to go in and tell them I quit.

Monday I made sure to send off my letter of resignation right away to my contract rep at TEKSystems. I waited all day and no response. So Tuesday I came in and still nothing, no reply in my inbox, no phone messages, nothing. I decided to call the office and speak to my rep who I’d never once spoken to before (long story made short, he took over me in the middle of my contract). The guy had never called me. Well, no luck no answer. I did leave a message though and a few hours later he called back.

After talking to Mike, I had basically set the ball rolling. He had me notify Target because our Target rep was gone for the day. I shoot off another email to my manager letting him know. He came by later to talk to me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be released immediately like I thought. I figured they wouldn’t care about some contractor who decided to leave. Well, it turns out they were much more understaffed than I thought. Brian couldn’t really tell me much other than that he’d talk to his supervisor so we could settle on a final date.

Wednesday, I met with my supervisor right away was told they are so understaffed they’d like me to stay until the next Friday. He also said that he understood if I didn’t want to stay and he didn’t want to keep me from what I wanted to be doing, which was a very nice thing to say in his position. I took some pity and agreed to stay through this Sunday (tomorrow).

Some might find it weird having your last day on a Sunday. Immediately I was too, but the more I thought about it, the better it sounded. My last days are a weekend which tends to be less busy. I don’t have to bother with all the goodbyes, because really, I’ve said my goodbyes to those I care about. I’d rather not have another akward conversation about how I’m leaving with another manager. I’m pretty much just going to finish my shift (of course no one will be around because it’s the late shift) and then just drop my badge off at the guard desk on the way out never to set foot in this place again.

I’m also really glad because Scott has allowed me to take a couple days off before I start. I told him I would be ready to go bright and early Monday morning, but he suggested time off to “recharge the batteries.” I took him up on the offer and decided to take Monday off. I was encouraged to take more than that though and finally settled on taking both Monday and Tuesday off before starting. So, Wednesday next week is going to be the big day. I’ve already got the job, now it’s time to do it.

I’m a little nervous as to how my coding skills will stack up with this. It seems like it’s been ages since I did any formalized programming. And I’ve never done any enterprise programming. I anticipate quite a bit of learning going on in the first 2-3 months. I’m pretty good with learning things on my own and having the programming background I do now, it should work out. I know from going back to some of my early coding projects in college that that stuff now is just simple stuff. I’m hoping the same will happen with this new job. In no time I’ll be flying around this app like I’ve known it for years.

Still, having to relearn Java in an enterprise setting in addition to all the other frameworks and stuff they use is going to be a task. Then at the same time I’m trying to get a grasp on Ruby on Rails because that’s what we’re going to be moving to. I guess thinking about things now, this is what I wanted. I’m going to be a programmer!