This job is NOT for the fainthearted! Today was my first day of training to be a data conversion operator. Fancy name for an easy job, I thought. WRONG! All those tests and hoops I had to jump through have nothing to do with the real job. Truthfully, it is not difficult at all. It's just that I have to retrain my brain to retrain my fingers on a keyboard. It's a completely different keyboard. The numbers are on the "home row", meaning letters A S D F G H I J K and L all share with corresponding numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and 0. So, as I took test after test, I had to switch my brain between letters and numbers using the same fingers. Because I am a visual person, I think using pictures and my mental movie screen had to keep jumping back and forth between numbers and letters. Plus, my fingers are currently trained to stretch up to hit the numbers, so I see the number "2" and my ring finger automatically reaches up to hit the 2 without my thinking about it. That caused me a bit of trouble.
More difficult for me is that I am a piano player. My fingers already have numbers ingrained into them from 35 years of playing piano. The numbers go 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 4 5. But now, the numbers have to go 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0. I was constantly mixing up my numbers. The trainers must think I am dyslexic. Which I am, but only when I talk, not when I read.
Then there are the "special keys" - clear, reject, none, misfaced, doublefed, zip+4, foreign. That's only half of them. By the end of 2 weeks I have to be hitting 7150 keys per hour with only 4 errors. My best time today was 746 keys per hour with 10 errors. Yikes! There is no way to check how you are doing compared to anyone else although there are 99 other people training in the same room. But I did speak to a couple of people and they all seemed as frustrated as I was. All you can do is your own best and hope to last the 2 week training period. Spend an hour typing numbers and letters with no rhyme or reason and your brain turns to mush. They all start to blend in with each other.
2 days ago I was internally confident that this job was no accident. It may seem silly to say that when I am only talking about a silly little post office job, but every once in awhile a person can just feel when Heavenly Father is reaching out to guide your steps. Boy, give a person a little difficulty and the doubts start creeping in! Maybe I am really not supposed to be doing this job! But then, my mind reflects back on the certainty of that tender mercy and I know I just have to take a deep breath, hang on, do my best and trust in the Lord. "All these experiences shall be for thy good."
So much for my first day! I promise not to post again until the 2 weeks are up - at least about going postal.
P.S. In our orientation, we were warned to NEVER say that out loud on the premises. It is taken VERY seriously! TTFN
