First Impressions

There's something of a truism in the maxim that "the first impression is the strongest".

After some interviews this week, I've read as much in many web sites dedicated to helping job seekers make the best first impression. Luckily, my dad taught me how to dress well. I speak well. I write well. I think I make a good first impression.

Unfortunately, I'm not so good at listening to my own first impressions. When I started work in January at XYZ Imaging (two days after my wedding, as a special favor to the owner), I was repulsed by how dirty and in disrepair the place was in comparison to previous digital printing studios I'd visited or worked in. XYZ, located in a warehouse district near the San Jose airport, was a barn filled with too few employees, lots of dirt, tons of old, broken, disused equipment, and most of all, a spirit of disgusted frustration.

"It's a challenge", I thought.

I should have turned tail and run like hell.

Six months later, when I quit out of sheer frustration, I'd learned that there was a reason the place gave me the first impression it did; the owner, reluctant (and as I later learned, just unable) to invest in any new equipment, made the employees cynical about the prospect of doing much else than working from crisis to crisis. The ordering system, designed and implemented many years ago, was inflexibly based around the clockwork schedule and "done or not" nature of of film processing.

First impressions are often the strongest, and there are good reasons why - when it comes to people, places, and things - to give that first impression more weight when deciding whether to fish or cut bait.