A Letter to the New Colleague Who Started This Week

Dear you, who started here this week,

On Monday morning I saw you standing in the doorway, backpack hanging off one shoulder, eyes sweeping the room for a desk with your name on it. I was carrying my chipped mug to the pantry for coffee. I saw you, and I kept walking. I did not know what to say. I am writing it now.

This letter is not an orientation pack. There is no wifi password in it, no org chart, not one line about who reports to whom. You will get all that from other people, when it is time. I only want to write about the first week, because I remember it more clearly than the whole year after.

The first week in a new place has its own smell. Carpet that has soaked up the air conditioning, instant noodles someone is eating at half past eleven, coffee already made in the pantry, and no idea whose mug is whose. On my second day, Mai at the next desk asked:

"Want something to drink? I'm making some anyway."

"No, thank you."

"Okay. The blue mug on the shelf is the department's. Anyone can use it."

I said no even though my throat had been dry since morning, because I was not sure which mug I was allowed to touch. I spent the whole afternoon with that dry throat and one thought: new people do not get to ask for things. On the fourth day I finally took the blue mug. Nobody noticed. It had been sitting there long before I arrived.

There is something I have never told anyone here. In my first week, at a team meeting, people used a few acronyms I had never heard. I nodded. A steady, confident nod. After the meeting I went into the restroom, sat down on the closed lid, and looked each one up on my phone. One I got wrong, and I worked from it all afternoon. The next day I had to redo it, and I told people I had simply forgotten, not that I had not understood. A tiny lie. I carried it around for months.

I am not telling you this to ask you not to do the same. You might, like me. I only want you to know that someone nodded like that, asked again at the next meeting, and the sky did not fall. People repeated the word, a little slower, and nobody frowned.

Names are the same. You will forget them. Asking twice is awkward, asking three times is worse, and I once called a man by someone else's name for two weeks. At the back of my notebook there is a page with names and one detail beside each: "Khải, checked shirt, laughs easily", "Phụng, blue thermos". Nobody sees that page.

And then there is looking busy. I know that feeling: when there is no clear task yet, sitting still among other people's typing feels like being watched. I moved my mouse around, opened the same file again and again, just to keep the screen lit. I do not know if anyone was counting. Probably not. But the feeling of being counted was very real.

On my Wednesday afternoon, around three, it started to rain. The tin roof of the café behind the building drummed so loudly I could hear it on the third floor. I sat and listened, doing nothing, for about a minute. Before I could feel guilty, Mai turned and said, "Listening to the rain? I like this hour too." Then she went back to her screen. That was all, and it was enough for me to sit up straight again.

So I want to thank whoever asked me "have you had lunch?" on the third day. A small thing, free, and I still remember it. If someone asks you that this week, take it. And if no one has, it is not because you are not worth asking. People forget, because they are running too.

There is one small thing I managed to do in my first week, and it is not a work thing. I put it in the box below, if you want to try it.

The first time, you may feel awkward, as if you are waiting for something to happen. Nothing happens. I only saw a desk too, but after a few days it looked a little less like a stranger's desk. Some people notice no difference at all. That is fine as well.

One more thing, and I will say it plainly. If anyone says things to you that leave you feeling insulted, bullied or threatened, that is not part of being the new person, and it is not something to breathe through and let pass. Write down the date, the time, the words. Tell someone you trust. Find the team or office at your workplace that handles this. And if you feel tired, sad or anxious for many weeks in a row, please talk to someone with professional training rather than carrying it alone.

I hope that next week you sit down in that chair and find it a little familiar. It does not have to be fully familiar. A little is enough.

I sit at the third desk from the window, next to a money plant that is half withered. If you need to ask something, call me. Or ask nothing at all and just want someone to make you a coffee. That works too.

Thục

P.S. The blue mug on the shelf still belongs to the department.

This article was created with AI assistance.