Assignment 5: Commercial Property Company
		My first experience of this company was exceptional.  They put me in the Building Consultancy department, and I absolutely loved it.  The other secretaries were lovely, the surveyors nice and friendly, and my boss had a voice to die for – his audio tapes were music to my ears.  On my last day they actually presented me with a leaving card and a bouquet of flowers - after two weeks!  I pestered my agency to go back there, and eventually I did, about a month later (when the lady I was covering for was off on extended sick leave again - I later discovered that, although only young, she had chronic arthritis and was in incredible pain most of the time).  I was there for two months and I learned an incredible amount about office practice.  The other secretaries were very patient with me - in fact, knowing how nervous I was about the phone calls, they took all the incoming calls for me, how good is that!  I really settled in and got used to the work.  It was a real pleasure to work there.. Then the day came when I had to leave - the other secretary was coming back off sick leave. Desperate to stay with the company, I applied for a vacancy they had in a different department, but the first thing my ‘potential boss’ said to me in the informal interview was, “We don’t encourage people to smoke outside the building.”  He’d apparently seen me leaning wearily against the building smoking on a day when I was feeling quite ill (temps don’t get sick pay, so you go to work even if you feel like death has a vice like grip on your internal organs), and he wasn’t impressed.  I wasn’t impressed with him or his job either - it had a different atmosphere on this floor (as I discovered in my other jobs, each floor in a building, even if it’s the same company, has a different atmosphere on each - maybe its something to do with the air quality!).  The new job didn’t offer as much money as I was getting temping either, so I turned it down.  I left the company for the second time, really upset.  It was my first experience of settling into a ‘temp’ job and then having to leave.  I’ve since developed the skin of a rhinoceros.