We’ve all been there at some point – standing nervously outside the door, hands all sweaty, thinking ‘what if no one likes me?’ First day nerves are not fun. And what they don’t tell you is that first day nerves don’t magically disappear when you leave school, you get to carry them with you! Yay.
I’ve had my fair share of first day nerves, both as a kid and also now that I’m a grown-up (ha ha haaaaa!), and most of them have actually been since I moved to sunny Abu Dhabi.
I’ve lived in Abu Dhabi for just over three years, and when my husband and I first moved over we thought it would be pretty sweet if I could get a job at Time Out. We’re both originally from London and were regular readers of that fine city’s edition, and we have always picked one up when we’ve visited other Time Out cities – to get the inside scoop, naturally.
What with one thing and another (they weren’t hiring), I got a job somewhere else. Then somewhere else, and somewhere else again. That’s a lot of first days there, in a pretty short space of time too. One thing I will say is that experience makes it a bit easier to fake-out the nerves (my advice: flash a grin and keep your mouth shut, at least until you learn everyone’s names), but they don’t go away.
To cut a long story short – too late – a little over a month ago I found myself standing nervously outside the TOAD office door, hands all sweaty, thinking ‘what if no one likes me?’ Thankfully I haven’t been shunned for my dorky ways, and if anyone doesn’t like me they have been far too nice to let it show.
‘So what’s it like working for TOAD?’ I’ll pretend you’re all asking. I’m not going to lie to you – it’s hard work. We’re a small, but crack, team who work pretty long hours (evenings and weekends too peeps) to bring the best of Abu Dhabi to the stands each and every week. It can be stressful, with last minute cancellations and tight deadlines, but what helps is that the TOAD team really is a team. If someone needs a hand everyone pulls together to help out in whatever way they can, even if that means fetching a cup of tea or thinking up a desperately witty pun. It’s harder than it sounds.
We’re also a pretty diverse team, we’ve got the Lebanese, Turkish, Australian and British bases covered in the office – and that can get added to depending on where our intern is from. And kind of like the Spice Girls we come in a few different flavours: fashionable toad, alternative toad, dorky toad, clever toad and chief toad.
With such a mix, and in a small office like ours, there are certain keys to survival. Firstly, you have to be willing to work. There’s no slacking on this magazine, everyone has to pull their weight and everyone does. Secondly, you have to have a sense of humour. If you can’t laugh at yourself and take a joke you’re a goner. Thirdly, you have to accept, embrace and regularly proclaim, that hummus is the greatest food known to mankind – the only way to keep chief toad happy. Simple really.
Being a part of TOAD is no easy ride, but we also spend a substantial portion of the day laughing our heads off. So yeah, it’s pretty sweet. And I hope you enjoy the magazine as much as we enjoy putting it together.
