Bestest birthday present

I need to take a special moment to celebrate an extraordinary occasion: we just hired our first employee.  Wam, bam, done deal.  Just like that.

It started innocently enough on Wednesday night.  We nabbed our massage therapist’s significant other to help out with an evening new-patient orientation, gave her a crash course in Our Office 101 and some minimal vague instructions for that evening’s affair, and turned her loose.  She’s psychic.  She’s a genius.  She’s a natural.  She handled it all.

I had nothing to lose; I asked the question.  Casually, half-joking.  “So…you should totally come work for us.”  Actually, it was more of a joke than half-joking because I knew it was a pipe dream.  This person had just graduated from school for something different, something that would pay more than we possibly could.

Imagine my surprise when she said, “I’m seriously thinking about it.”  At first I thought she was humoring me.  “Really?  I mean, I totally understand if…”  I knew she was headed to greener pastures and I was chock-full of wishful thinking.  But what if…

Strategically, I dripped bits of suggestion her way, even going so far as to caress the front counter and say, “this whole area could be yours…”

Wow, that was easy!  I had been trying to mentally gear up for the onslaught of extra work I had previously been about to dump on myself – the email replies, the preliminary applications, the more advanced stages of application, the first and second interviews (along with compiling lists of relevant questions and pre-deciding ideal answers), selecting the final candidates, then the top pick, and then finally, training.

Make no mistake, there’s still training involved.  There always is.  The CA field is not the most common of job positions, so many don’t have experience.  I’ve always been prepared for that.

But with our CA on board, I now have just one final email to send:  “The position has been filled; may we retain your information on file?”

And now I can actually breathe.

❤

❤