My First Week at ESM
It’s a rainy Monday morning in mid-October. My housemate knocks on my door and wakes me with a cup of tea to make sure that I’m up and ready for the first day at my new job.
As I sit up and take a sip of the first cuppa of the day, the nerves and excitement start to kick in. Having only just graduated from university, the prospect of starting a new job in the industry that I actually want to work in is equal parts exciting and terrifying.
What if they don’t like me? What if I don’t like them? Have I just signed up for six months of making tea and photocopies? As I sit on the bus on my way in to the office for the first time, I’m not sure what to expect.
When I arrive at ESM HQ, I take a seat and set up my laptop, eagerly and anxiously anticipating the week ahead. Dan, Commercial Director and Co-Founder of ESM, explains that the main part of my job will be to manage their social media so he wants me to spend the day essentially stalking their online presence and watching every piece of content they’ve ever made. On my second day, now more than familiar with ESM and what we do, I meet Alex - Operations Director, Co-Founder, Big Scary New Boss.
As scary as he may seem at first, when he makes a joke about how my smoothie matches my hair colour I feel immediately at ease. Despite having a day full of meetings, he takes the time to sit down with me, get to know me, and ask me what I’m hoping to get out of my time here. He also reassures me that there’s a lot more to my job than making tea and photocopies (phew).
Obviously, starting a new job is nerve-wracking for anyone. But as a non-binary person, there are additional anxieties that come with it. For anyone unfamiliar with what exactly it means to be non-binary, the LGBT charity, Stonewall, explain that it’s “an umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn’t sit comfortably with ‘man’ or ‘woman’. Non-binary people can feel that their gender identity and gender experience involves being both a man and a woman, or that it is fluid, in between, or completely outside of that binary.”
Sadly, non-binary people still don’t have legal recognition in the UK and there is a lot of ignorance and prejudice that we have to face, which makes entering any new environment rather daunting. Will they know what non-binary means? Will they ask what my pronouns are? Do I tell them if they don’t? How do I bring it up?
When Alex asks me to tell him a little about myself, I decide to casually drop it in. To my relief, he asks if I use ‘they/them’, and when I respond ‘yes’, he writes it down in all caps and underlines it. He asks if I’d like to tell the rest of the team, keep it to myself, or have him tell them on my behalf. I’m not particularly interested in another coming out announcement, so I ask him to tell the managers and I’ll just tell people if it comes up.
Since then, I’ve noticed people in the office make a real effort to use the correct pronouns. It was just treated as normal, as it should be, and that was a huge relief.
In my first two weeks here, I’ve learned a lot. I've had crash courses in Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator which, as it turns out, are not easy to pick up. But I’ve already used them to make graphics which have been posted on ESM’s social channels, and I’m pretty proud of how quickly I’ve been able to pick it up.
I’ve also learned that my expectations are usually wrong (I haven’t made a single photocopy since I’ve been here), and that people are generally more accepting than I give them credit for.
But the most important lesson I’ve learned, which is (literally) embroidered on the walls at the ESM offices, is Don’t Be A Dick.