My First Week on Long Island

This week went as good as any first week at a new job could go. Nothing too exciting happened, but I did get to learn my way around the Farmingdale/Bethpage area and got to meet some of the USGA staff. For the first week, me and the other merchandise interns (Kyle and Rebecca) got to do alot of cleanup type of work in the offices and learned the basics to get the internship started, such as arranging furniture in the merchandise office, hanging up bulletin boards, vacuuming and cleaning, running different computer programs, and learning how to answer the phones. We also go to travel to the off-site warehouse in downtown Farmingdale where all of the merchandise will be delivered before the Open. Honestly the warehouse is kinda creepy and not my favorite place to be, for it reminds me of some kind of building one of the Saw movies would be set in. The first day in the warehouse we got to build some dollys, which turned out to be more difficult then expected, and moved some wooden palettes around so that we could easily organize any shipments we receive by SKU's (I did learn something in my Marketing classes). UPS is the Open's shipping partner this year and we were able to meet Matt, the UPS delivery man in charge of all of our shipments. We got a taste of what the delivery and inventory process would be like in the warehouse when he delivered some packages on Tuesday. There weren't a whole lot of packages relative to what we will receive in the future, but it was still a pretty tough job considering there are only three interns right now. On Wednesday and Thursday the other interns and I were told we would have to take shifts in the warehouse throughout the day, so that someone from the USGA staff could be present while some security men set up a security system in the warehouse. So every two hours or so the interns would take turns holding down the fort to see if anything suspicious goes on. Not really sure what we were looking for, but we got to catch up on reading or sleeping. Yesterday I got to put labels on envelopes all day that would be sent out to all of the 1,200 merchandise volunteers for the Open. We had to fill every envelope with random stuff like vouchers, maps of the course, a pin, and other information about the tournament. The labeling and stuffing process took all day and we only got through the letter J, so we will have fun continuing this daunting task next week. To end my last workday of my first week on the job I took a camera out to the soon to be merchandise tent and took pictures of the construction. The tent is massive and will take a few more weeks to be finished. It will be the largest tent at the Open and will eventually be my home away from home as the Open approaches. So overall it was a nice first week in Farmingdale. Today I drove around Massappequa (sp?) and found this famous hamburger stand called All-American Burger that is supposed to be pretty good. I've heard that Alec Baldwin and Jerry Seinfeld are frequent customers, so it must be worthwhile. Really cheap also. I didn't get the chance to try it because it was cash only and I was paperless. But I found a Five Guys down the road in Amittyville and got my 3,000 calories for the day there. I wanted to find the Amittyville Horror house, but had no idea where to go, so I'll save that trip for another day. Tomorrow I'll have my first golf outing on the Blue course at Bethpage. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm sure it will kick my butt. I'll take my camera and takes some pictures, but i'm not promising they will load on this site because of the weak internet. I'll let you know how bad I play.