Checking Out

I turned over the reins to someone on the staff today because I realized I’m only in the office for eight more days.  He wants to meet on Monday to ask me questions.  I also started to clean out my electronic files; will clean out the filing cabinets next week.  I’ve already told everyone at the office that I doubt there is much in the filing cabinet that I or anyone else will want.  Guess the shredder is going to be busy.  Isn’t that sort of funny?  28 years of work and most of the written history is going in the shredder.

I had my ethics briefing today, too.  It seems like I can do a lot of things when I leave the government, except represent a contractor to the government on something I previously worked on.  That that would never be a problem for me because the last thing I want to do is represent anyone to the government.  I was on the other side of the desk too many times when contractors came to pitch us ideas.  I don’t blame them, that IS the business, but I know that I could never do it.  In fact, I don’t think I’d make a good salesperson at all.  One time I helped my sister out in her shop for about one hour and felt so badly when customers didn’t buy anything.  I couldn’t take that kind of rejection!  Of course, when I DO like something I tell everyone about it until I’m sure they want to run screaming out of the room.  So I suppose if it were something I really really really liked, I might be able to sell it.

My next step is the checkout list.  I haven’t really looked at it in detail yet, but I think mainly I need to return all the government’s equipment (blackberry, laptop, CAC, and Pentagon ID – I think that’s all I have).  Once that’s done, I won’t be able to just come and go into the building like I do now.  That will seem strange.

The way I figure it, I have two and a half more paychecks left.  Now THAT is going to seem strange….and will be a future post.