1.Get to know people. First meet those people in your department and then those in departments you interface with. Listen more than you talk. Ask lots of questions and get clarification if necessary so you truly understand how office/department/business works.

2.Don’t try to change everything at once. Be open to learning “their” way before you suggest “your” way.

3.Get in synch with your bosses priorities. What are his/her expectations of you? Make sure you are living up to them.

4.Have lunch with different people in organization. Learn “unwritten rules” of your new workplace.

5.Learn about culture. Seek out those people who have been there a long time and schedule time to talk with them.

If you need to put on boots and grab a lap-top computer to relieve yourself at night, you might be a redneck workaholic.

It never crossed my mind that there could be such a thing as a redneck workaholic, until I read a column on “Are you a workaholic?”

“Did you read this?" I asked my wife. "Are you a workaholic? It looks just like those you-might-be-a-redneck jokes.”

My wife studied page. “Maybe it was written by a redneck alcoholic.” She suggested.

“Workaholic, not alcoholic.”

“How do you know writer is not an alcoholic?” she demanded.

“I don’t. But column is about workaholics, and it reads just like a series of redneck jokes.”

“Well, maybe it was written by a redneck workaholic, then.” She suggested.

“No way. There is no such a thing.”

“Why not?” she wanted to know.

“Because workaholics sit late in front of computer screens and steroid-laced in-boxes, wearing $500 suits and $550 haircuts. Folks out here wear $19.95 jeans and occasionally wash their hair.”

“But many of them do spend late hours in front of their computers,” my wife pointed out.

“Like who?”

“Like you.”

“Oh, yeah…”

“Being a workaholic is not just about computers and offices and taking out a mortgage for a haircut,” she added. “Look at Buster.”

“Buster?”

“Sure, every time he’s set to retire, he goes and buys another machine,” she pointed out. “One year it was a backhoe. Another it was a dump truck.”

“Wow, he must be desperate this year.”

“Why?” my wife asked.

“Because this year he bought a whole combine…”

“Ooh, that does sound desperate.”

“…plus a farm to use it on!”