Work, of course, introduces you to so much more than how to do a task or the lingo of the industry. As a student, I'd never divided my day into work time and night time so I was a tad taken aback when colleagues started saying to me, "Have a good night".
I also learnt about the power of the weekend and sunny weather. The keeper of the stationery cupboard was always in a good mood on a Monday if the sun had been shining over the weekend and Wellington's wind behaved itself.
Then there was the woman who each day would shave the front of her legs before work as her husband liked them smooth.
Work - like women's body hair - is inherently unfair. There will always be uneven workloads, the cruisers, the ones who are always seeking new challenges, the ones who are creative with their communication.
In my first journalism job, male colleagues would talk about going to see a man about a dog and other colleagues would snigger. I never worked up the courage to ask what they were on about, but I suspected it meant whatever the talker wanted it to mean.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, it is said euphemistically when leaving to go to the toilet or keep an undisclosed appointment.
In my first spin doctor gig, I was introduced to the phrase "We will never get that hour of our lives back". My manager said so after we had had a meeting with two colleagues about a new pamphlet.
In workplaces, you will find the baker, the eater, the idealist, the idle, the fiddler, the forgetful, the one who cuts their fingernails over their keyboard, the one who gets so drunk at lunchtime they can't work for the rest of the afternoon.
Not everyone will think and act like you (though, of course, at times they should). Help is at hand - the MP for Unicorn, Dreams R Free, has a member's bill just waiting to be drawn from the biscuit tin.
As a tribute to the eight-hour day, here are eight things I would tell my 25-year-old self about work.
1. No matter how much you love your job, there will be days when you want to hoist your manager up the company flagpole or put a colleague through a shredder. Don't.
2. Work can be inequitable but never stop railing against that.
3. Change is unsettling as you often don't have a voice during the process, but here's to the end of dot matrix printers, smoking inside and photos of naked women on the wall.
4. Don't dis colleagues old enough to be your parents. They might not know their fomo from promo, but they have a wealth of wisdom, life experience, skills and institutional knowledge they are willing to share.
5. Learn the difference between work friends and friend friends - the latter will make an effort to keep in contact when one of you changes jobs.
6. Don't sell yourself short. Not everyone can organise, communicate, plan and bring their empathy A-game to work.
7. The adult equivalent of the child who goes to school to eat their lunch and chat to their mates exists.
8. Search out colleagues with good intentions so when they annoy you it will be short-lived.
