Keeping a Day Job

I started a day job this week. It's a temp-to-perm job doing data entry. It's not straight up "Here's the form, enter it and click on all the answers to the questions," it's more puzzling out if all the info is there and what the people need and running it through two different complicated systems with an 84-page instruction sheet (and side instruction sheets for various aspects).

And we'll be shadowing current "Application Specialists" for the next couple weeks, too. This is serious business, y'all.

So anyway, it's been a long week.

Not as long as it has been for April and her overdue giraffe calf....

She's got her tail up right now. Is she pooping or pushing?

Sorry, I had to toss that in.

The company where I'm working appears to hire most of its staff - at least the data entry and call center staff - as temps, then whoever makes it for a while has a shot at a permanent job. And I'm talking hundreds of people. Some of the people who started in the training didn't make it all week. One poor woman, who I bet will be back because she had made it that far, had minor surgery the weekend before training started and was there on Monday. She had to leave halfway through Friday because she was suddenly in pain and had to go for a CAT Scan.

I have a lot of thoughts about a business model that's based on the impermanence of workers and nonchalance about them and their benefits. But I will wait and see, because this actually seems to be a good job with some advancement opportunity. At the very least, I can do it for a long time and use that on my resume to get something bigger.

But right now, I need to get to work on all the stuff that I haven't been doing all week because I've either been at work or too tired from the unaccustomed schedule. (This weekend: groceries, child to buy a birthday present, then to a birthday party, do layout of RWA chapter newsletter, make kids mow the lawn, find birthday present for husband and make his birthday pie, trying to make up for the few hours of my kids' lives I miss by going to work (Mommy Guilt!), maybe shopping for a couple more nice blouses for work...

Oh. And of course I'm blogging and I just cleaned out some old emails.

Ready to get to work now!

The anniversary of the publication of Book 2 of Chateaux and Shadows is coming up very soon. It's one of my favorites in my series (which.... there are 4 out and they're all my favorites. They're siblings, so I'm not allowed to play favorites, right?), because the couple are both quiet and reserved and have such a strong core of decency and of hidden passion. No, it's not super sexy, except all the smoldering. And I introduce Marcel Fourbier who has been one of my favorite people to write.

So go forth and read!