We'll see if it gets me full-time work...

This whole week, I was working on my own in the Celebrations department at The Wichita Eagle. My co-worker, who usually works three days a week while I work two, and her family went on vacation over Spring Break, so I got to take all of the hours for both of us. That means I put together the entire Celebrations announcment section: three pages.

My boss said two weeks ago that Spring Break week would be my test week to see whether he thought I was ready to be cross-trained into the Obituary department. He said he didn't want to cross-train me until he thought I could handle every aspect of Celebrations on my own. Supposedly, the system that's used in Obits is more complicated. I have my doubts.

Yesterday, which was my production day, I got my pages done and printed to negatives earlier than I ever did when I was working Fridays and sharing the week with Melody. Since my boss was still at work and in his office, also on the same floor of the building that my pages print to negative on, I stopped by his office and let him know that my pages were done and printed. He thought it was great and asked me if I would show them to him. When I did, he examined them and said they looked really good.

I'm supposed to meet with him on Wednesday at 1 p.m. (that's Central time), and he's supposed to tell me then whether, in his opinion, I'm ready to move on.

Now, this will be the third or fourth time I've met with him about moving to a more full-time capacity at the Eagle. Every time, he's come up with something else he wants me to work on first. Since I got everything done well and quickly, he shouldn't have anything to use to hold me back. But we'll see.

Melody, my co-worker, is thinking about applying for a full-time position in another department, and if she does that, Celebrations would be all mine all the time. That presents some challenges along with the obvious benefits of having a full-time job. For instance, right now, we don't leave for lunch: we eat in the office because lunchtime is when most people come in to place announcements. In other words, we get no breaks. Only one of us is in the office during the day. So what happens when I get sick? I still have to go in because there's no one there to relieve me. So how would I be able to go to see a doctor? Beats me. That's something management will have to figure out.

Anyway, I'm thinking that my boss is stalling me until Melody finds a full-time position where she wants so that he can hand Celebraions over to me without cross-training me. I hope not, though.

For these reasons, I'm almost not looking forward to this meeting. I'm almost afraid he'll come up with another excuse not to cross-train me. But for the slight chance he'll say I am, I am looking forward to it. Maybe I'm being naive. I don't know.

Whatever I am, please pray for me. This full-time work, hopefully with benefits, is something that would really help Ron and me a lot.

And, no, our announcement pages are not published online. I've made the suggestion, but nothing's been done yet. Otherwise, I'd point you toward the Internet link.

But I do need the prayers.