New hope

Tonight after my last post, I don't know if a certain coworker of mine read it or what but he brought something to my attention that I had pushed to the back of my mind. In our personnel policy manual it states that promotion from within the city shall be granted within the persons already employed by the city. Maybe this is God's way of telling me not to loose hope, but in order for him to help me, I have to help myself.

It also states that the city may hire outside the city if there are no qualified applicants. Now some of the things that this day position requires is knowing 10 key (basically the numerical pad to the left or right of your computer keyboard), Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and answering phones. The answering phones I'm in top shape on since that's one of my primary duties around here. The rest of it ummmm I'm a bit rusty on. I use Word occasionally off and on for personal letters, but it's been quite a while since I have used the more advanced features. Excel basically the same thing. I'm not really confident in my abilities at this very moment using them. On the other hand, I know once I started using it, I would return to my previous competency in them.

Another issue is that while I probably *should* get the job, if the other lady is more in practice or qualified I don't want to take it away from her either. Her husband works for the city as well and I guess I'm kind of afraid it could cause some hard feelings. Normally that's not something that I would worry about too awful much, but for some odd reason I am in this situation. I do believe that I'm going to go over to talk to the city administrator about this issue. If she IS more qualified for the position I will happily concede the position. If not though, well, they should go by their own guidelines and give it to me.

Another small issue I'm fighting within myself is the fact that this job is a 5 day a week with weekends off job. I REALLY like having 4 days off. It's kind of like a mini vacation between my workweeks. I'm also guaranteed overtime every other month, but I loose some of my paid time off at the same time because of that. SIGH, indecision, indecision. This whole mess could be averted if someone in my department would leave, but I don't forsee that happening either.