It feels great to be appreciated!

If you've read anything of my blog (what, all 3 posts of it? LOL) you'll see that my last two posts were about work. Really, in many ways, my job rules my life. Not completely, but quite a bit. Anyway, this week was annual review week... it's where our managers give us our annual performance appraisal, go over our accomplishments, set goals, etc. In the 4.5 years I've been with the company, I've always had good reviews. I was a bit nervous this year, however, because this job is completely new to me - something I've never done before. In fact, it is so new to me that I'm still learning and thankfully the company has been willing to pay for me to get training in it. (I'm still a bit surprised that I was hired for the job - apparently my manager and her manager both saw my potential. Hey, I'm not complaining!)

Ok, ok... moving on to the good stuff. So, I had my review and it went a hell of a lot better than I had anticipated. Last I had heard from my manager, I would be "promoted" (really more of a title change, supposedly) to a Salaried-Exempt position at this review time, as opposed to the Salaried-Non-Exempt position. (If you don't know the difference between Sal-E and Sal-NE, I'll try to explain: Basically the word "exempt" pertains to overtime. If you're Sal-E, you are no longer eligible for any overtime pay, regardless of the hours you put in. The Department of Labor oversees what job positions should be considered Sal-E or not. Sal-NE has pretty much all of the benefits of a full salaried employee but is also eligible for overtime pay - though at my company the overtime pay isn't the standard "time-and-a-half." It's actually a pro-rated amount of your salary, rather a pittance, actually, and in my case it worked out to something like $8/hr. That's not on top of my regular salary - just a flat $8-ish/hr for every hour over 40 worked in a work-week. Because of the overtime part, a Sal-NE employee has to fill out a time card every two weeks. It's such a pain in the butt and really a hassle.)

So now that that little explanation is out of the way, let me really get to the meat of things. So, with all of the OT I've been putting in with this new job, my DH and I were concerned that maybe it wouldn't be a benefit to go to a Sal-E position. We calculated, approximately, how much money I'm pulling in with OT, etc., and we came to an amount that I felt would be appropriate as compensation if they did switch me to a Sal-E position, thus negating my OT pay. When we got to the monetary compensation portion of my review, I was honestly shocked. Not only did they meet what DH and I felt would be a good raise, they exceeded it by QUITE A BIT. *faint* AND I was given a true promotion. And here's the best part: I'm not a Sal-E employee (yet)! So it's the best of both worlds! Not only did my salary increase exponentially, I'm still eligible for OT pay (even if it isn't the greatest of pay, it's still more than I was making and some compensation for my time being put in). It's freaking awesome!

Of course, to put a damper on this, boy-child has been sick for the last two days and I've had to stay home with him. It's nothing major - likely a viral URI - but with a fever over 100.5 he's not allowed at school. Both of the kiddos stayed home with me yesterday but today girl-child insisted on going to school. Poor DH... I don't envy his commute with the loverly sinkhole on I-25!

Catch y'all later!

Work is Hell.

Don't get me wrong... for the most part, I love my job, but the month of January is pure fucking hell. HELL. We have multiple deadlines throughout the month but the major deadline is 2/1. That is when the new quarter, the first quarter of the year, begins and that's when new promotions for the company roll out. It's a major time of the year for practically every department in the company. The problem? I need things from other departments but they have the same deadlines as I do. Uhhh, how is THAT supposed to work, eh? Well, as I'm sure you can imagine... it doesn't. I did, however, manage to make pretty much all of my deadlines, so that's the important thing. I don't think the quality of my work was all that great, but ya know what? It worked, and that's the most important thing in the absolute long run. It'll get better with time - I'm still in the learning curve. Now that it's February, I can actually relax for a few days. Not too long, though... I have more deadlines coming up. Wheeee!