Interesting. For some reason, the two posts earlier today I sent via e-mail have not arrived yet.

To make life easier on me, I'm just going to copy and paste their contents here. Then, when they eventually do appear, I'll just edit the blog to get rid of the duplicates.
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Gah. Remember when I wrote, a few days ago, that the Verizon tech was supposed to come out to our house on Monday?

Well, since the static issue had basically disappeared by Monday morning, Mark called to cancel the appointment. That should have been the end of it.

No such luck. We came home from Jean and Joe J's last night to find a note on our door from a Verizon tech, who had come to the house at 8 PM(!).

He checked the wires and found a bad one, which he apparently believes is the one leading "into a rear room" of the house. Unfortunately, we also have no more dial tone coming into the house. I don't know what in heck he did, but whatever it was, it coincides with the fact that we now have neither static nor anything ELSE on our home phone. At the moment, it's flat-out unusable.

Thank goodness for Answer Call and for cell phones. At least people who call our primary phone number will get our voice mail, which we can check periodically via the cell phones.

They're supposed to send another tech out today after 5 PM. They don't normally schedule a tech to come out at that hour, and they were resistant to the idea this
morning, but Mark made the point that the guy who came YESTERDAY wrote "8 PM" on the note he left in our door. So they're supposed to send us someone tonight to finish repairing this mess once and for all. Mark will make sure he's home by 5 tonight.

In the meantime, if you call our house at an hour when you truly expected someone to be there, but no one picks up, it's due to our phone being goofed up. Please be patient and leave a message. We'll return the call as soon as we can.

Freaking telephone Gremlins!
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I'm back. I HAVE to get this out of my system...

The person who transferred into the job in this department has arrived. I heard them talking to her and I heard my supervisor starting to train her on the kind of data entry that I do.

A little while ago, I asked my supervisor if the person's old job has been filled yet, and she doesn't know. She also can't give me a time frame for how long my temp assignment will continue.

But she DOES know that there are other employees looking to transfer into that position, the same way this person transferred here, and they get first consideration. (IMO, that probably means I can forget all about having a shot at that job. Good thing I didn't get my hopes up.)

So I let my supervisor know that I need Friday morning off for an interview, and she understands. I told her that I would rather stay working here, but if I can't be sure of being able to do that, then I have GOT to be working steadily somwhere. I can't afford to not work at all.

My supervisor will also be glad to let me use her for a reference, which is a Good Thing. Heck, if my hard work can't earn me a permanent job here, the least it can do is help me get a steady job somewhere else.

I know the polite thing would be to go up to the new person here and welcome her. But I haven't got the energy to do that. I certainly won't be UNwelcoming to her when we finally do talk -- I'll be as civil to her as to everyone else. But right about now I'm too emotionally drained to be a coherent conversation partner for just about any reason, never mind for greeting the person who already HAD a permanent job, but got between me and MY chance at a permanent job I specifically wanted a LOT.

I actually had a decent night's sleep last night, but you wouldn't know it from how I feel right now. I just feel so worn out.
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OK, so that's basically what my morning went like. Now I'm on a break for lunch and I thought I'd call my ex-supervisor at the Nameless Nationwide Department Store job for a reference. The day I left, he gave me his business card and told me what a great job I did, how sorry he was to see me leave, and that he would be happy to be a reference for me if I ever was looking for a job. He just wanted me to contact him first to let him know that someone would be calling.

Well, I sure am glad that I called. It turns out that my ex-supervisor no longer works there. Knowing what a stress factory that job at Nameless Nationwide Department Store was, I can't blame him for getting out. I had enough ulcers as it was, and I was in the job on the lowest rung of the ladder. I can only imagine the stress level that would've accompanied being in CHARGE of that circus.

The one thing that nobody in Customer Service was able to determine was if he has completely left the company, or if he has simply moved to a different position within the company. I did e-mail him yesterday, prior to trying to phone him today, so I guess I'll find out soon enough. Either he'll answer the note, which would mean that his e-mail address at NamelessNationwideDepartmentStore.com is still active, or else I'll get an error message that my note was undeliverable. Either way, I'll know.

His direct work number was a company-provided cell phone, however, and THAT is no longer in service. So I'm not particularly optimistic that his e-mail address will still be valid.

I was talking to Karla last night, and she reminded me that it took her two separate tries to get into this company permanently. Her first temp assignment here ended, and she wound up at a different long-term temp job for a while. After that finished, she returned to this company (because in the intervening time, they had determined that they needed someone doing that work and they really wanted her back). Only after another stint as a temp here did they finally make the position permanent.

Well, if that's what eventually happens in the future for me with the position I have now, fine. But in the meantime, I have got to be out there and working. If it's not here, it needs to be somewhere and I'm not going to let up until that's what happens.