The exercise:
As promised yesterday, today we write about: pros and cons.
Probably my last in-post contribution for the foreseeable future. I'll try not to disappoint.
Mine:
So I've got a new job, just not the one I was initially hoping/aiming for. Let's have a little look at how things ended up, from my point of view.
Pro: I've got a job! A permanent, year round job!
Con: Unlike the utility worker position, it's not full time. That means no benefits.
Con: I'm missing out on the final two months of my cleaning position contract, which is a higher paying, more hours per pay period job.
Pro: No more ten hour days. No more four on, four off. In a typical week I'll work two six hour days, two four hour days, and one eight hour day.
Con: Again, that means fewer hours per paycheque.
Con: At a lower pay rate than what I'm making at Public Works. Can you see where my hesitation was in applying for this job yet?
Pro: The new job has a pay range and they're starting me at the top of it, so the pay cut is actually fairly minimal. I didn't find this out for sure though until they offered me the job.
Pro: With me working fewer hours, and on a consistent schedule, that means spending less money on babysitters and more time for Kat to book clients and promote her counselling business.
Con: It's a desk job for the most part, so I'll be fairly stationary (other than when I'm running programs with the kids, like floor hockey and basketball and whatever else they want me to do). No more walking around outside on nice days, working on my ta-aahhh, my um... fitness. Bicep curling garbage bags and stuff.
Pro: The weight room and gymnasium will be nearby on the five days a week I'll be working at the community centre. That means no excuses not to make use of them. I might even end up in better shape compared to working the cleaning job. Speaking of which...
Pro: No more cleaning public washrooms.
And... game over. But also...
Pro: The community centre has always felt the most like home to me out of the four locations within town I've worked. I like the people there a lot. This is where I'd rather be working, and I'll be doing what I'd rather be doing. That, really, was what settled things in the end for me.
Today was day eight. Only seven more work days to go before the switch.
3 comments:
That's a decent list of pros and cons, though I might have put being started at the top of a pay range in the con list myself, as it limits the opportunities for a pay-rise. Still, I look forward to seeing pictures of you with your new tan. I mean, muscles. Yes, muscles.
But... if you're going to be on a more regular schedule now, shouldn't we be seeing more in-post comments from you? :-p
Well, I feel that I was a little mean not letting you know what happened to Sixticton's swimmers, so let's pop over there again today.
[Double post again, sorry. I thought I'd gotten out of the habit of this!]
Pros and Cons
As the black-suited divers gathered on the edge of the gorge the water, white-tipped and roaring like an angry hippopotamus, splashed the nearby trees and teachers with enthusiasm. Steve was soaked to the skin, his Metallica t-shirt clinging to his scrawny frame, and Grace was angrily taking off her pumps and looking for somewhere to dry them. Emma was standing well back, watching the preparations with a moue of concern on her face. The wetsuits were obvious; the scuba tanks equally so. The waterproof backpacks with snap straps to easily detach if they got caught on something contained things, but she didn't know what. The head-torches, the plastic map of the Sixticton cave system (known-parts) -- everything was fine. It was just the machetes that were bothering her.
"Right," called the group leader, and the divers quickly formed a loose circle to listen. "We think the children are probably in cave 7 on the map. Some of the locals call it the Slaughtercave because there were a lot of seal bones and flint tools found there twenty years ago. Don't call it that in front of the children please. The Headmaster has suggested it we call it 'Detention Hall' though I don't see how that's much better.
Pair up, buddy system as always, expect a bit of fun while we ride the gorge down to the weir, and remember: bringing any child back alive is a win."
"Pros and cons," said Steve. Somehow he'd appeared next to her, dripping like a rusted pipe on Christmas Eve.
"What?"
"Pros and cons. They're all either professionals or criminals. It's the name of their diving group."
"Criminals?"
She missed what he said next as the divers jumped into the gorge with much splashing, and the water consumed them, still very much like an angry hippopotamus.
The journey down the gorge was fast, painful, and hard to explain: the threshing water might as well have been a gale-force blizzard as far as visibility went and there was no sense of control, just the feeling of being a pinball in a machine where all the bumpers were made of jagged steel shards. Left and right became as meaningless as up and down, and only when the weir pulled the divers under was there a moment of respite. Then there was a sense of rapid motion as a powerful current pulled them into the cave system and spat them out onto a sandy, underground beach.
The surviving headtorches lit up the cave in a rough circle; the divers had all made it through though there were a couple of rips in the wetsuits and one backpack had gone missing.
"Think the kids survived that?" asked one.
Another looked round. "Unless they ate the body, it'd be here."
There was a silence.
"Kids are fussy eaters," said one at last, and there were hurried murmurs of agreement.
The divers spread out; the beach was long and shallow; the cave ceiling descended at a steep angle to the ground keeping everyone away from the very back. The sand glittered in the torch-light, and when the leader sifted it between his fingers he swore softly under his breath.
"Quartz", he said. "This whole beach is quartz. There's money to be made here, lads."
"Let's keep looking," said another.
"For the kids?"
"Well yeah, but also if there's quartz there's probably other stones too."
"Good plan."
At the back of the beach they found a line of confused footprints, probably several people walking in crocodile fashion, leading deeper into the cave. As they followed them the water splashed at the beach's edge, droplets falling upwards towards the ceiling.
Greg - in an ideal world the position would have come available in October. But I'm not planning on being in this job for very long, so I'm not worrying about pay raises. Which are all on union schedules anyway. I'm aiming to be in a full time permanent position within a year or two.
A more regular schedule will certainly allow for more writing. Some of that is bound to end up on the blog.
While I appreciate the follow up, I'm not certain that I'm any closer to knowing what the machetes are intended for :(
Enjoyed the descriptions and progression of the tale anyway though :)
Post a Comment