Rough start to the workweek today

What you don't want to hear when you're pouring the water from the carafe into the coffeemaker in the morning:

glubglubglubglubglub*chink!*

My suffering-from-insomnia brain took a moment to blearily focus, and as I raised the carafe to my face (very nearsighted, no glasses on), I realized there was now a crack running from the lip of the carafe down to the base. So. No coffee for me this morning!

Yes, yes, the bright side (and I am well aware that it is a very bright side, indeed) was that this happened BEFORE there was hot coffee dribbling into the carafe. But, you know, I can't quite get past the whole "no coffee" thing just yet.

Got to work, and then discovered that there was no consensus on the health insurance, so the boss left us e-mails to revisit the process, and oh, in the meantime, this paycheck will have the larger amount taken out, in case that's the way we go. So, yeah, no luxuries like a new carafe in the budget this paycheck.

Then, the clerk-treasurer was passing out our pay stubs (we all have direct deposit), and she wanted everyone to check their information on it, because she has to hand-enter all the numbers at the beginning of the year, and she wanted to be sure she hadn't transposed any numbers. For some reason, this just ticked me way the fuck off, quite ridiculously. And I know it's unreasonable, but it stuck in my craw today- she is payed SO MUCH MORE than I am, but hey, no promises! It might all be crap figures set down by monkeys! Get out yer previous pay stubs, and the strong light and magnifying glass (very lousy printer for her Official State of Ohio Payroll Computer Program) and see if you can figure it out!

You know, I think I blame the "no coffee" for everything today.

Except for the fact that the schedule for this week has me on my feet for a "Rover 1" shift four hours a day every day except tomorrow, when I'm only "Rover 2" for five hours. That I blame on the people doing the schedule.

Wow, the health insurance increase just got a LOT more expensive

The coworker who was so angry about the latest rate hike did her homework after the meeting with the Anthem agent.

And turned in her notice that she will be taking her retirement as of February 29th. She said she can take PERS at 25 years instead of 30, and buy the highest coverage of the health insurance PERS provides, and will still be ahead on her income- because of Anthem's greed. That is the ONLY reason she's leaving.

Some people are very difficult to replace. She is the one who always does the birthday cards, she started the "cards for patrons" program where we send cards to anyone we hear about who has an operation, or a death in the family, things like that (and I think we've all gotten better at smiling and saying "Oh, you're very welcome. We wanted you to know we were thinking of you," when the person you don't know AT ALL at the front desk is thanking you effusively for the card that the library sent them). She's also a very experienced event planner and hostess of parties- which doesn't matter until you consider the big Library Lovers Nite [gack!- the arguments over that still haven't gone away], and the Christmas Volunteers Luncheon, and all the other things she does.

She's also the sum total of our Tech Services department. She was hired when we still cared a lot about presentation, so she learned to do the labels on the book spines in a specific manner, and consistently place the labels at a certain height from the bottom. This makes a small, but distinctive difference. Which, given the current sentiment of DO IT FAST AND GET IT OUT THE DOOR I expect will be lost.

And, she's also someone who has maxed out on her sick leave (she just doesn't get sick much- her only absences have been related to the chronic health conditions she has with her skin and her eyes). Because of this, she has been instrumental in keeping health coverage for the coworker who has been off work for months fighting cancer- we set up a sick leave donation system specifically for her, and there are only a couple of people on staff who have actually maxed out their own sick leave. Now there will be one less.

From Anthem's standpoint, you know they're happy she's leaving. They no longer have to cover her scary-weird eye surgeries and ophthamologist appointments, PLUS they are that much closer to being able to drop coverage for the one who's fighting cancer (if she falls below fulltime status for over two weeks, she's off the health care plan).

Right now she's all bitter and angry. I'm hoping that, after she's had her two months off, she might be amenable to being hired back part time.

I'm hoping the library will be SMART ENOUGH to WANT to hire her back.