First, our plans have settled and we know what we'll be doing for the next few months. Here's the plan: We'll be on vacation for the next couple of weeks, but then we'll be back here. Budd will accept a 30-day emergency-hire appointment (that's a technical term in government service that means they need a temporary worker) and I'll finish my appointment, or most of it. That's the only part that isn't quite settled. The days are business days, and they don't count my vacation, so when I get back I'll have 40 days left and Budd will only have 30. One of us will adjust, or he'll go ahead to the next thing without me while I finish up. That part hasn't been decided yet.
When we're done here, he will be re-hired as a seasonal at Timpanogos Cave and immediately be detailed to Lakewood, CO, near Denver, for a 60-90 day period at the Help Desk. This is to fill in for Budd's friend who passed away a few weeks ago, as I may have mentioned at the time. In government service, they can't just post the job and hire. There is a long process where the HR department combs through each application, which includes usually a resume and some essay questions addressing knowledge and skills related to the job description. HR 'rates and ranks' all the applicants, and then forwards a certified list to the department that's hiring. There is a lot more to it as I've learned from my friend Kathy, a long-time government employee, but it gets pretty complicated so I won't go into it.
The bottom line is that it can take months to get the new person into an open position, hence all the temporary types of appointment. We know of two types, the emergency-hire, which is 30 days extendible to 60 and no more (and can only be done once per year per individual); and the detail, which is when a park sends a regular employee, either permanent or term full-time or seasonal, to work elsewhere. That's the type Budd just finished up at Organ Pipe. I understand there are others, and each has its own rules and regulations, but I don't know anything about them including what they're called.
Our maintenance department, where I'm doing my temporary job, has a few workers who have been hired on a different type of temp appointment. Yesterday was to be the last day for one of them, but literally half an hour before close of business, someone called and asked the boss if he wanted to extend Mike for another 30 days. I wasn't on the scene when Bob told Mike, but I'll bet that was one happy worker. There is very little work in this area, so even 30-day appointments are precious. For the admin clerk permanent position that I applied for around Easter (thinking Budd would be here long-term), there were over 90 other applicants. The rating and ranking on us still isn't done.
I didn't get to help in other departments this week after all, as the superintendent had some projects for me and also gave Bob (my immediate supervisor) some others to give me. In fact, I didn't get them finished and will have a couple of them to come back to in June. My favorite was devising a way to collect the information for an annual energy report in such a way that it will be all ready when the time for it comes. Before now they have had to go back through monthly records and compile it, so the superintendent wanted to be proactive. My response was a monster spreadsheet, with separate worksheets for each type of energy or fuel we use and a summary worksheet that continually updates year-to-date consumption, pulling it from the individual worksheets as monthly data is entered. It links to other spreadsheets that are already kept on a monthly basis so that very little actual data entry is required, and it has embedded formulas to calculate totals. Creating it was a blast, but now I need to populate some of the worksheets with retrospective data from the beginning of this fiscal year. Others are done and already reporting YTD info. For those of you who aren't nerds, I apologize for putting you to sleep. This stuff is entertainment to me. Who was it who said, find employment doing something you love to do and you'll never work a day in your life?
So, it's time to do the laundry so we can pack and finalize where we'll be, when. We will be traveling through Las Vegas where we'll catch a show for which Budd has purchased tickets (I guess it's a surprise--he hasn't told me what it is yet). And then on to either Montpelier, ID to see his brother and sister-in-law or straight to Salt Lake City to visit our kids and grandkids. That part depends on whether Joy is finished teaching school and can visit. One way or another, we'll be in Salt Lake for the holiday weekend, through Memorial Day.
If Idaho doesn't work out, we'll go straight to Salt Lake and maybe then go to Idaho after Memorial Day. Either way, I hope to grab a quick visit with Budd's mom and stepdad in Grand Junction before returning here. If that doesn't work out, at least we can plan to see them when we relocate to Lakewood sometime in July. We have missed everyone so much, that it's really exciting to know we'll be seeing them soon.
With that, I'll say adios for the next couple of weeks, and see you on the flip side.
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