Good Karma... I Love It!

So here I am with a new boss, a new baby and soon... a new house. All of it is awesome. The only down side is that the baby/house combination is about to send me into abject poverty. My wife anticipated having to borrow more money from family just so that we don't have to sleep on the floor.

Except that now we don't have to.... borrow money or sleep on the floor.

See folks... I'm a simple man. I have very simple creature comforts. I teach because I love teaching. I was never one to count beans, nor even keep track of where I stood on the pay scale. My wife is the finance major... she's the one who monitors that stuff. Well, in the face of mortgage payments and diaper bills, I decided it was time to figure out where I stood on the pay scale. So I called.

I felt like an idiot because... well, who in their right mind doesn't know (or seem to care) what their salary is? But the people at payroll were very nice. They told me. The only problem was, I wasn't as far over on the education columns as I thought. I got my master's degree some time ago and I figured that between that and my credential units, I was easily bumped over to the far-right column where the big bucks were. I was wrong. I was one column short.

What the hell?

Hmmm... well, If I wasn't in the high column, I figured I had to be close. So today I drove over to the district office to talk to the nice people in HR. I just wanted to know how many units I needed to get over into the last column. The nice lady at the front desk pulled my file and thumbed through it. After about 20 seconds of looking at my education/training sheet she said "Ummm... actually, you should be in the last column. I don't know why you aren't" So we went and consulted another clerk, who meticulously went through all of my paperwork and checked off, item by item, all the coursework that I did going back to the mid 90s. When all was said and done, they figured that I'd been on the wrong column since the 2003-2004 school year. I had turned all the paperwork in correctly, it was just never registered in the system.

Their mistake.

Now, another person might have gotten really upset at this point (and honestly, the clerk kept looking at me as if she was expecting me to blow a gasket). But I decided to hold off on a reaction until I asked the important question: "What does this mean for me?" The clerk looked at me, put her fingers together and made the "money" motion. My eyebrows nearly jumped off my face.

Am I pissed? No. Here's what I figure: I basically got by the last six years without it. Had my salary been correctly adjusted way-back-when, I'd probably have nothing to show for it today except a few more toys. But now, with a new child and a new house.... I'm about to be compensated for six years worth of the difference.

The timing couldn't be more perfect.

I've done some good things in this lifetime, but I don't know if any of it merited something like this. I must have been martyred in a previous life.