Pseudo-promotion

I've been promoted... sort of.

No rank has been gained -- I'm still a lowly specialist, which is Army for "shitbag." Instead, I've garnered some new real estate on the paper's masthead: "Section A Layout and Design Editor."

The other interesting fact is that the title comes with no new responsibilities; since our associate editor (colloquially referred to as the "ass ed") was sidelined after an automobile accident last Thanksgiving, I've been taking on her duties.

Those who read this space regularly know that I gripe a lot. I need you to suspend your disbelief for a moment and believe me when I tell you that I'm not a very complaintive person -- the last thing I want to do (other than, maybe, be covered in venomous tarantulas) is bitch about the recognition I get. I'm a pretty agreeable person in real life. No, seriously. Scout's honor.

Basically, it took six months of doing the job for me to wind up talking to the Boss about this title issue, and it only happened then when another staffer sort of forced my hand during lunch last Wednesday.

The end result of this is that I've got a new unwieldy title. The awkwardness of it comes from the fact that the people I work with are all GS-7s and GS-9s, and while I have only a vague notion of how civilians work out their rank structure, it seems pretty apparent that 9s don't tend to work for specialists.

Hence the invention of my new name.

Don't get me wrong, though. I used to work with this guy, who is now in Taji, Iraq, and will be for another 16 months. Like I said, the last thing I want to do is bitch about the place I work.

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