Yesterday morning, the Director of my library came over to talk to me while I was covering the desk. He is really a great guy. I always get a kick out of it when he has bad news to give me because I really can tell that he feels bad about it.

I have always had quirky luck at work. For the longest time, the library counted full-time as being 20 hours. That made you eligible for all of the benefits: matching contributions to a 401(3)(e), health/dental insurance, extra vaction and sick time, etc. When I first made the jump to 20 hours, he had to break the news to me that they were changing the required scheduled hours to 35 hours.

Currently, I am the only one at the library who gets his medical insurance as an individual. If I could, I would also have family insurance, but the town I work in doesn't recognize same-sex couples when it comes to benefits so the library, which buys into the town's insurance group, is forced to be limited by those rules as well. Up until now, we have gotten individual insurance at no cost to the employee, and family insurance came with deductions from the paycheck.

The Director was breaking the news that the Board of Trustees voted to make everyone have to pay toward their insurance, which basically means I have to cough it up. I am OK with that. In all honesty, most places of employment around here are heading in that direction. He had also given me a heads up about this earlier in the year. I am happy to have insurance at all. I now have to pay 20%, which doesn't really work out to be too much money.

Now for the good news ....

It is that time of year! The fiscal year is coming to a close, and the new one will be kicking off on July 1. That means our raises kick in! As part of our little tete a tete, the Director had to tell me what my new salary was going to be. It was pretty good news. It works out to being a 10% raise. About 2.5% of that is an increase to compensate for having to pay toward my insurance. What is more exciting is that the rest is just for me being me! That sure made me feel really appreciated.

So, all in all, I think I ended up in the postive side on this one.