I was tapping into the ol’ grapevine yesterday, because I’m starting to feel just a wee bit nervous about remaining employed. Oh, I’ve worked on a year-to-year basis for nine years now, so I’m somewhat used to it, but the writing on the wall is getting bigger and bigger by the day.

Some tagger’s sprayed it all over the side of my office, in fact; “STRT LOKING — 2OO7 GUD YR FOR UNEMPLOYMENT!!1!” Hey, he’s not a speller, but it’s very artistic.

So I was talking to my usual County contact, the one whose groping I patiently put up with during my thin years, conducting conversations while backing around a job site in circles while my working guys snickered or got defensive for me. He doesn’t stand quite so close any more, possibly because I’m no longer hot, but that works for me.

And he let slip that the water guy’s thinking about retiring, and my ears perked up so hard that my hat flew off. I picked it up off the ground and started prying. See, I’m extremely qualified for that job — maybe overqualified, but it would get my foot in the door. My mind started whirling with the potentials of job security and salary reductions.

I talked to him a little more when I was wearing my operator hat later and doing a little consulting on our new operating system (man, the things they forgot by not getting the operators’ input in the first place!) He’d obviously been thinking about it some more, because he warned me that it’s entirely likely that I’m way overqualified for the job. The County might want to hire someone who can fix toilets and sprinklers rather than someone certified to actually take care of the place legally. He says he’ll try to talk them into it; after all, then they wouldn’t have to contract with us to do the operation, and I could get all of the backflow preventers in compliance under salary too. I can turn sprinklers on and off too, and do a little plumbing if I have to.

So he said to get my application in with the County. I was browsing the web site looking for the classification for the job, and stumbled across something even better. It turns out that I can probably go test with the State for a (sorry, excuse my degooglefication) R3gistered 3nvir0nmental H3alth Sp3cialist, which has a standing position open until filled. That makes me think that they don’t get a whole ton of applicants for it, and it even pays better than my current job.

The work would actually be very similar to what I was doing when we were really rolling, although I’d have to expand my horizons a little bit. I’ve never worked in food production, for instance, although my Ag degree could come in very handy for that. I looked into it, and about half of the test is stuff that I’ve done daily for years. The other half, however—specifically the math and epidemiology—I need some work on. I wasn’t that strong on math in college and I’ve let it slip since then.

So I went looking for a review class, and found one. Don’t you know though, it was last weekend. Of course. I don’t believe that I’ll be ready for the next test anyway, but I may aim for the summer one.

First thing to do though, is to call my contact at the County who does this, and is actually one of the supervisors for the position, and ask him what the job is like. I’m not really sure that this is something that I’m fully qualified for or that I want to do, but talking to a real person should sort that out. I have my stack of applications all ready to go after a lot of research last night — isn’t the internet a wonderful thing?

One thing that gives me pause though, is that my business will most likely be considered a conflict of interest and will have to go. I would have some major regrets about losing that business, as I have a ridiculous amount of pride in it. Getting the business put together contributed a lot of the training for this position. But it’s too related to this job, and government agencies are really sticky about that. It’s walking the line to have it with my current job, and it’s less related to that.

So if I do this, I’ve got my steps all lined up in order on a sticky note. Am I ready to jump ship? It is undeniably going down, and I am one of the last rats on it. There are a whopping four of us in the office these days. And I do need to keep my kids fed, and I suspect that a stable, professional job might just be a better way of doing that than a lower-paid blue collar job. I think I could enjoy this work too.

Wow, doesn’t seem like much of a decision at all when I put it that way, does it? OK, then we’ll see if I’m qualified. I think I am — let’s see if they agree with me.

Onward.