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It has always been curious to me both the incredible speed and inaccuracy of the gossip line at work.

Last week, when speaking to the acting production manager, I choose specific words to indicate that although I enjoyed the tasks of my current job, I didn’t see much growth beyond it for me. Somehow, from then to this morning, it flew scatter-shot about the upper channels in the plant and perhaps struck the fear-of-gawd into more than one person that their senior Acoro operator was itching to hit the bricks.

Since I cannot control the gossip, I may as well benefit from it.

The bindery manager ask me first thing this morning to make room in the afternoon to stop by his office.

It was a good talk. It was about an hour of both our days. I personally suspect that the man has never known what to do with me. Nothing like disrespect coming from him, but he simply hasn’t had much exposure to such atypical bindery workers, I think… He is a good guy, as much as management can be from a labor point-of-view.

The outcome? He outlined what was heading down the pipe towards me. A chunk of it needs to hold on clearance and release from HQ, which could be now or never ever. No one can predict that…

The smaller stuff: He assuaged my concerns about the good Acoro operators never getting away from the thing. They know they need to spread out the machine experience. They have a big retirement coming up; one of only two men that can run every machine in the department. They only have six months to manage that loss. The machine they started me on last season will be brought back into my use as the high season runs down. It’s the only sewer in the place that does a good job of stitching up the spines adn there are only two regular operators of the thing. I like the machine; it runs very similarly to my own line. It has all the same language and glyphs…

The production manager and the bindery manager will be working out a schedule to get me up into the cover art department for a bit of their rush in the fall, which is one of the slower times for the bindery… This I like.

The company has been investing in lean and green belt training, which I can only say is integral to the reshaping of production processes and the revamp of work flow through the entire plant. This, HQ has to set the budget of people to be trained each year for each program. As stated by the bindery manager, I am the top in line for lean belt training, which would be the first time I was indicated for anything but machine training in three years. That was starting to add up poorly in my head.

Most importantly, my manager stated unprompted by me that of the three general experience/wage scales of the bindery, I should be well to the upper half of the middle bracket. Wage-wise..? I am riding at the upper edge of the bottom bracket. This is the tricky bit: HQ still is being tight on raises. Of course, we have merit raises, offered annually at the fall performance review. But there is also such a thing as an equity increase. Basically, this allows the company to balance the scale when an employee proves more valuable than the normal rate through training and performance reviews would normally allow for…

Both he and my supervisor (who answers to the bindery manager) will be pushing both avenues for me to clear the gap between my level of performance and my wage.

This is the part that is the most – what? – unsolidified…? I have to simply wait it out and see. It would be an insane increase percentage-wise. I’d rather not say exactly until it happens. Just to say…

So, it can really pay to let others misinterpret your every word…

Good thing for me, no one else in the place speaks queer fluently.