stripped of my title

this morning before lab meeting (yes, i do attend lab meetings. take that, mr. mccracken, my 10th grade biology teacher!) my boss karen approached me with news on my promotion. i picture you, dear reader, asking, "but robert, weren't you offered that job a month and a half ago?" i just chuckle and reply, "obviously, dear reader, you haven't ever worked for johns hopkins." i'm convinced that human resources doesn't even own a computer--they still use those punchcard machines from the 1960's and prefer sending messages via pony express to email. so it was no big surprise that today, april 27 (also my sister's 21st birthday--happy birthday!), a month and eleven days after i was offered the position, i haven't even heard from human resources. they're busy over there, trying to figure out what's wrong with their mimeograph.

so karen tells me, "well, the reason you haven't heard anything from h.r. is that even though we told them that you're the one we wanted to hire, they didn't think that you were qualified for the position." they didn't think that i was qualified for the position! i've been found out! the solution, karen told me, was that i would maintain my current job title--secretary 3 (one of my biggest sources of shame at the moment is being a secretary with a masters' degree)--but that i would get the same raise i would've gotten with my new job title.

i sat in the meeting with karen, thinking to myself ok, that's fine. you can call me "jackie the dancing faerie clown" as long as you increase my pay. how, though, do i make it appear to karen that i'm in this for more than the money? i put on my concerned face and told her that the plan sounded fine to me.

so, the reluctant receptionist isn't, in fact, going to become the reluctant assistant research program coordinator. but i'll be getting paid like one.