God does answer prayer

On Monday my manager was not at work. Over the weekend her ex-father-in-law had died. Though she is no longer married to her (obviously) ex-husband, she was still close to his family, so this was a bit of bad news. The funeral was on Monday, which explained her absence. She had, however, come in early in the morning to finish up a couple of things, and while she was there, or so I was told, she had been in a bit of a crabby mood (which is understandable). This is not the first time she has been somewhat grouchy, and when she is it can be difficult at the store. She is a very demanding lady (which is not usually a bad thing).
Monday was a weird day - it was unusually busy, especially given the weather conditions (cool and cloudy, and then rainy), and none of us there were completely into the day. It was like we were all in neutral, revving our engines but not getting anywhere. Some time after noon, I had a guy come in and order some five gallon pails of paint and two single gallons. We were busy, I was a bit distracted, I didn't write anything down, and he left after ordering it, planning on returning for it in a while. I did the two single gallon pails of paint and then I did the five gallon pails. As I was finishing them and putting them at the front to be picked up, it suddenly occurred to me that I had done both five gallon pails of paint completely wrong. I was supposed to put ten drops of black into them so that they would be just slightly off white. Instead, I put ten ounces of black in them. For the record, an ounce is made up of 48 drops (at least it does for our purposes). I then had to make another five gallon pail of paint with the correct amount and the five gallon pails were a write-off, which looks bad for me and hurts the store's bottom line. Later, I mis-tinted another single gallon pail. It was a great day (where's the sarcasm font? I need a sarcasm font!)
On Tuesday, I was worried about going to work. I wasn't sure if things would be okay or if I would get home for the day (and every day after as well). I was quite certain that Tuesday was going to be worse than Monday, and I really did not want to go to work. As I drove there I was getting more and more worried. Finally I prayed a serious prayer, asking God to grant me mercy. I was willing to accept the consequences of what I did, but I was praying that the consequences would not include being fired.
I get to work and, to my surprise, everyone is in a pretty good mood, even my manager. I decide to not mention the five gallon pails, at least not for a while. As the day goes, things are great. It was really slow (which is not great), but there was no frustrations or anger and tension or anything. Finally I am pulled into the office for a chat. I close the door and sit down, wondering what my punishment would be, wondering just how close I was to the end. She sits down, looks at me and very seriously offers to put me on full time, which includes benefits and vacation time, and even a possible raise. My brain rubbed its eyes and looked around nervously, wondering if my ears were playing a trick on it. For their part, my ears just shrugged and told my brain that they didn't make up the news, they merely reported it, which is not always true, but in this case they were right. She said that she was pleased with my effort and had contacted our district manager to tell him of her recommendation, and that he had agreed. I guess he was a little surprised because my manager is so demanding - for her to praise an employee so highly is somewhat unusual.
Wednesday was a normal day, nothing to report.
Today, our district manager came in and talked to me, basically repeating everything I had already been told. But him saying so makes it official, so that was cool. I decided to celebrate by not closing the lid on a gallon of paint and then putting it in the shaker. And when I say paint, I mean oil stain, so it was lots of fun to clean up (seriously, what is the most sarcastic font out there?). Apparently I cannot be told good news...
The full time/benefits/etc thing won't actually kick in until January or February as the budget for this year is frozen and nothing like this can be added to it. But when they do the budget for next year, I will be written in so it will be set in stone. Soft stone, as anything can be changed, but stone nonetheless. I don't know if I've ever been part of a budget like that before. It's pretty cool.
Anyhoo, that's been my week. I updated Thunderfunk again, in case you were wondering.