Hope Springs (a.k.a. "Those poor children. Those poor, poor children.")

Eternal Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S made an enormous announcement last week: She's found a new job!

My heart leapt at the news! Could it be? Could it truly be? Were we about to have our dreams realized? I nearly danced with joy. Finally, finally, we were getting rid of the last remaining greenhorn!

Then Ms. S dashed my hopes by clarifying that her new employment would allow her to finally leave her much-hated fast-food job and concentrate entirely on her new gig and the "liberry" gig.

And what, I hear you askin', has some poor, unfortunate bastard, employer agreed to pay her money to do for them?

Teach.

No, you heard me right. They've hired her as a teacher of first-graders at an area private-school.

As she told me that news, I came to within a quarter inch of blurting out "Holy shit!" right in her face. Instead, I just grinned and congratulated her and inwardly prayed that the poor tykes survived.

Her plan now is to work her teaching job from 8 to 3, then roll on over here and finish out the day with us. I sure hope things don't work out like that, though. If Ms. S thinks fast food is hard, wait `til she gets 10 six-year-olds hopped up on sugar running around her for hours at a stretch. She'll be so tired afterward that her previous levels of "liberry" laziness will seem pale by comparison to what she pulls when she rolls on over to do an afternoon shift.

Though I've not spoken with her about it, I suspect our boss Mrs. A knows this as well. I also suspect she sees the golden opportunity to finally get rid of Ms. S without resorting to a firin'. Word on the street is that she's told Ms. S that any other job she takes will need to find a way to work around our schedule, or things just won't work out on this end.

That may sound like good news, but I somehow don't see this being enough to dislodge her. Instead, she'll probably hang on as a weekend warrior with an occasional weekday afternoon shift.