Recently, one of my co-workers suffered a stroke and because of her other health problems she cannot come back to work. In fact, her doctors have said she’s lucky to be alive. While it’s sad to lose her (she’s a great lady), I’m happy they decided to hire a new person to fill her position. I fretted and bit my nails over who they would choose. We really need another person to do taxes, not just the bookkeeping work our former co-worker was doing. I wasn’t hopeful given management’s track record of late, but they surprised me by hiring… me.

She’s not exactly like me but close enough. She’s around 30, unmarried, has experience doing this kind of work, and most importantly, does individual taxes. That’s exactly what we need. I’m working on training her and I see a lot of myself there. She went to grad school and got the Masters and is still trying to decide if she wants to get the CPA. I decided against all that early on but we have a lot in common. She’s responsible, detail-oriented, hard-working, kind, and respectful. She’s struggled through her twenties, having jobs pulled out from under her. I’ve struggled on one job. Boy, have I struggled. We may not have the same experiences but we agree that she needs the training now. It’s only six weeks to tax season. She wants to know what she’s responsible for and how to do it and I’m trying to make that happen. Management has responded positively to my efforts and I see that trend continuing. I’ve proven over the last year and a half that I’m attempting to improve things for everyone, not just myself. And that seems to be appreciated.

A year ago we were in dire straits. I was sending up desperate prayers that these issues would get resolved, that someone would pay attention, that people would stop fighting me when I was trying to help them. It looks like those prayers have been answered. This time next year could be even better.

There are many things I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving but the biggest is this job. There have been a lot of days when it didn’t seem worth it and I wanted to just quit and go somewhere else. It has taken six long, hard-fought years but I finally feel like it’ll be okay. I’ve built a career here and I’ve earned respect. I was even able to clone myself. Now, that’s something to be thankful for.