In one second everything can change...

I get a phone call on my office line from my boss saying meeting in thirty minutes, my office...So of course for the next 30 minutes I am freaking out wondering what the hell this meeting is about.

Meeting time: My boss asks me how the holidays were and just making small talk while we wait for the HR person to meet up with us for the meeting too. HR walks in and says sorry I got a conference call we are gonna have to reschedule...And I was like WHOA, wait a second somebody tell me what this is about so I don't spend the rest of the day stressing out. So she shuts the door and in a nutshell pretty much tells me they are laying off people in the hospital because census (amount of patients int he hospital) has been too low. (it has been very low for about 7 months now!)They need to lay off about 7 people. I run the radiology department, I am the only person in that department...no me...no xrays. So they said they want to try and keep me and my job but that means changes. Either I go down to part time or I pick up another department.

They told me they are probably going to lay off the women that runs central supply (orders everything the hospital needs) and I would run that department too. The women in central supply just had a baby a couple months ago who probably isn't even 6 months old right now and I think she is a single mom:( At this part I am trying very hard not to cry at the thought of losing my job and being stuck with all these bills that we would in no way be able to pay without my income. So I told them I can't go down to part time and I would obviously do whatever it took to keep my job (and income!). So it looks like soon I will be running the radiology department and the central supply department all by my freaking self with no raise for doing it either. (I also am head of the Employee Activity Committee here at the hospital) Plus don't forget I also have a part time job working at the mall. Just the thought of it stresses me out, especially since I know doing all that work should result in a pay increase but with layoffs hapening I know it wont. I told them let me know when everything is going down because I will have to train more to run that department (I ran part of it when the central supply girl was out on maternity leave).

So I get back to my department and called my husband. I started with "You need to look for another job that pays better" lol and he was like yeah, okay. (This is nothing new, he already knows he needs to eventually find a better job but we were in no hurry because we were hoping at his one year mark in June they would give him a raise.) I couldn't even keep from crying tellling him everything. He is going to call our friend who lives in Austin and see if they are hiring at his job just in case. He makes a ton of money at that job and would be able to pay all the bills on that income alone. But, that is in Austin....we live in Houston. 3-4 hour difference. So that would be DH staying in Austin during the week and then home for the weekends. I guess If we had to do that it would work but holy hell would it suck.

So as of right now I am just waiting to see what happens. I was told that if I agree to run both departments then it would probably be for 6-7 months. I have a feeling that if census doesn't pick up then they may want to do away with my job too. Today sucks.