Ensuring sticky posts are retrieved first (without using two queries)?

Question

I need to maintain pagination for use with infinite scroll.

Is there no way to tell query_posts to retrieve sticky posts first?

It seems to be default behaviour on a standard wordpress blog on the home page, but becomes a bit awkward on a custom template for a page from what I can tell.

Thank you.

Edited to show current query:

query_posts( array( 
    'post_type' => array('post', 'careers-post'),
    'paged' => $paged,
    'posts_per_page' => 6,
    'category__in' => $page_categories,
    'ignore_sticky_posts' => 0
) );

Edit 2: Seems like "category__in" has a conflict with sticky posts dating back a long time: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/category_in-ampamp-sticky

Just to confirm, removing "category__in" does indeed let sticky posts bubble to the top as expected, but obviously doesn't solve the problem.