The Real World

Since January there have been rounds of layoff's each month at the tool-shop where I work. Good machinists and fabricators are being shown the door; being thrown into a situation where nobody is hiring. They are talented, even gifted in their trade. Yet there is nothing out there. Some are in their mid-fifties, missing fingers from accidents on the lathe, with their children's college tuition bills yet to be paid. To be sure they were our company's bread and butter. Now they are treated like manure. And to pour salt into their wounds, after last month's layoff's and scheduling of furlough weeks our CEO told us that we are now poised to take on the future.

What a machine-like view! It's like saying to those who are gone, "too bad for you, but we'll be okay - so there!". No remorse for the fallen.

I guess being machine-like is how you become CEO. You can have it, thank you.

(Lord, save these people. They need to come to Christ.)

Newly made friends, one's I was trying to build bridges to in order to share the Gospel, are now gone. I feel sick to my stomach. May the Lord raise up other witnesses to go into their lives to share Christ with them.

Now they're telling us that there will be even more furlough weeks throughout the year. My wife, who is a benefits clerk in the human resources department, has now had two more furlough weeks added to the one we were told of in January. I'll be getting additional weeks too, if I survive the layoff's. This would be the third time I've been layed off in eleven years, having lost previous jobs when they left the state.

Makes for some interesting times ahead.

Lord, not my will, but thine be done.