Well I am officially still employed. It looks like they ended up laying off a little over 300 people company wide which is about 15%. It must have been a 15% across the board cut because that’s about what our department lost too. 15% doesn’t sound like that much but it was quite a shock around here since they have never laid off anyone in the 53 years that this place has been open. I would say that most people that get hired here stay here a long time unlike most jobs. Since I work at the front desk I can look at all the security badges that got turned in and I see a lot of familiar faces and I will get the termination email that lists everyone since I am on the front desk email list. The biggest surprise to me was that they let our manager go too which wasn’t really on my radar at all so now we are going to have a new manager for our department. The schedule got changed around some and now there’s only 3 guys covering the night shifts instead of 4. I actually came out of it with a pretty good schedule instead of the wacked out schedule I had before. Anyway it sucks that so many people lost their jobs and I hope everything works out for them.
I don’t have all that much going on right now. I’m in between classes until next week when I start the stupid Statistics class and I’m not up to much else except getting close to my marathon at the end of the month. I wish the race would get here already because it’s no fun at all to run 18-20 miles just for the hell of it. It’s a lot easier to do it when they give you a medal at the end and there’s people cheering and running with you. It still feels good to run about 5 or so but after that I don’t have the greatest motivation to continue. I much prefer the race over the training and I haven’t raced in about 3 months now so the training is wearing thin. Comon’ Spring get here already! Jason started working out again instead of just talking about it so at least I can have someone to occasionally work out with.
Ooh I almost forgot, there are preliminary plans for a Canadian fishing trip that coincides with me running the Manitoba Marathon towards the end of June. So far the plan is to drag the boat up there and fish for walleye somewhere west of Winnipeg, I can’t remember the lake now off the top of my head. We’ll split gas and hotel costs and stuff like that. I started the talk of the trip by wanting to go up there and do an “international” race, but I didn’t want to go by myself. I’m sure the other guys could care less about the race, they want to go fishing in Canada and going to the race gives them a reason to make their way in that direction. It works out for everyone! We will see of it’s all talk or if we can get our shit together in time to make it happen.
Congratulations! I’m glad you still have your job. And about your Canada trip, did you know that you have to have a passport now to go there?
Yep. I have a passport. Went across Europe, remember? There’s only one guy in the group who are planning on going who doesn’t have one yet and he’s going to get it.
Yeah, I remembered after I submitted the comment, but thought it wouldn’t be worth going back in and saying “oops sorry, I remember you already have one because you went to Europe”. I hear it takes longer now to get a passport than it used to, so your friend probably should apply ASAP. I don’t know because I don’t have a passport, I’ve never been to Europe. I only went to Mexico…which at the time didn’t require a passport…but it does now. OK, bye.
It doesn’t take any longer. The government has always been such a paranoid clusterfuck bureaucracy that it has always taken an eternity to get it. If you need it in a hurry and choose the expedited service then they get suspicious and delay your passport so they can find out why you need it so fast since that’s something a terrorist would do…
Well, maybe I should start working on getting one then…since maybe sometime in the future I might want to go to Canada…or back to Mexico…or maybe even Europe. Then again, maybe not.