March 5, 2016
This has been an actual weird week for me. We found out that after our parent company has said we didn’t make enough profit(even though we increased profits over last year) to get a quarterly bonus….that they are in talks with U.T. to try and buy them. That would probably be great news for the company to grow….but that is the company that sent all the Carrier Heating and Cooling jobs to Mexico…..so that not amazing news to workers on the shop floor.
I assume they are trying to trim labor costs even more because they actually cut both buildings to 32 hours this week. And that is only surprising because outside of a holiday week, I have never worked less than 40 hours there…..ever. It seems management pulled millions of dollars of jobs up in the last few months of last year to make the stock numbers better but in doing so, they left the future short. When some people get a bonus off of that performance….I’m sure they were not concerned with that maneuver but I have a lot of coworkers who have do not plan their finances out as well as I do, so even when working over 40 hours a week they are living “check to check”.
My father taught me when I was very young, the principles of spending. You can spend “above your means” to try to “keep up with the Jones’s”. You can spend “at your means” and live check to check but have the nicest items that you can buy(but if you lost that weekly check….you may have to purge very rapidly or scramble for a new direction). Or you can live “below your means”. That last style allowed me to work for one year doing construction and saved enough back that almost the entire next years worth of rent was paid for. That type of financial security allows a person to make decisions where all needs are met and some luxury items are purchased but that person has less stress and more happiness knowing that they could lose their job that day and still have their bills paid beyond the next check. That precious time will allow the person to find the next course of action. So, as I have said before……”GOD will provide a way for me to provide for my family.”
Coworkers were moaning around at work all week about the 32 hour work week. For me…..I work 50s almost every non holiday week, so I looked at it as a week of relaxation AND since I knew ahead of time I was off Friday, I talked wifey into taking the day off. That allowed us to have “DATE DAY”.
What is “date day” you ask? Well, it consisted of the wife waking up to find a vase full of flowers on the kitchen table with a card in front of it. Once she got the children off to school and I tried to sleep a little longer(since I would be on a short nap)…..I got up and got ready. Then we headed out for Lunch at a restaurant. Afterwards we went over to the movie theater to watch “Deadpool”. Now I will take a break on the description to point out the only weird thing about the movie…..this was during school hours but some teenage looking boy with a backpack came in and sat at the end of a row. I have always been aware of my surroundings….but since I was carrying my defense with me….I was not too nervous. Since you asked in this weeks questions if I would walk alone in Muncie & in Indianapolis…..I thought Id point out I was more concerned for a little while in the theater than I would have been walking around at night time. Nothing happened but the way I was raised….I was aware of the situation not appearing normal.
So….back to DATE DAY…..after the movie, we went to my mother in laws work(which is an old employer of mine) to drop off a gift my wife had gotten for her mother. While they were hanging out I went down the hall and chatted with my old supervisor and the top guy in the building. It was nice to catch up and hear how things were going there and improvements they had made, etc. I don’t miss “working in a thermos”. That place is a non insulated metal building(in the manufacturing shop area I worked), so the winters would be cold enough that the machines would not work(and they would then bring in torpedo heaters to thaw out the machines….not to warm up the workers) and the summers would be fine for the first few hours…..then the heat that came through the roof/windows/walls would then begin to radiate from the steel beams all around us. Not fun times, BUT the coworkers made it all manageable. After that trip we went to pick up our daughter. She didn’t know I was off work so she was pretty surprised to see me there to pick her up(I am always at work so I am not the person who has ever picked her up at the school before). The teacher mentioned that the smile on her face is bigger than she had seen in months. So, that was a nice compliment. After that we ran some errands together then got some pizza to eat at home(one of daughters favorites). We watched some movies and hung out. My daughter treated it like it was a normal weekend….she hugged me and wanted to sit next to me until she had to go back to school on Monday. Those are the things that make me having a job easy, yet sooooooo difficult to do. I truly miss my family as much as my daughter SHOWS ME that she misses me every weekend.
Saturday was a more relaxed day. Did some house cleaning. Put together chairs for a new kitchen table that I had bought the wife last week. And had a couple friends come over. We watched the UFC under-card and just caught up on lost time. We plan on doing some camping and shooting this spring/summer with them.
So, in reflection……I am so very blessed to have the things I have in my life. I fail to pray every night but when I do….I try to start off by thanking GOD ALMIGHTY for the blessings that I DO HAVE in my life. It is hard work to achieve some of the goals that some people have accomplished in this world…..but if you put GOD first and learn how to live properly…..you will have a more relaxed, less stressful, and happier life.
Good luck in your current project and future life plans
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