Sometimes you have to make your own sunshine...

Ever had one of THOSE weeks? This past one has been a whopper.

My job is...well, it is what it is. As of today, I still have it! That's a plus. There were some MAJOR changes made this week. More than half of our locations across the US and it's territories were shut down. As you can imagine, some massive layoffs. In a meeting with our regional leadership this week, we were straight up told "we don't know" and "we should always have a Plan B".

Well that's reassuring. Apparently, if you make 6 figures you just automatically have a new job dropped in your lap if you get laid off. Please let me know how that works for the rest of us? Seriously...clearly the majority of us have a Plan B...it's called find another job. Easier said than done in this market don't you think? Right...so in addition to the the big shut down, there are more layoffs coming over the next fiscal year. Seriously? So in addition to having a Plan B you want me to come to work and be productive and not feel like I have to look over my shoulder for the next 365 days? Sure...no sweat. It's not like I have bills to pay, 2 mortgages and some high priced repairs to vehicles and houses pending. No problem. See you Monday morning. 

On the plus side, at least with this round of layoffs they actually cut a lot of highly paid folks who were not at all necessary. Of course I feel bad that they're out of work, but at the same time, they were part of the reason the company was being bled dry. Trust me, the people I spend my days in the cube farm with are NOT taking up a large percentage of the money the company is paying out. 

I guess the simple Plan B would be start looking for a new job now. Not so simple. I have 5 weeks of paid time off, plus holidays, and several weeks of banked sick time because i've been at this job for 10 years (just last month actually). So do I get a new job, have no time off to enjoy Robin's Nest and hope that I find one with decent benefits? Thanks to Obama many companies are doing anything and everything to decrease benefits. Why have them, we have Obamacare! How about one of Central Florida's large employers - Darden. The fine folks that brought us Olive Garden and Red Lobster (among others)? They are talking about dropping employees to part time because of the proposed mandatory "paid sick time" on the table for Florida. Of course i'm sure that would only be for the worker bees (chefs, servers, etc) and not corporate workers. I'm sure they would still get all the bells and whistles. They already have medical folks on staff at the office. 

It's frustrating. It's depressing. It blows. 

That said, Mr. Paisley and I have been doing some number crunching and it would be tight, but we could swing it on his income alone. Robin's Nest would, of course, be priority 1. Finish the remaining fixes, move out our personal belongings and put it on a rental program to get some income flowing. I would have plenty of time in my day to actually get some stuff done at the house. Like my office. It's still a disaster. Redoing it was my Christmas Gift from Mr. P last year. I haven't purchased anything. Still at my old desk. Still piles of paper to go thru. Ugly metal file cabinet - still here. With nothing else pressing, I think I could have the office cleaned, sorted, shredded, filed in two weeks. Maybe less, i'm not sure how long it would actually take. I could get back on track with C25K. I could have that yard sale that has been pending since last Spring. I could redo the garden bed and have it read for the spring. I could sort and repack all those holiday decorations that I wanted to do after Christmas last year - get rid of stuff, make sure it's all properly labeled and easy to find. Dreams of being organized...

Alas, i'm still employed (Thank God), so baby steps on the organization and the office. I got a portable, wifi enabled scanner the other day to work on getting the paperwork under control. I have an all-in-one printer/scanner, but it refuses to play nice with this stupid iMac (3 years and I still hate it!). I bought a new one because the old one (the printer/scanner) wouldn't work with the iMac (should have, but wouldn't). So bought one that had the Apple drivers and it worked great for a few weeks and now no matter what I do, it sees the scanner part, but won't actually scan (works fine on my HP laptop, so it's not the printer).  On that note, i'm going to scan some stuff.

More soon - it's a beautiful day here in Central Florida - it's actually fall like (well Florida Fall) and i'm going to enjoy it.