It Can't Happen here

So, had one of those "uh oh" realizations this evening.

You may have heard, oil supplies are up a lot.

So, oil prices are down a lot.  So, people that process and sell oil & such are not making as much money.

As it happens, my dayjob is with a company that sells services to companies that sell energy.  I've been with them five years, as of a couple of days ago.  And the bosses are talking about efficiency and reorganization and whatnot.

Funny thing, before I started there I spent about six years working for another company, a multi-state phone center company like this one.  They got bought by a large southern company, like this one.

The tail end of that period was the start of that big economic slowdown we all remember.  Some said recession, some said depression.  Financial hard times.

The large southern company decided if they were going to trim, they'd protect their own job security by trimming as far from headquarters as possible.  And northern Minnesota and Wisconsin was as far from headquarters as possible.

So they closed the office where I worked, and I ended up a displaced worker for two years.  A Wisconsin state program offered to pay for me to go to vocational school to get into a different field.  And I'd always wanted to be on the radio...

Now during that period I did most of the episodes of most of my podcasts.  I also graduated from Media Studies & Production at Lake Superior College, and having a ridiculous amount of podcasting experience helped a lot with that.

When I got out of school, I couldn't get that broadcast job I'd hoped for and gone to school to qualify for, but I came across this temp assignment, indirectly working for MPR, with my current company.  I took it, temporarily.  I did well enough that they asked me to stay permanently. 

That almost always happens when I take temp jobs.  I'm lousy at applying for jobs, and lousy at interviewing -- Asperger syndrome, remember?  But give me to chance to do the work, I got Mad Skillz as the kids used to say.

Pretty early on, I noted the previously mentioned similarities to that earlier job, and mentioned them to the folks who'd convinced me to stay.  "But this is completely different!  That won't happen here..."

 All of those folks that hired me are gone now.

Hm.

Better check back in with the temp agencies.