You Win Some & You Lose Some:

Hello Blog! It's been a hell of a long time, I know.

I could have blogged about when we moved to the 5-Cities. It's fan-freak'n-tastic, where we live. Out in the country (but apparently *too country* because we can't get mainstream renters insurance, due to CA wildfires & subsequent mudslides) - the cats & dog love it, we love it. Sure, there are down-sides like random gunfire (Seriously. What the HELL, people!) and Diablo Nuclear Power Plant sirens scaring our pants right off, but like I said - you win some and you lose some and this place lands squarely in the Win column.

But before that, I could have blogged about moving from the sweetest home I probably ever lived in, given the circumstances at the time. We had moved from the Central Valley, after losing our home to foreclosure. I hated that area so very much that I never tried fighting to keep our residence. No really. Hated. It. As we were losing it, The Mike lucked into finding us a rental back on the Central Coast (my hometown and where we met originally). Initially, I was reluctant but Hubs kept on and on about what a great place this new home was. And it was. That great. For crying out loud, it's a house at the San Luis Country Club. We were over the proverbial moon and we loved it dearly - rent was affordable (remember, both of us were on Unemployment at the time), it was freshly revamped, yet luckily the owner is a fellow bass fisherman and Hubs had an "in". It's that place I blogged (and flickr'd) about several times. Loveloveloved it. Unfortunately, the SLO utilities drove us out.

No really. The rent we pay at this place is $200 more a month, but we save over $500 a month on the costs of gas/electric/trash/water versus SLO.

Thus, the opportunity arose to move here to "the sticks", and we jumped. Jumped high & jumped hard.

It may be smaller in size than our house in the Valley and our place in SLO, but I love it to bits.

Right after we moved here, The Mike got a bona-fide job with a bona-fide plumbing company! Probably should have blogged about that too :chagrin:

His work is hard physical labor. Damn hard. More-so because he'd gotten hired to do commercial plumbing. Ever look at the pipes running through your house? Commercial pipes are easily 3 times larger in diameter and 6 times heavier. Cast iron. It's not a job for the physically or mentally weak. You have to wake up every morning knowing that your day will be nothing but hard physical labor.

He did that, every night before work and every morning before work. Running through his mind the upcoming day's activities. Lugging pipe onto the work truck, being on his knees on concrete while drilling, manhandling cast iron tubes while balancing on a ladder 8 feet (or more) up. Outside of that physical work, while in and of itself is enough to tax a person, he worried about his placing in the company hierarchy. He's the "new guy". Times are slow and times are tough for businesses and business owners - in all venues, but more so in "New Construction". Banks are not giving loans to builders, some local builders have burned local banks and businesses (Hi Mr. Gearhart, Mr. Scum.) and across the board businesses are playing everything close to their vests.

I get that. I've worked in the professional world for over half my life. I've done the taxes, given business advice when asked, had to fire people, hire people, let people go through no fault of their own - fielded audits, Labor Board disputes. I've had employer issues as egregious as employee issues. You name it.

For The Mike today? Laid off. Told work is slow. It is! Work IS slow. The thing that makes me saddest the most? He worked his ass off. Never called in sick, always followed his supervisor's instruction, and never complained about his working environment to anyone he worked with. Ever. Things like coworkers smoking cigarettes in the company vehicle (he doesn't smoke cigarettes but had to breath that air while commuting over an hour each way), never complaining about his coworkers smoking pot on their breaks (Why yes, thank you for asking, power tools and heavy equipment are used on the job frequently!), was ready and willing for any changes in work schedule (which happened regularly), accomplished his 90 day probationary period and breathed a sigh of relief.

Here are our questions though:

1) Why doesn't Knect's Plumbing & Air drug test? If they did, their list of banned employees (from failed drug tests) could be the prime start to culling their workforce without any harm to the good employees, new or not.

2) Following #1,Why not ban any employee that goes to ANY work site, let alone the Cal Poly campus, and leaves a crack pipe & pornography in plain view inside the company work vehicle (double parked for double the Stupid)?.

3) Why lay off an employee that has been nothing but positive for your company - in his work ethic and his appreciation of employment? Someone that can pass a drug test on the spot and endured hard physical labor for the privilege of being employed by a business he believed in.

Chris Knect? Today you made a choice, and with your choice you lost a real asset to your company. Too bad you never knew him.