08-13-2025
I was at work one day, it was like any other shift. As the evening progressed, I heard about a recent visit from our parent company's parent company executives. It did not go well, from what I'd heard. Apparently, the head executive was not even aware our company even existed until the day prior during an audit.
Later into the evening and well past sunset, I finally finished up a reel and sent it off to the production line. It was immediately taken by the forklift (which normally does not help since the carts have wheels). The first thing I noticed when I looked outside the workshop was that the forklift was taking the reel outside the plant. Then I noticed that the production line had no chassis in any of the earlier production zones. Instead, the shelves along the zones were being removed from the areas and taken away by the forklifts, which I now noticed were far greater in number than the plant even has. I turned around to look at the production bays and saw a similar sight of every single bay not having a chassis to be worked on, and the parts shelves being removed.
It didn't stop there. Other departments were being dismantled as I looked around. The only things remaining untouched were the heavy duty overhead hoists, which were each and all assisting in the dismantling process. I was baffled.
At this point, I decided to check the other production line to confirm the final area I couldn't see from my cell. But as I turned and started off towards my destination, the first shift supervisor caught me and said “well… Thanks for your work. It looks like the company is doing a rebranding of sorts, huh?”
He then explained that the visit from the executive went far worse than anyone but the plant manager realized. The extra forklift operators and their operators had only arrived 20 minutes prior and immediately began their dismantling with little to no explanation to even the supervisors, only stating they were on orders from the two parent companies, but mainly the grandparent company. The supervisor himself had only just been released from a long meeting with the plant manager and the other major supervisors and plant executives.
The supervisor went on to explain that the main reason for all this was that our company generated very little if any net profit. This was mostly because the plant is rather isolated and heavily relies on at least 7 outside companies to maintain its stock of parts (neither this nor any of the following is even true). These companies are owned by the grandparent company and since the plant opened, they have all long since relocated to areas much closer to each other on the other side of the country. Our plant was supposed to move long ago, but the project was up to now long abandoned and forgotten for some reason.
Finally, he said that after tonight, everyone except the plant executives/office workers would be out of work for at least a week, but that it would likely be indefinite unless one were invited to be hired into the new rebranded factory at the new location. Even he was unsure he'd be invited, or even interested in moving to the new location if he was.
Lastly, he told me to not start a new project and to just help my coworker finish up his, if I even wanted to stay for the rest of the night as most of the other workers had already left following their own debriefing from their supervisors. I decided to stay, but not in my area.
I wandered around for hours watching the dismantling take place. The forklift operators were now working on dismantling the overhead hoists for the main production line. I headed over to the other production line as I never got a proper look at it. There, I noticed a woman my age with shoulder length curly red hair leading the chassis of a parade float the company (never actually) made the previous year with a metal cow's head on the front. She was doing this alone and using the still intact hoist (it's controlled by a remote) to drag the chassis into place at the start of the line.
When I asked her why she was doing this, she excitedly said she thought it would be funny. I agreed and started helping her, and we even mounted a toilet onto the float’s main body. After that, we both left. On the walk to my car, I was wondering what it was going to do for work now. This had been the 5th major, and by far the largest, employer in the town in the past two years to shut down. I was wondering if maybe I should apply for an active duty billet. Then I woke up.