Today, the number stands at around 25,000.
25,000 people have walked out the doors. People carrying cardboard boxes packed with family photos and souvenir mugs and a training certificate or two. People walking out with their lunch boxes and steel-toed boots and safety glasses.
Good people. People who did nothing wrong, other than finding themselves in the wrong row on somebody's "layoff" spreadsheet.
Okay, so it has to happen. Nobody's buying our stuff. Everything's dried up. But why so many, why so fast, why does it keep coming and coming like waves of a tsunami?
And when will they get to our names on the spreadsheet?
We stand and we watch them leave, with nothing to say. The void is palpable. The cloud settles like a nuclear winter in the emptying cubicles and parking lots and factories. We turn and go back to work.
So, reading this is making me feel weepy. I am also one left behind but feeling like I don't deserve to be (in comparison to those I know walking out the door who have had yellow blood coursing through THEIR veins for decades). All I can do is work harder and smarter so others can come back and soon. - C.W. at LC2188
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