Family Life

After almost six months in the trailer I’m back inside. Personally I’m overjoyed. I’d dreaded the move out to the trailer back in the spring, and while not all my fears came true the experience was not pleasant. The trailer now stands empty waiting for a truck to take it away. I’m back in the office with a cubicle that gives me a degree of privacy, shielding me from the outside world and satisfying my hermit nature. As a bonus, after umpteen years of slaving away under artificial lights I have a big, beautiful window that lets in the afternoon sun and looks out over something more interesting than a warehouse. OK, so we’re in an industrial zone. Can’t expect rolling meadows, thick forests, soaring mountains and glistening waterfalls. But boy, do I love my window! I’m told by my cubicle neighbours that this wall is poorly insulated and that it’ll get pretty chilly during the winter. But I can bring my space heater and my sweater and I’ll still have the sun coming through my window. The outlook is bright.

The circumstances surrounding my move back into the light are somewhat unfortunate. One of our customers put their project on hold. They phoned up one morning to say that their customer had halted the program, and there was a possibility they might not need the machine after all. This was a big project that was a huge rush, that made the company incredibly busy, that had required hiring scores of new people, that had been the reason for moving out to the trailer in the first place.

Overnight we went from boom to bust, from a hive of activity to a ghost town. We laid off most of the new people and the remaining staff were casting around trying to find something to do. A job that normally needed one person would have five clustered around. An uneasy atmosphere predominated.

There are other projects in the pipeline, so we’ll be back to busy–eventually. And the project that got put on hold will be re-evaluated in February. Maybe we’ll get to complete it. Maybe not. Either way we’ll get paid for the work done so far. But if the project is canceled outright then our customer will become the proud owner of a very expensive pile of non-functioning junk. We’ll even ship it to them. But that’s bad business for them and for us. Who wants to have their name associated with such a fiasco?

Thus, my move is a mixed blessing. Nevertheless, today I’ll enjoy the sunlight. Tomorrow will have troubles of its own.

Photo note: My desk is actually made of straight lines. The photo is a composite spanning a 180-degree field of view. There’s no way to map that onto a flat surface without some distortion, hence the warped edges.

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