Report From the Frontlines of the Economic Collapse

[Elspode]

I'm as lower middle class as lower middle class gets to be. I own two houses...that is to say, the mortgage companies own them and let me do with them mostly as I will. I have worked pretty much constantly since age 15 (I am now 52 years old, and have put my 401k deductions on pause), with a couple of periods of unemployment, the longest of which was technically 6 months, although my Kansas unemployment payments and the cash money I was able to earn during that time largely ameliorated the trauma.

My stock in trade is construction. I and my high school diploma have managed to eek out a living as a long haired, iconoclastic Pagan office manager for the past 18.5 years, grinding out endless miles of paperwork, dealing with the complete scum providers/installers of roofing, guttering, insulation and fireplace trades, and verbally massaging various sorts of customers - elderly, dottering and near deaf; dissatisfied and pissed; privileged and arrogant, self important and self depricating; and everything else in between. I am fucking *good* at what I do...as good as good gets in this industry, I'll wager.

I'm here to report to you, my beloved and respected fellow Dwellars, that things on the front line of construction are grim indeed. When I hired on at my current place of employment, the company was grossing $800,000.00 a month. There was an office staff of five - receptionist, AR clerk, work order/payroll processor, office manager (me) and Safety Director. We had nearly sixty field personnel, three department supervisors, and a Branch Manager.

That was five years ago last week. Today, as I type this, our November gross sales were $330,000.00, down from $435k in October. December looks as though we might dry up and blow away.

Yesterday, after taking a brief moment to review the previous month's disaster, my boss sent out an email to the branch...layoffs would occur, pay would be cut, shit was gonna suck.

I'm one of the lucky ones. He's flat out told me that he and I would be the last ones out the door when our gigantic corporate parent closes the place, if they do. He can't get by without me. That might possibly be due in part to the fact that he rarely works more than five hours a day. But, according to him the place cannot possibly function without me there.

That's why I am only taking a pay cut of $1,200.00 per annum instead of the 7 to 10 percent that everyone else has to shoulder. That's why I get to continue working five days a week instead of the four that he's now reduced my only remaining staffer to...leaving me answering phones, writing work orders, handling scheduling, processing AP and AR, etc, etc on my own every Friday from now on...because Patty now gets a 32 hour schedule, effectively giving her a 20% pay cut. And she's *happy* that's all the worse it is for her. Happy.

My place of employment is imploding with all the haste and grace of a popped balloon. We are primarily based on insulation of new residential construction...and there isn't any. Although we have seen an incredible upturn in retro insulation and gutter work (people who want us to upgrade their existing homes' envelopes), it is scarcely enough to maintain the number of employees, trucks and physical plant that drag on our overhead.

There's more...lots more...crap that is relevant to my current woeful state of affairs. Corporate BS that only grows and gnaws away at time and morale is a major component. Corporate has been contracting their staff throughout all of this, and shoving their former duties back into the branches. But mostly, what I'm feeling right now is a sense of hopelessness. I've done what I've done for the better part of two decades now. I'm *very* good at it. I know how to do everything that modern construction needs to have done to make the paperwork come out okay and allow the money to change hands. Never in the past 18 years has anyone ever said anything about my work but that it was indispensible...

...and yet I sit here typing this, realizing that my pay has just been cut to what it was *eight years ago*. In that time, inflation has eroded the purchasing power of $40k/year by some 20%+.

Monday, my boss actually sat me down and told me that I was lucky to have a job at all.

Why doesn't this make me happy?