[Saturday’s run: 5 miles; today: 3.4 miles]
With some mild trepidation I start on my journey tomorrow. All flights out of our regional airport go through Atlanta. And outbound flying usually goes pretty smoothly.
It’s the coming back that tends to go wrong. Last fall I was coming back from Denver and we were delayed coming into Atlanta. I missed my connection. And there were people stacked up for the last flight of the day. Eventually I got them to send me to Birmingham and from there I drove home. I have had the return trip go amiss at least three times that I can think of off the top of my head. The most tragic was the time we were late leaving Atlanta, arrived over GTR… but we didn’t land, we turned around and went back to Atlanta. They made some sort of announcement that they couldn’t raise anybody on the radio to turn on the lights, or something like that. It was sad.
But, never fear! I don’t attempt the return until Thursday.
I’m afraid I was a bit querulous toward my boss last week.
We don’t usually go to trade shows. Last year they let us go to one each. I went in April and co-worker went in October. This year he was going to do the spring event and I the fall. But his spring pre-travel expense form was denied in an email.
It wasn’t the boss’s fault. The powers-that-be decided that the money previously approved in the budget for travel/training was not to be spent pending an examination of when the project is shutting down. Which to me says they have not yet given any consideration to what happens to the employees (one being me) when the end comes. Both of us employees could stand to have the networking and the little bit of training update that an industry convention would supply.
A few months ago I spoke to my father-in-law about his experience in the shutdown and lights-off of a manufacturing plant he worked for. His experience was that they offered selected people some remuneration for sticking around and getting things sewed up.
Not only is that not happening in my case, there really isn’t any one who has the authority to make such an offer.