My Corner

i don't know why i am having this 2nd part since i have told this story way too many times already. but here goes...

WHAT HAPPENED LAST THURSDAY AT NOON?

that day was so wet and cold. 10oC in june? not a good sign. i arrived at the office 10 minutes before 12. never had i seen the office with so many people and there were more people coming in.

i tried to find out from the others if they had heard anything in the morning. no one knew anything except they found out that all three import service centers (ISCs) across canada (one in toronto, another one in quebec) were having the meeting at exactly pacific time 12pm (gosh, that's crazy!!). we felt like kids waiting for our report cards...

the clock finally ticked to 12. mr littlewood came down, ross walked out from his office. along with.... union rep and human resources?? they all had grim faces. uh-oh... bad news. far worse than all the scenerios we came up with. worse than what we could imagine.

the government had always wanted to improve food importation service to ensure food safety. they had the idea of having a centralized import center operating 24 hours, 7 days a week instead of 3 ISCs in two time zones, 20 hrs, 7 days a week. long story short, steven harper finally decided to look into this matter last fiscal year and he decided that closing down the 3 ISCs and having 1 national import service center (NISC) would be the best for canada (i have to agree to mr. harper)

the location for the future NISC is still unknown. but it has been confirmed that it will NOT be in the western area. they had an idea where to put it...probably in ottawa but it is more of a business matter... we DO know one thing - the NISC will officially start its operation on April 01, 2009.

silence.

so what does that mean? it means we are saying goodbye. it means 65 government employees across canada are greatly affected. it means time to look for a new career path. it means crap.

it was all fuzzy after. people all asking questions at the same time... i just stood there trying to absorb the information.

i love this place. i love this job. although i do bitch and complain about the crazy poeple at work from time to time, there are also a lot of cool people that i enjoy working with.

that sucks. somebody tell me what i should do.

slept soundly for two nights. it seemed that the news didn't affect me that much.

done digesting. ready to talk about it.

it all started on wednesday. ross, my manager asked me if i could come in an hour earlier tomorrow because we are going to have a meeting at 12 noon and my shift doesn't start until 1pm. everybody turned to look at me because apparently no one knew about a meeting. ross then told everybody else there is going to be a meeting tomorrow at noon. he even called in the people who are on their day off to come in for the meeting. so EVERYONE is going to be there except for the people away on vacation.

after ross left, we all speculate as to what is going to happen tomorrow. we had all come to a conclusion that it must be huge since the regional director himself is coming downstairs to address the news(and he doesn't come down a lot). we had a lot of theories...

theory 1: we are all moving back to airport. rumours had it that the lease of our office is due...(everyone thought this is a sucky idea since they came from the airport. i actually kinda like this idea sice i never had that apportunity to work at the airport and inspect travellers... sounds like a cool job)

theory 2: regional director is giving us up. they recently appointed someone in ottawa in charge of importation. so maybe we no longer report to the regional director but to that dude in ottawa? (this doesn't really affect us but that would explain why mr. paul littlewood-the regional director (RD) had to come down himself in person. but this doesn't require everybody to come in to do overtime when this can easily be done in an email...)

theory 3: there are changes in our work schedule and pay and stuff. they had a idea about operating 24 hours and so there will be graveyard shift... (aw man, that would suck... i really want to stay away from graveyard, even if it is higher pay. but this would actually be a UNION matter, the RD wouldn't care less.)

theories went on and on... some were jokes and were actually quite funny. so we went home that night with these ideas in our heads...
WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN ON THURSDAY AT 12 NOON?

...............................to be continued.................................

well, this sucks.
it's been a while since i have something sucky to blog about. but this is too huge. i am still in the process of digesting. just when i thought things are finally getting in shape and BOOM... things fall apart. this is like going back 1 yr ago.
damn it.
i'll blog more about this later when i'm done processing the news.