At the tail end of a massive maintenance shutdown (16 hr days for everyone, for 2 weeks) the mill leadership started a site-wide meeting with pictures and stories of their recent trip to Japan. How they went golfing, the great meals they had, their trip to the mountain, etc. They finally wrapped that up and proceeded to tell us that cost of living raises were going to be small that year due to them being “unsure about next year’s profit margins”.

There was a pretty steady wave of resignation letters for the 6 months following that meeting.

Finally, success.

We went to a county show, they asked veterans to stand, no one did. Our child even nudged us to be recognized. _We met in the military and live in red country, very rural. We stayed sitting.

We don’t have the right to ask children to do this any more.