Bombshell

The other day, due to vehicular swap arounds, I got a ride home from work with my boss. There was a raft of issues discussed during the ride as there’s always plenty going on and plenty to talk about.

It wasn’t until we were about 2/3rds of the way home though that the bomb bay doors opened and this little gem fell from about 30,000 feet.

“We’re recruiting someone else to go to Sarnia for us.”

Yep, you read it correctly. It now seems that we will be in Fort Mac for the longer term. It wasn’t that getting us to stay here wasn’t expected. But the timing was surprising, as was the manner of delivery.

I’ve been bracing Caroline for sometime for the time when the company turned to us and said, “you know, we’d really like to have you stay on here and continue what you’re doing.”

I also expected at that point in time to be given a choice, that maybe there’d be some incentive offered to keep us in the middle of nowhere.

I certainly didn’t expect it to happen 7 weeks after we arrived here and I certainly not to have it dropped on me in that manner with a third person in the car. It kind of made it difficult to have a truly detailed conversation around the piece. So now I have to try and find another time to have that part of the conversation with him and point out just what it has meant.

I managed to start the conversation the following day as we had a breakfast meeting with our client, but I really didn’t get past the “ok, here’s what you’ve done to me, I didn’t get much sleep last night because my wife was in tears and awake thinking about the consequences of what it means to all of us. Oh and by the way, the kids were starting school this morning too, so we really needed this right now.”

I mean, for me personally, there’s pros and cons. It’s a great work opportunity. There will be more for me here than there would be in Sarnia. And after all, I go to work everyday and really only have to deal with the fact that we’re in Fort McMac on the weekends … and of course during the commute to work in a vast field of incompetence (two days ago it took me one and a half hours to travel 30kms because some d#&%wad had managed to have a crash on the bridge in town. (I missed the morning one because I was headed to a workshop rather than to site – otherwise it would have taken me that long to get in to work as well.) And let’s put the 1.5 hours in perspective. For about 15 of those 30kms I was actually able to travel at 100km/hour! But I digress … traffic part 2 is a whole other post.

Where was I? Oh yes, for me, the whole Fort Mac thing isn’t that much of a drama because I spend most of my time working. It’s only when I think about how much effort it is to leave the place (either financially or in terms of time commitment) that I start to cringe about this location.

For Caroline however, who has to suffer the trials of Fort Mac (like a half hour wait just to treat the kids to some maccas for the their first day of school) there is quite simply a host of reasons to want to go to Sarnia. And the fact that she’s had no say in the fact that we are now stuck here longer term simply isn’t fair and just (And I’m sure will be the focus of one of her near-future missives)

So the conversation must continue. I’ll keep you posted.