What are friends for?

Chris has been working as a pipe welder for a company out of Brewer for the last 2 years. He has worked hard, had excellent attendance, done everything that has been asked of him from welding, to construction of the warehouse, to working in boilers and even pushing a broom. He's never said no to the task he's been assigned. If given the choice he would be welding pipe. He enjoys it and he is very good at it. At his job site, most of the welds are x-rayed to make sure they are sound. There are about a dozen (out of 150ish) welders who have 100% x-ray rate. Chris is one of them and has more than 400 welds under his belt.

The job they've been working on is just about to come to an end. This was expected, no big surprise. So far the company hasn't come up with another big job to keep all of it's employees busy and has been laying people off since the beginning of the year. They started thinning the heard by letting go the people with poor attendance, low x-ray rates, bad attitudes. Slowly they've gotten down to a bare bones crew and need to thin even more in the next few weeks.

Chris has been concerned. He is, after all head of our household, the breed winner and sole supporter. The girls and I depend on him to take care of us financially. It's a big job no matter how frugal we try to be. Gas, heat, electricity, and food all cost way too much and unemployment pays way too little.

Most of the lay offs happen on Thursday afternoons. It's the last day of the week since they work four 10 hour days (or nights). The text messages were flying today. "I heard this..." and "Did you hear that..." Usually women are blamed for rumors but if you think that's true you've never met the bunch of guys Chris works with! The last message Chris got before he left was "You better bring your truck tonight.." so he could bring his tools home. Chris looked defeated. All that hard work felt like it was for nothing. When he left he said, "Well see you in a little while" expecting to be sent home right away. Just about the time Chris would be walking onto the job site, I got a texted message saying "Jerks busted out laughing the second they saw me. Here Monday morning."