secondhand suckitude

Being a public school teacher is not exactly like having a real job, or at least not like working for a business. Regardless of anything out of my control, I know I'll be paid until next August, and, given the tenure, for many Augusts after that, barring some cataclysm. I'm not immune to the coming Depression, of course, especially given the source of the rest of the household income, but my economic wariness has been a little abstract, a little theoretical. No more.

I have this friend in the steel business, see, a friend as close as a sister, and it turns out her December bonus is the news that her place of employment may not continue to exist in the way it most always has. It's news as logical as it is jarring. If fewer cars and appliances are being sold and fewer buildings are being built, naturally less steel is ordered, and consequently less steel is produced. Fewer workers are needed at every step along the way;that's the trickle-down reality. And wow, does it ever suck.

It may be that things will be fine, both for my friend and her work community, but it doesn't seem they'll ever be the same. Even I've been saying that for a while now, in a big picture kind of way. It's just that now I understand what I meant.