Ten years ago, in February 2016, my employer called an all-hands meeting at our plant in Albuquerque. Almost 300 of us gathered to be told that the plant would be closing and all work transferred to Connecticut. Devastating is one word for it.
I was offered a position in Connecticut, if I wanted it. My wife and I discussed the offer, and initially I said there was no way I was going to move. Soon, the reality of a sure thing in Connecticut won out over the probability of not finding another job in New Mexico. We uprooted our little family and trekked eastward.
For nine months I shuttled back and forth between CT and NM, two weeks in one location, two weeks in the other. The entire ordeal was hard on our family, but we did the best we could.
Every time I came back to New Mexico there would be fewer people in the building, as work was wound down and people let go. Office furniture, equipment, and other detritus from the 30ish years in Albuquerque was piled up for auction.
One day, in a particularly melancholy mood I wrote:
“If asked to name my favorite western, at the top of the list would be anything with John Wayne in it, followed closely by anything with Clint Eastwood. After that, things are move competitive, but in the mix for my ‘other’ favorite westerns would be “Silverado”, a 1985 Lawrence Kasdan film starring Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, and a very young Kevin Costner.
It’s a movie without many shades of gray, where the bad guys are really, really bad, and the good guys are very, very good. It’s also a source of great one-liners, like when Danny Glover levels his Henry rifle on a band of bad guys and deadpans, “I don’t wanna kill you, and you don’t wanna be dead.” Epic.
Rosanna Arquette portrays a young pioneer woman making the trek westward with her husband, who is killed early in the film in a confrontation with bandits. Shortly thereafter, there’s a scene where three of our heroes are seated around a campfire when Paden (Kevin Kline) joins them. When asked where he’s been, he sheepishly responds that he’s been checking in on the young widow, to which Kevin Costner exclaims, “Geez, Paden, her old man ain’t even cold yet!”
I was back in Albuquerque this past week, where we continue to try and wrap up operations and close down the plant. When I started in 2014 there were almost 300 people employed there, now there’s barely 50. The company has been slowly selling off the furniture, cubicle walls, and computer equipment, as employees depart and the staff dwindles. The remaining personnel have been consolidated in one area, making do with what’s left behind. We had to fight to keep them from selling the phone system out from underneath us, but for the most part, it’s business as unusual, and the job continues to get done. A testament to the extraordinary people that it’s my privilege to work with.
My internal clock was still on east coast time, so most mornings last week I was the first one in the building. The area that was once full of engineers and technicians is now empty, the furniture sent off to more profitable locations. Left behind are rows of filing cabinets, emptied of their contents, and a few broken chairs, all stacked up like refugees from the island of misfit office furniture, waiting on a new home. As I would enter the building each day, walking through the silence and the empty spaces, the scent of (my own) melancholy in the air, all I could think was, “Geez, we ain’t even cold yet.””
Within two years we were back in New Mexico as new opportunities arose. The only saving grace from our short exile was that my oldest daughter met her future husband in Connecticut.
One day while we were still in Connecticut, I was called into a meeting to discuss ‘lessons learned’ from the plant shutdown. While going through the documentation, I was surprised (well, maybe not so surprised) to learn that the shutdown was planned long before that fateful all-hands meeting in 2016. It was actually in the early planning stages before I went to work there. Meaning that I was recruited away from another company and offered a position at a location that corporate was already planning to shut down. And I wasn’t the only one. Diabolical is one word for it.
I share this just to state something that you should already know; the company you work for doesn’t care about you or your family. They might say they do, they might say that you’re like family, they might have slogans about how people are important. They don’t believe it, and neither should you.
We’re in a time of economic turmoil, geopolitical unrest, and internal political conflict. AI is projected to be a (devastatingly) disruptive factor in the economy, and in the labor market. If you’re not already, you should be thinking about what Plan B is. Because your employer and your government isn’t wasting any time thinking about you.
Perhaps this is overly pessimistic. I certainly hope so. But if I might share my own ‘lessons learned’ I would say that you need to hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. And remember that hope isn’t a strategy.
Finally, you need to be anchored. In all likelihood, it’s about to get stormy out there. Faith, trust and hope in God is indispensable. You’ll need that anchor when the waves get rough. I know I did.
P.A. Tennant – February, 2026
Soli Deo Gloria
——————–
Photo: P.A. Tennant
Copyright 2026 Paul A. Tennant
Substack: https://storyroad.substack.com/
Website: https://patennant.com/
P.A. Tennant 