Thursday, October 2, 2008

Heavy Heart

Hi Friends. I have a heavy heart this evening. I drove to Scrapbook Garden just as I do every Thursday night to work my little shift. When I arrived at the store there was a strange feeling in the air. I knew there was a meeting but I didn't know that I was to be included in that meeting, I thought it would be a meeting for the managers. There were several customers in the store and one of the owners walked up to the customer closest to me and asked her to leave, here is a gift certificate for the inconvenience just take all of the stuff in your basket we are closing the store for a meeting. She didn't understand, he repeated himself and told her to go ahead and take the things in her basket, that she didn't have to pay for them they were closing the store. I found this very odd. The rest of us kept looking at each other in disbelief of what just occurred. We were then all asked to go to the back room for a meeting. As he read from a piece of paper we were told that effective immediately the East store was closed. All of the merchandise would be sent over to the West store over the next week and the staff would help to do this and stock the inventory at the West store. There might be positions available at the West store but hours could not be guaranteed. So there you have it. I sat there thinking about my co-workers that work there full time. They are out of work now. How would they make ends meet? I know the economy is doing poorly right now and this probably happens a lot more than we know but I have never been through something like this before. What an eye opener!
Please keep my friends in your prayers tonight.

7 comments:

Sarah :) said...

Toni, thank you for your prayers and the precious "wind-down" time this evening. My mind was racing the whole way home and I just kept thinking of a favorite song by Matt Redman, "Blessed Be Your Name."

"Blessed be Your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where the streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing you pour out,
I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord"

Basically there are two times to praise the Lord: when ya feel like it and when ya don't. I know He will provide. He provided the job with Scrapbook Garden in the first place. My life is in His hands and I have faith in His love...He never lets go.

This does, however, put a kink in my blogging plans! I wanted to blog about my wonderfully relaxing vacay with my splendid family...and now I feel like I have bigger news to talk about.

Michelle said...

Sarah is handling this better than I am and it's been four months since I've been there! I am ticked! On the selfish and frivilous side they've screwed up my plans for three weeks from now! On the more serious side you just don't treat people the way they have in the past and did tonight. I still want to see everybody when I'm there somehow but I can tell you for certain where I will NOT be shopping!

Whimsey said...

WOW...I'm stunned; just like that??? I find that odd. Was there ANY explanation? It appears it would be very hard to bring closure to it as an employee; I'm sorry; I'll be praying for all of you!!

Michelle said...

You think of the big conglomerate's doing something like this not an...ahem..."family business".

But you know what? Even though I know this doesn't help at the moment I think there are wonderful things waiting out there for all of you!

JoEtta Zabel said...

Toni you already know what I think of the whole deal, so I'm not going to repeat myself except to say that I'm so sorry this happened to you and your co-workers.

Lynette said...

Evan after a whole weekend, it is still wierd.

On the basic business level, I see the sense in it, but I still wish I could understand the way it was handled. But then, maybe there is no good way to do this. It stank when Nationsbank told all of us we were going to be fired.

Lynette said...

I saw your post over on my blog. That is even wierder. You know who they value the most!