I found out tonight that I'm off work all of this week too. That means that between the dates of 14th Dec '20 & 18th Jan '21 I'll only have worked one day. And the 3 hours I did for them unexpectedly last Thurs. Some of this can be explained by the two week Xmas hol and the huge amount of TOIL hours they owe me. This week is covered by those too. January is always a slow time for breweries but we normally have some work. Last year we worked stupidly long hours because of covid. Lockdown caused a greater demand for bottled and canned beers, and tbh, we should be relatively busy with that now. But there's a problem. Last week the bosses made me aware there were issues with 3 different batches of beer that had gone out to various supermarkets. That's why I did 3 hours of work last week. The supermarkets haven't been told yet. A microbiologist has been and taken samples. The first results will be in tomorrow and the second ones should be in by Fri/Sat. I don't know if I'll be told then. I don't know if I'll be in work next Monday or not yet. What I do know is that we're a very small brewery, and if we have to instigate a full product recall it will cost the company anything from £10K-£20K and we don't have those sort of resources. We'll go under. I'm sitting here relatively calm. I don't know why I'm not freaking out but it's possibly because of everything I've been through over the last 12 months. Somehow the prospect of losing my job isn't upsetting me. It might be the case that if I do lose my job I will freak out then. But, I've my family, who are just the best and are so incredibly supportive, inc financially. Most importantly I have my wits. If it comes to it I WILL find something. I may even take the opportunity to retrain. I fancy a career in the NHS. I hope I'm not too old to be able to viably do that. It might be that nothing too bad comes of this. It's all up in the air at the mo. I might be in for a turbulent time, but I'll be ok 😊
'Pie xxx
11th January 2021
