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bindery. I debated not answering; the last two times I heard from her, she wanted money (apparently she thinks I'm rich or something). But I did, and after a brief exchange of pleasantries, "L" got to the reason she was calling.

But first, a bit of backstory...the bindery I worked at closed in September 2020, a victim of both waning demand for paper reading materials and, of course, COVID. At the time of the closure, we were down to 15 employees (from a high of around maybe 50? Going up to around 75 during the summer when we bound textbooks for various schools) and the most "recent" hire had been there 11 years. Several of my co-workers were older and were either almost at retirement age or AT retirement age but unable to afford to retire. We had roughly two weeks' advance notice that we were closing for good and the extent of our "severance package" was the owner bringing in a bottle of wine to share (in the middle of the workday. And some of us didn't drink alcohol) and the plant manager telling us that we could take home anything we wanted that wasn't already promised to be either sent to our sister bindery in North Carolina (which we were told would be closing in December 2020) or sold for cash. They actually sold the long table where I did paperwork the week before the place closed, which forced me to hunch awkwardly over a chain of small wooden carts we normally used to move the product around the factory floor. In retaliation, I took practically everything I could: pens, pencils, markers, folders, manila envelopes, a TON of paper scraps that I still use for crafts, paper clips, rubber bands and--my biggest score--a guillotine paper cutter, similar to this only MUCH older I still have a box of rubber bands, a manila envelope full of paper clips, paper scraps, a couple of the writing utensils and, of course, that guillotine paper cutter.

Flash forward to tonight...L is still in touch with another co-worker "D", who married a guy who used to be in management at the bindery and still regularly talks to both the former owner and the former plant manager, who went to North Carolina to be plant manager there. The NC plant did not, in fact, close in December 2020...it closed earlier this year. When they shut their doors for good, their employees got a goodbye party (with actual FOOD, not just something we shouldn't be drinking while still on the clock) and a small severance package which included extended health insurance coverage, payment for unused vacation days and an undisclosed (by L) amount of money to help in the upcoming weeks (months?) as they look for a new job.

What the heck?

Incidentally, our owner was their owner as well, and he has, and has always had, other businesses that have provided him with a comfortable lifestyle. In the years since the bindery closed, I've talked to L countless number of times--either on the phone, through text, or at the gas station where she worked for a time--and she has always been exceedingly bitter about getting nothing when our bindery closed. So you can imagine how absolutely apoplectic she is now knowing how the employees of the NC bindery--which was always considered to be less important AND a bit less elite than our bindery here in NE Ohio--were treated when their plant closed. On the one hand, I'm indignant myself. OTOH, I long ago made peace with how little we received when our bindery closed and assumed there simply wasn't the funds to give us any kind of severance pay or whatever.

But still...what the heck?