If you'll recall, yours truly had three things to worry about:
1. My job
2. The 'girls'
3. The Hubs's job

We all know what happened with my job but now I know it was for the best; the 'girls' have to wait another 3 months for any kind of an answer; and today is the day that the big pow-wow happens in regard to The Hubs's job.

The Hubs is feeling really good about how his chain of command feels about him. He's done a great job for his company and has made a tremendous amount of money for them since he started. In fact, this quarter (his first quarter with the company) he made more profit than that facility has EVER made and he made the most profit of any facility in the company this quarter. Go The Hubs!

But, ultimately it's not up to his company to keep him employed. It's up to the one and only customer. They're used to a certain way of being treated and The Hubs wasn't aware of this. He thought his job was to make the most profit for the company even if it meant pushing back on the customer a little bit. That was drummed into him by his last employer. His current employer doesn't care as much about profit as it does about customer satisfaction, and forgot to mention this to The Hubs when he was brought in. They fully admit that it was their fault because they hadn't explained their philosophy to The Hubs.

As soon as he was made aware of this, he totally changed the way he did things- but was told it might be too late.

Let me put this into perspective for you. The Hubs is in the distribution business. He's the general manager of a facility that brings in cargo from ships from all over the world (mostly China) and then loads that cargo onto trucks for distribution throughout the state. Because of the type of merchandise he distributes, there are peak seasons. One is right before school starts and the other is right before the Christmas season. During peak, the amount of cargo quadruples (or more) and the customer expects the same turnaround as off-peak months. That becomes quite a balancing act between getting enough people to handle the peak without overspending. The Hubs's facility was off service levels by ONE day during peak and that's what the ruckus was about.

The meeting today is between the top level executives of his company and the customer. If the customer executives decide that they want to take their business elsewhere, then that means that his company will have to shut their doors and The Hubs will be out of a job.

The thing is, this particular customer has pulled their business from every.single.facility in our state- and The Hubs's is the last one. I used to despise W@lm@rt because I thought they were hard on The Hubs- but this customer is worse and has a horrible reputation. The Hubs knew that going in, but was up for the challenge. This customer makes W@lm@rt look like a bunch of pussycats.

I hope he hears something today so he can finally take a nice deep breath and relax a little.