Don't get attached

So here's an interesting little development: Uchenna's company announced that it is shutting down the Ponca City facility. All positions not directly connected to the refinery (a total of 700 jobs) will be reviewed and/or relocated. Yup, that includes us.

As you can imagine, the town is a-buzz. No matter where you go, that's all you hear people talking about. We're all comparing notes about the effect on this small, one-company town, for one thing. Because it's not like just 700 people will be leaving, they'll be taking spouses and children as well. Schools will consolidate--though many teachers are company spouses, so maybe the reduction in kids and the loss of teachers will sort of balance out. In our not-very-big ward, sixty people are directly affected, including most of the leadership.

Besides the sheer number of people leaving, those affected are a good portion of the professional population in town, those with more education, higher wages, and good health insurance. Retail, restaurants, and all the other support services will shrink, presumably. My friend at church, a doctor's wife, wonders if she's going to want to stick around this future ghost town.

Imagine roughly 700 houses coming on the market at once with no reason for anyone else to move in. We have a friend who had been renting and was now in process of buying. When the announcement came out, he called his boss and said, "I have a house under contract. What do you recommend?" His boss said, "I'd cancel the contract and walk away from the earnest money." So he did. The realtor said that, in fact, all of their contracts have, one by one, just been cancelled.

Fortunately, when the company relocates personnel, they promise to buy the home if the homeowner can't sell within three months. They're going to be buying a lot of homes. They promise to pay fair market value, at a guaranteed minimum of what the homeowner originally paid. Shwew. It's not like our house would have appreciated in the last nine months anyway. We're also glad we weren't, like, super motivated and went around making upgrades or repairing the roof or anything. This is one time that lack of effort and responsibility actually paid off.

I should say that fueling all the speculation is the company's lack of specifics. This announcement was just a heads-up; details will come at the end of January. But when jobs are "reviewed" that really means "cut." Which positions? And for those relocating, where are they relocating to? And when? Houston and Bartlesville are the two main possibilities (Bartlesville is just an hour due east of Ponca City. There's been a lot of traveling between the two sites, so a consolidation does make sense). But the company has facilities around the country.

Just so you know, we're 85% - 90% confident we'll keep our job, but 100% sure we'll be moving. Bye-bye pretty house.