RogerN wrote:

I've been working at a tire plant 33 miles away for around 8-1/2 years now,
Continental Tire's Mt Vernon, IL plant, ~60 acres under roof. A help wanted
ad came up in the local paper, a local plant, less than 7 miles from home,
was looking for maintenance workers that could run mills, lathes, weld, and
program PLC's. I had an abundance of about every required and desired
skill, so I applied.

I started last Monday, the new job makes electrical cables, drawing copper
or aluminum wire and making cables, 2 Awg to 1500MCM. The position just
seems to be a good fit, they are in need of someone with my skill set and
the tire factory outsourced the work that I could have done for them. I
feel uneasy about changing jobs at this time, going from mid seniority to
bottom man, but in the new position my skill set most closely matches the
top mans skills, they hired me to help because they had no one else that
could upgrade obsolete equipment and change the program as required. So I
save 52 miles a day in driving and have a job that should fit my interests
and skills better.

I'm enjoying learning the new processes anyway, drawing and annealing the
wire at least has some metalworking!

RogerN

The new job sounds good. Don't believe all the doom and gloom reports on
the economy pushed by the pathetic media. The economy is improving
slowly and the issues with it are far from uniform. There are areas that
are indeed in bad shape, but there are plenty of areas that are
relatively booming and many more that are only minimally impacted. I
know a few folks who changed jobs in the past year or so and all are
quite happy with their new jobs.