This is just a quick rant that I intend to clean up later if I have the time. I appreciate feed back.

I've never been much for believing Atlas Shrugged could come true, I'm not a big fan of prophecies as they don't seem like a very solid foundation to build your future on. However I just had a conversation with my dad that allowed me to see something I hadn't seen.

I'm still not going to fully endorse a prophecy, I still think that we're going to fight this and win, but I see a path that we are headed down that I hadn't seen before. Hopefully this will help us understand the nature of the enemy a little better and prevent the finale.

First a little introduction into a story. While trying to skip over a massive amount of detail I can tell you that my uncle is a self made man. After getting out of prison he started a contracting company that ended up installing cable for Comcast. He got the money from a loan my dad took out and the two of them started the shop out of a garage. a few years later my uncle owns two warehouses and employs up to 50 people at the busiest time of the year.

At about the 4 year mark after I joined the company, Comcast terminated my uncles contract in favor of a bigger contractor, and this new company bought our whole warehouse as well as offered jobs to all the techs who worked out of it. It's been a year since that day. When they hired all of us things stayed about the same, a few different rules but we all had the same positions, and my dad was the one running the shop.

When the crossover happened, we had about 20 techs if I recall. Since most of this is based off of memory the numbers will be off but I think about 4 quit immediately with another 3 within the next few months. We all talked and they gave one reason after another about why they left, but the ones who were leaving were the best techs. I admired most of them while I was growing in the company, and I told them so.

As the story goes we had to hire new people. We hired people who had experience and few if any others. Looking at it in retrospect it is easy to see but what i know now that I didn't back then was that the people we were hiring were far from the cream of the crop.

This is where we are now. Sure we have a few techs that know what they are doing, but even they are lacking in what I can only describe as motivation. They constantly complain about the job, how hard it is how it isn't worth it how they aren't getting paid what they should and such. Until tonight I listened and took it in and didn't give it much thought. I laughed and told myself if it was so bad why don't they find work elsewhere?

My Dad. He is the one who runs our shop. He has always been my hero, not because he raised me or did anything for me, but because he has told me stories about his life. Time doesn't allow me to give as much attention as I should to his history but suffice to say, he is a free man. And most would call him unqualified for his job. He couldn't do half the things me or any other tech does in the field. He doesn't know the first thing about computers. (which is kind of important in our line of work.) But something he told me years before was that he may not be able to do something, but he knows someone who can. And he is the person who can make sure a job gets done if he says he will get it done. He constantly jokes with me about how if his new superiors knew how much stuff he didn't know they would have a heart attack.

After talking with my dad I had a little more insight into the upper workings of our company, and this is where the revelation struck me. He runs one warehouse out of 5, and since we were bought we have always been in the number one position, for a few weeks maybe at number two, but NEVER at number three out of all the five shops. And I didn't realize how much stress this is putting on him until tonight.

See, our techs don't enjoy their job. They show up and put as little effort into it as they can to get their money and get out. And they only attempt to make as much money as they need to survive, with little concern for their own progress or future. The techs we have left are the ones who have resigned them selves to this life.

My Dad told me tonight that he isn't getting the help that he should, from the people who should be helping him. we have one supervisor below him, and he is a slacker. he is just like all the other techs. He could care less if the business fails as long as he gets his pay. I've been to the other shops and this isn't isolated to ours. Every one I meet in the industry has stopped caring.

I don't have as many words as I wish I did, but my Dad is the Atlas at our company. My dad is literally getting ready to "Go Galt," And it's going to kill our shop. Without enough time or words to fully define this, our culture is refusing to acknowledge the producers. It is cutting corners and trying to get something for nothing and I see this company getting ready to reap what it sowed. Four.