So, since you folks are the only people I talk to other than my husband...

[OldBaldy1701E]

4. He is also going through some really bad things.

(Fuck it, I am going to tell the truth here. I hope they do sue me.)

My husband is employed by a certain bakery/cafe chain. He went from counter help to baker, to baker trainer, to baker supervisor, to baker manager for an entire market. When we moved up here, we moved into a hornets nest of people who did not like him because he was not 'GQ' or 'metrosexual' enough for them. (One upper manager complained that he never wore 'loafers', he always wore his bakery shoes. Which was because he was always having to take up the slack from the dweebs he was given to manage.) We moved up here because my husband was accepting a promotion to manage one of the two markets that existed. Well, once we moved here, they gave the promotion to a crony, so the person who was moving out of my husband's promotion did not have a position and therefore my husband did not have one. He worked here in his current position until they decided to break the area up into four markets. (This was not what he agreed to when they offered him this position.) This was partially because most of the 'underperforming' markets were in one part of the area and could be turned into its own market. They then gave him that market and told him that he had 90 days to fix it all or they would fire him.

Well, he did it. He got it all working and had a decent loyal group with him. Middle management did not like him, but the regional people did, so things stayed as they were. Until COVID hit. As you all know, we all went into lockdown in January of 2020. In February, he received an email informing him that the company was going to dissolve the entire department. Some 3000 managers were cut loose by email on one day. Just like that. I think it really hit him hard. It hit me hard too. I found it yet another example of how we are just too dependent on mega corporations to survive and that there are almost no other options out there. He got a severance package, which was a joke. He has not been the same since. He finally took a job as a regular baker with this same company because they are so mismanaged that they are desperate for bakers. He gets paid pretty well for it, but it is part time. We are barely hanging on.

I cannot help him. I cannot snap my fingers and fix this. I cannot stop being the burden that I am to someone who is probably falling apart like I am. He is the reason I am alive today. I would have passed 25 years ago were it not for him. (Whether or not that is a good thing is debatable.) He is all I have. When he gets like this... I don't know where to turn.