Another one bites the dust

[julesjones]

 I shouldn't do this to myself. The demolition work on my former employer is going to be at least two years of slow motion destruction, the building by building dismantling of what once employed thousands of people. But the most iconic piece of plant has toppled now. And I do mean toppled; not the neat folding in on itself of many controlled explosion demolitions, but falling sideways to crash against the ground. Something about watching that video hurt more deeply than if it had just fallen straight down, pancaking as it went. It was an ignominious end to what had once been a giant of its field, full of cutting edge technology. 

Comments

[graydon]

My first thought is that you used to work for Kodak.

Other possible candidates, though.

Finality is tough.

[hrj]

There's a similarly weird, but much less final, feeling to watching a multi-building worksite change around you. In the almost-20-years I've worked for my current employer, I've had office space in four different buildings. Three of them no longer exist. The two oldest buildings on site ("Building #1" and the building that was originally the founder's home -- or maybe a house that was incorporated at some point as offices?) are both gone. But in our case, it's because the kind of manufacturing/laboratory space we use is so specialized that it's cheaper to demolish and build new than to try to re-tool 20 or 30 year old buildings for cutting edge biotech. A lot of change happened during the course of the pandemic, so returning to the worksite was like stepping out of a time machine into the future.

[lexin]

I remember walking past a building I knew well (the former DWP lawyers offices) and discovering that it had become a big hole in the ground. I don't know why, but it went to my heart.