If you're a person who's ever worked with other people, then you already know how you can build a relationship over time. Sure, maybe you aren't best friends with your workmates. But then again, maybe you are. Maybe, over time, you celebrate birthdays, and show up to parties outside of work, and forge relationships with those people you see every day.
I mean, it makes sense. Back when you went to school, that's probably also how you made friends. You saw the same people day in and day out. Over the course of days, weeks, and months of conversations, you got to know each other. You learned what you had in common, and maybe you took it from there. As adults with jobs, of course we're going to make friends with some of our coworkers. It happens.
That's even truer if you're in a situation where you're at a job for a long time. Why am I telling you this, though? You may recall us telling you that Textron-owned Arctic Cat was in deep trouble at the end of 2024, and that it was laying off 65 workers at its Thief River Falls HQ in Minnesota. But now, to start off 2025, the news for employees is, unfortunately, even worse as earlier this week, employees at two Arctic Cat facilities received word that they'll be laid off in March and May. And the numbers are a lot higher than 65.
This time around, a total of 385 employees at the Thief River Falls facility and another 19 in St. Cloud will be let go. The Thief River Falls folks have until May, while the St. Cloud folks will be exiting stage right in March, according to reporting from several local news outlets including the Grand Forks Herald.
Some news outlets spoke to some of the affected employees, which got me thinking about the nature of work friendships. One woman who spoke to KSTP 5 Eyewitness News said she'd been with the company for 30 years, but will now be laid off in May.
That's an entire career.
I've been close to other folks who have been laid off after essentially giving the best parts of their working lives to a company, as well, and I can state for a fact that it sucks. That's putting it mildly. The Arctic Cat folks will reportedly receive severance packages, but it's unclear what they involve, nor how much help they'll ultimately be to the working people who are being affected.
What do you do when that's the case? How do you pick up the pieces and move on? Sure, most jobs aren't perfect, but if you've spent that long working for a company, you probably had at least some expectation of maybe retiring from that job one day. Where does that go? And how do you start all over again?
As the folks who spoke to KSTP outline, it's also hard because Arctic Cat has been around in Minnesota since the 1960s. While it's now been owned by Textron since 2017, chronologically speaking, that's but a blip in the overall timeline of the company, and the community it initially grew within.
Still, a Textron spokesperson named Brandon Haddock told the Grand Forks Herald that this doesn't mean Arctic Cat is going out of business entirely; just that its business needs are changing, whatever that means.
That's probably small comfort for those 400-plus affected workers, each of whom has a life and a family and a community they're part of; both in life and at work. I wish I had good answers, but I don't. I just know that I hate seeing people suffer, and I'd much rather be telling you about having fun on snowmobiles and other powersports vehicles all the time. But unfortunately, and especially as of late, that's simply not all there is to our little slice of the world.
And I won't just stick my head in the sand (or snow) and pretend that it isn't happening.
