Trouble at t'mill

The economic crisis continues to bite.

The factory's stock yard is nearly full of tiles and we aren't selling enough. So We stopped all productopn on the 24th April and will ot start again until the 13th May.

The stoppage is no doubt linked France's tax system whereby companies are taxed on their stock. That's right, their stock is taxable. In June. So the bean counters want the stock as low as possible at the end of May. This is also the reason why we keep so few spare parts. Those parts would be stock and thus taxable. The companies that make the parts don't want to keep them either because then they'd be paying the tax. As a result, large portions of France's stock is permanantly hidden "in transit".

Another reason for the bean counters shutting down the factory now is that May has 2 long weekends. By putting all the production staff onto day shifts the company doesn't have to pay out the extra dosh for the shifts that would have worked on the public holidays.

To give them some credit tho, at least no one's been laid off. Yet. We've spent the last 2 weeks cleaning and generally wasting time.