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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shadowrider" data-source="post: 4241278" data-attributes="member: 3099">I went through something similar at Baker Hughes. They bought our company and renamed it to Baker Hughes Inteq. Shortly thereafter they decided to move the whole plant in OKC to Houston. They offered three relocation packages of which I was in the top tier, which included buying my house and assisting me buying one down there, paying for moving, etc. and a decent raise once there. We took an all expenses paid weekend tour in Houston. They put us up in the Double Tree. Toured the facilities for the different divisions, saw the bunker where they store all the radioactive stuff, got to watch a perforation gun demo, etc. Went to a rodeo out of town and had great Texas BBQ. We had a blast that weekend, wine, beer and drinks as far as the eye could see! But after seeing Houston traffic and congestion there was no way I was moving. A few did though and they only had to sign a 1 year agreement. At the end of that year, I only know of one guy that stayed on and he didn't stay all that much longer.It was a complete boondoggle. We had a beautiful 12.5 acre facility that had three different shops on it here in OKC. A rotor lining shop, a district shop that assembled and ran our directional tools on the rigs to customer order, and our machine shop where we built ALL the parts and did some remachining of parts that were still serviceable after being used. Drill bits were in Salt Lake City, but right before the move they had us machine a prototype diamond bit. In 7 years we had never touched a drill bit until then. But the brainiacs in Houston wanted it all down there. It was the nicest facility I've worked in with painted floors you could almost eat off of, plumbed pre-mixed coolant to every machine, great equipment that was actually maintained and a killer break room, training room and engineering rooms. When we went up front we had to take our boots off or there was hell to pay. We had a great crew that knew what they were doing and most everyone got along great. We didn't have a lot of turnover.And yet, they threw it all away and  moved it. I can't even imagine what moving our equipment cost but it took over a year. Most of the machines were German. We had 4 slant bed CNC lathes and two deep hole boring machines that had drive motors over 100hp. And a good 6 really large oil country engine lathes. with 12 inch holes through the spindles. The CNCs had 300mm through hole spindles. I used a 1" square insert and took 5/8" cuts on AISI 4145 heat treated steel and those machines loved it. Multiple 4 ton gantry cranes covered the entire plant floor.Then they tried to sell the facility. Didn't quite work out, They ended up having to keep it and eventually leased it, but I'm sure they took a bath on it sitting empty, even though it was paid for. It would have brought serious money and I know they planned on using it to partially finance the move. That never happened.Had they not moved it to Houston, I'd probably still be there. I loved that job and lost a bunch of good friends when they moved. I'm still pissed! <img src="/images/smilies/pissed.gif"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":pissed:" title="Pissed    :pissed:" data-shortname=":pissed:" /></blockquote>

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