(New Owners)

The company I have been working for the last 10 plus years got bought out today. We were all summoned to the cafeteria at 3:30pm on Thursday afternoon for an important meeting. Prior to that, the day shift guys must have been on a gag order because they were only hinting at what took place at their meeting earlier in the day.
The owner of____ talked about wanting to get an exit strategy (where have we heard that line before?) for the last year and a half. He is ___ years old and his kids evidently don't want to be the 4th generation to be in the ____ industry. So he found a buyer out of ____ to take over the company. We were introduced to this cat named ____ from a company called ____ Who are under the _________Group. All sounds like some Wall Street mumbo jumbo to me, which frankly scares the crap out of me.
But! We were all told that nothing would change. The management we have now would stay intact, the crappy insurance and the minimal benefit package would remain the same. He didn't say that , but that is what he meant. All the other companies (three so far) would remain autonomous and function as usual. The idea is that we would all compliment each other in the world of ______.As per my usual M.O. I came home and looked up the other companies on the internet. I also looked up ______. They have many business interest in many fields. That was slightly comforting. The other two companies under the _____banner seemed smaller than ours. One is in _____ and one in _____. Not so comforting if we are supposed to get more work from places smaller than us.
I've never been through a buyout in my 22 years of printing. So this whole situation is new to me. Two of my friends used to work at Gibson Greeting Cards and they got royally screwed when they got bought out by American Greetings. So my emotions have run the gamut in the last few hours. Here's a few reasons why:

1. I've never trusted the upper management in any company I've worked for.
2. I certainly don't trust someone from _____ who I don't know at all.
3. I have a family to support.
4. Like everyone else I have debt.
5. I never went to college and have been doing this for a living since I was 20.
6. I'm 42 years old now.

Now here are the reasons why I'm not worried about my job:

1. You can't live in fear for any job, you will get an ulcer.
2. I had a labor job before this one I can always get another.
3. As long as I'm able, my family will have a roof over their head.
4. I have a supportive wife and "this team has made it this far."...
5. In a way I would like to do something else for a living, this could force me into it.
6. The only thing I stand to lose are material things anyway.
7. Life is full of unexpected twists and turns, it keeps you from getting bored.

So on Friday at 3:00pm I will go into work as usual and count down the hours until the weekend.
I'm still going to do my job and have a few laughs with my friends. What the future has in store I can't tell, but I do know this... Life is too short to worry about what might happen.

P.S. You can fill in the blanks for yourself, maybe you or someone you know may have gone through the same thing.