‘We’re all still going to be family’: Former employees grapple with end of Nebraska Book Company
After more than a century, the Nebraska Book Company is closing, and let go of most of its employees Thursday.
By News Channel NebraskaLINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) - After more than a century, the Nebraska Book Company is closing, and let go of most of its employees Thursday.
The air was light at Rosie’s Sports Bar late Wednesday afternoon as laid-off workers gathered to laugh at remember.
“We’re all still going to be friends,” said Kristin Gladson, a former Nebraska Book Company employee. “We’re all still going to be family, even though we’re all going to part ways.”
Gladson clocked out for a final time Wednesday. The lightning strike announcement of closure came at the end of her shift Monday.
It’s also difficult news for people from the business’ past. Former employees Greg and Cheryl Oppat retired from the company more than a decade ago, but they likely wouldn’t be married today without it. That’s where they met in 1981.
“We figure we have fifteen couples that ended up getting married over the years that worked together at Nebraska Book,” Cheryl said.
Fast forward to 2020 and beyond, the company faltered during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an increased demand for digital textbooks sending its revenue plummeting. That led to most of the company’s 114 full-time employees getting laid off today.
About 30 employees, like Alan Wilder, are staying on temporarily to help liquidate. That process will last between four and six weeks.
“We’re going to be dismantling everything that we worked with for the last four years I’ve been there, last two years she’s been in there,” Wilder said. “All the memories and everything will soon be wiped out by us.”
In a way, Cheryl and Greg live in the house that the company built, and like the relationships of those workers who at Rosie’s, it will stand long after the business locks up for good.