{. Apparently this happens to people when they retire. They grieve about the things they lost when they ditched paid work }
Deprived of relevance.
Another retiree phobia:
FORO – the fear of running out (of money).
ralph
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They probably thought they were far more relevant than they actually were when they were working, too. People can make things so much harder on themselves than they need to be.
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After reading the article, I think it is a joke. Or maybe unsubtle pushback on the “JC” narrative that the media pushes “your only function is to work”.
The media loves to run stories like one recent one of a guy in his 80s, who is still working as a salesman at a car dealership. A POTUS, who was advancing a scheme to privatize SS at the time, spoke glowingly of a farmer around age 90 that supposedly still got up at dawn every day and worked his farm.
Here is a dandy screed from a gang of “thought leaders”.
What a pile of twaddle! Work was what kept me from doing anything interesting, because I had to get up before dawn, and slog through a snowstorm, so people could b!tc4 at me all day.
Steve
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My biggest regret is that I worked far too long and far too hard when i didn’t have to.
I see it now, but didn’t see it then.
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This is not unheard of. It was very noticeable with retired cops I knew growing up and certain military types. The real “careerist” types officer and enlisted. They sort of unravel and spend the rest of their lives at the “O” club or NCO club and other places on-Base. They always had more responsibility than they really did.
It’s hard to believe you were nothing special after all when you can no longer “authort” yourself on people
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I spent 30 years working “too hard for too long”, but, short of financial independence, my choice was “shut up and work” or “if you don’t like it quit”. Once I had the target number in hand, I was gone, and never regretted it.
Steve
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They were brainwashed, just like the people who think they are only doing it right if they have a house and a family and live their life as slaves to their debts.
Steve
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My life has much more dignity, purpose, and meaning now that I’m retired.
Just started to learn the fingerpicking & chords for Dust In the Wind yesterday. Hope I can learn it before I’m dust in the wind.
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I ran my own business and could have easily gone ten or more years before i did - I regret it more each day, but what’s done is done!
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A different scenario from working for someone who sees employees as lab rats in an experiment to maximize work for minimal reward.
Steve
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I’m not sure all of them were brainwashed. Fell for it from another place. It seems that there is a personality type that is already tailor made for that sort of thing. They don’t need to be sold on it. They show up looking for it.
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They probably thought they were far more relevant than they actually were when they were working , too. People can make things so much harder on themselves than they need to be.
THIS.
I’ve had this conversation with only a limited number of my still-working buds and budettes cuz I’m not sure if everyone I know still working can handle the shock.
For what I suspect is a large percentage of workers, they enter the work force thinking by golly, they have a college degree, they’re embarking on a “career” dangit. As they change jobs, their brain attempts to find a narrative in the evolution of the jobs and titles they hold, always with a theme of “onward and upward.” And financially, that might happen. However, as one reaches mid-career, it’s likely many people are tolerating positions they actually randomly fell into due to vacancies or temporary politics above them and are trying to rationalize staying in that position by thinking it’s part of a progression that’s leading somewhere. Somewhere, of course, with yet more pay, influence and esteem.
When I was in high school, I held the type of typical mundane job a teenager can get. The kind where even when you worked 8 hours, you COUNTED every minute of those 15 minute breaks and the 60 minute lunch cuz you didn’t want to give anything to the “man” for free. It was a JOB, man.
When I began working in Corporate America, I enjoyed what I did, the work was tied to EXACTLY what I had studied (communications, computers, software, management) and 9 hour days went by like THAT (snap). As I shifted from role to role, I thought, “I’m building a CAREER, man!” I changed jobs six times in the first four years.
Thirty years later, when I spent 75 percent or more of my time sitting in meetings with SVP and EVP level exectutives justifying failed projects that never underwent ROI analysis or shifting blame for delays because of poorly managed requirements gathering or poorly designed code that failed to follow requirements or standards, it didn’t feel so much like a career. It felt like someone realized you HAD to pay someone this much money to tolerate a job this frustrating and unconnected from moving the needle.
After retiring, an epiphany occurs. They were ALL just jobs. Everything else was just rationalization for staying in roles that evolved far from what you really wanted to spend 40 hours per week doing.
Oh, and are you continuing to work as an attempt to leave some kind of legacy? Don’t. The second you leave, someone from IT will come to take back your laptop and archive the hard drive in case you have any pending legal holds for your documents and emails and the person who inherits your job will likely take all of your documents, plans, processes, etc. and drop them in the recycling bin, never to be considered again.
If you need further proof of your irrelevance after you leave, try announcing your retirement a month or two before the actual date. Then see how much attention anyone pays to ANYTHING you have to say, knowing your head’s already out the door. You become invisible, immediately.
WTH
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Or go out with your former co-workers a couple weeks after you’ve left. It becomes quickly apparent that you’re not on the team anymore.
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I must be the odd one here. I enjoyed my job 80 to 90 percent of the time. I did pre-announce my retirement by 3 months, and my input was asked on projects/policies, but I only gave my opinion knowing that the person replacing me would have to take ownership of the project/policy.
Also as a company we had plant barbecues for the most trivial accomplishments. We always invited the retired people back to the plant for the barbecue lunch. We missed them and I assume since a lot of them came for the lunch that they missed us too.
I miss the camaraderie, but I have no interest in returning back to work. Retirement is great. Better than I expected. The one disappointment that I have with retirement is that I thought time would slow down. It hasn’t. The last 4 years have been a blur.
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When I told coworkers I was retiring, they wished me well and told me how much they’d miss me. I laughed and told them in a year or 2 they would barely remember my face, and after that it’d be who was that guy that used to do that job …
After about 10 years with the company, figured out I was just a tooth on the gear, did not display much if any ego on the job. As it turns out, a lotta people like that,lol, but I wasn’t being like that trying to ingratiate myself. Life became much better once I figured out my place in the bureaucracy.
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Carly Fiorina is a “tool”. She finished her “career” as Ted Cruz’s VP candidate in 2016.
intercst
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You’re a one-percenter in job satisfaction.
I enjoyed my job as an engineer the first 3 years when I was actually doing engineering and construction work. As I moved up the food chain, I spent more time in meetings, made a lot more money, but tolerated it less.
intercst
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Fiorina is the worst.
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I have told the story before, of working at a Steelcase dealership when Fiorina took over at HP. We made a lot of money off that company installing furniture at several new HP offices that she wanted. Then, when she was booted from HP, we made another stack off of HP tearing all the furniture out of those offices and taking it to scrap, so HP could get out from under the overhead she had created for them.
Steve
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I wish that percentage was higher.
My biggest aggravations came from corporate HR and management. Some of the corporate staff would fly in, tell you how smart they were and how you need to do this or that. I politely listened, then continued doing things that made sense for us. I pushed against some of their “mandates” and got away with it. The sole reason I was able to buck the corporate office was because our plant had some of the top numbers in the company. And the reason for that was that I had some of the best people in the industry working with/for me.
Unlike you, I passed on a corporate position. I would have had to relocate my family, far away from our extended family. Our kids were in their early teens and I wanted them to be around familiar surroundings. I would have had to travel 3 weeks out of the month from coast to coast. And I have a hard time keeping my opinions to myself in a meeting. I’m just not corporate material, but it was a nice ego boost to be asked. I never had any regrets turning it down.
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