Things I'll miss when retired

[Edward]

I'll consider myself fortunate indeed if I can afford to retire. I have about tne years left on the mortgage, which is something, but I expect that to enjoy the lifestyle I would like to have when retired, I'll have to keep working.... Here in academia, it's posible to keep working to some degree well into your eighties; I can imagine I may well try to keep on enough teaching hours to suplement the drop in income (which is the bit of the job I really enjoy anyhow). Also, it being a given that I'll never be able to afford to give up work in order to chase the dream of being an actor, I intend to spend a large poriton of my retirment sitting on various sts, waiting for my turn to be an extra. I plan to get a lot of good reading done that way.

 

[dnjan]

.... Here in academia, it's posible to keep working to some degree well into your eighties ...

It was the daily BS associated with academia that led to my early retirement. I still sit on a couple of university-level committees. But it is nice to be able to ignore the department- and college-level BS.
I definitely don't miss that!

 

[Edward]

It was the daily BS associated with academia that led to my early retirement. I still sit on a couple of university-level committees. But it is nice to be able to ignore the department- and college-level BS.
I definitely don't miss that!

Ha, I know what you mean - the bureaucracy and the officed politics! If I had a fiver for every time I've complained about time I could spend on something productive like teaching being wasted instead on form-filling.... Well, I would be able to afford to retire now. At 41...

 

[Fading Fast]

It was the daily BS associated with academia that led to my early retirement. I still sit on a couple of university-level committees. But it is nice to be able to ignore the department- and college-level BS.
I definitely don't miss that!

This was a big part of why I now work for myself. While I don't have the security and resources of a big company and steady paycheck, 90% of my work is real work and not BS. I sincerely hate office politics and, also, hate just the general bureaucracy of a modern business (especially one with heavy government oversight). There are people who are good at politics and thrive in it and others (sometimes, the same people) that are good with bureaucracy and seem to enjoy maneuvering through it - I hated both and was willing to give up a lot to be, mainly, free of both.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Retire? What's that? I am a writer, subcategory, freelance novelist. There is no retirement program for people like me. You write until you die. I'm okay with that. At least my job can't be outsourced to f#%$ing Bangla Desh.

 

[dnjan]

Retirement is when your spouse takes over as Boss #1, and you can no longer use the excuse of "I need to get this done for work" in order to get out of jobs around the house.

 

[GHT]

Retirement is when your spouse takes over as Boss #1, and you can no longer use the excuse of "I need to get this done for work" in order to get out of jobs around the house.

And when you do, 'get out of the house,' it's to tidy and prune the garden.

 

[dnjan]

Yup.

 

[Big Man]

I've been retired for 7 years now. What do I miss? Not one damn thing!

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Wholeheartly agree Big Man.
Going on 17 years in retirement and just love it..!! Doing what I always wanted to do.
HD

 

[tonyb]

Wear them anyway. I do.
Only real problem I've had is some of the "nice old ladies" that take the shuttle from their retirement home to the grocery store can be almost aggressively chatty when I am in the checkout line with them.

Ever mutter to yourself, "where were you old gals when we were all 40 years younger"?

 

[Big Man]

I spent 30 years of my life working at a State Psychiatric Hospital. I was the Safety Director there and for 28 of those 30 years I absolutely loved everything about my job. The last two years, however, were horrible. There was a new administration that, in my opinion, could care less about the patients and anyone who tried to advocate for the patients.

The day I left I made my rounds to all the wards one last time. One of the "worst" patients in the hospital, upon hearing I was retiring, called out to me from her seclusion room and said in the most sorrowful voice, "who will take care of me when you're gone?"

I almost tore up my retirement papers after that. If there's anything I do miss, it would be the patients. The adminstration and the "system" can go ... Well, you get my meaning.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Boy what a heartbreaker BM.
That would sure tug hard at my heart strings as well.
So sad.

 

[Big Man]

Boy what a heartbreaker BM.
That would sure tug hard at my heart strings as well.
So sad.

Two of my children work in direct patient care at that hospital and a third child in direct patient care at the MR center beside the psychiatric hospital. All three of them are doing a great job taking care of patients, bit it's a struggle for them to "fit in" under the present administration and the present way of doing business. Maybe one day it will change.

 

[Fading Fast]

Be it the public or private sector (so it's not about politics in the usual right vs left argument) and away from the tech sector (which is, for many companies, young, growing and with no legacy baggage or, yet, oppressive regulations) almost everyone I know likes or loves what they do but hates the company, government agency they work for / the administration or management at their place of work / the rules and regulations that won't let them just do their job / etc. and they all say it was better five, ten, fifteen years ago before "new management," a "new administration," new "rules, regulations and documentation" or "the new environment."

I, too, feel that way and left Corporate America five years ago to work for myself for less money and security but to get out from under the suffocating bureaucracy of both business and government regulation. Something is broken in our process, our approach, our structure, our laws, our rules, our regulations, our legal construct, etc., as almost all my friend on the left and right and who work in either the public or the private sector all have a similar story: "I like what I do / hate the place the environment in which I do it."

 

[LizzieMaine]

To use an Era phrase, "there's too many Chiefs and not enough Indians." Everybody's an executive or a director or a manager or a consultant or a board member or some other mickey-mouse title now, and there's not enough people who're actually willing to get down on the floor and wipe up the spills.

I blame the whole MBA culture that's emerged especially since the eighties. There are too many people with too many degrees who think they know a lot more about how to interact with human beings than they actually do, and who think nothing matters unless it can be quantified in dollars and cents. It's bad enough when you've got corporations run that way, but when that kind of thinking filters down into small-town mom-and-pop type operations, you've got a really diseased situation going on.

"Mission Statements" make me itch.

 

[Harp]

It was the daily BS associated with academia that led to my early retirement. I still sit on a couple of university-level committees. But it is nice to be able to ignore the department- and college-level BS....

Veritas, veritas.

 

[AmateisGal]

Be it the public or private sector (so it's not about politics in the usual right vs left argument) and away from the tech sector (which is, for many companies, young, growing and with no legacy baggage or, yet, oppressive regulations) almost everyone I know likes or loves what they do but hates the company, government agency they work for / the administration or management at their place of work / the rules and regulations that won't let them just do their job / etc. and they all say it was better five, ten, fifteen years ago before "new management," a "new administration," new "rules, regulations and documentation" or "the new environment."

I, too, feel that way and left Corporate America five years ago to work for myself for less money and security but to get out from under the suffocating bureaucracy of both business and government regulation. Something is broken in our process, our approach, our structure, our laws, our rules, our regulations, our legal construct, etc., as almost all my friend on the left and right and who work in either the public or the private sector all have a similar story: "I like what I do / hate the place the environment in which I do it."

So, so true. I work for a university, though I am not a professor - I'm a staff member. Yet there are still bureaucratic hoops to jump through and unbelievable levels of hierarchy just to get simple things done. And don't get me started on the politics of the place...

I'm a writer, so I will *never* retire from that job - but I sure would like to retire from working a day job, and I don't want to wait until I'm 65+. In fact, if I could quit next month, that would be swell.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There used to be a punishment meted out to convicts sentenced to hard labor in prison -- they'd have to move a pile of rocks and gravel from one end of the prison yard to another. And then when they'd finished they'd have to move that pile of rocks and gravel back across the yard to its original location. And then back again and forth again ad infinitum.

I'd be willing to bet that at least 75 per cent of white-collar work done in the 21st Century, regardless of the business or the industry or the sector, falls into that same type of exercise. Move those electrons from one end of the office network to the other, and then move them back again. In the Era people shut down assembly lines and occupied factory buildings for less.

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^ You are spot on. I worked for companies that would spend 2 years implementing a plan to combined this and that operation or department under one umbrella so that "our customers could have a better 'holistic' experience," and so that "we can 'cross sell' this or that to them if those clients are all in one unit," only to watch the next "leadership team" separate out the two departments so that "each could be singularly focussed on serving the client" and because "we confuse our clients when we try to do too many things in one area...." I am not making that up one bit as I lived through the combination and then splitting up of two areas - twice in one company and again once at another.

I am not just venting when I say something is broken in both the private and public sector as I am just old enough to have been around when it was better, when it wasn't all about process, documentation, getting through the next "review," but there was more of a long-term, "what is the really right thing to do" approach.