Your Most Disturbing Realizations

[tonyb]

Just learned my first girlfriend died of cancer last December, having just turned 50. And I have a daughter starting high school in the autumn. And I am seven years and four months from (current) mandatory military retirement age.

Where did all that time go?!?!

I recall a then-elderly woman (long since deceased) telling me 30-plus years ago that each year goes by a little faster than the one before it.

“Dammit, Emily, you’re just depressing me,” I said, jokingly.

My sense of how not-elderly I am now is stronger than my sense of being young was then. I can do the arithmetic, so I know that I am now what we used to think of as “retirement age.” Still, it’s a crime against us as individuals and collectively to shove us aside. We know things worth knowing, things a person can truly know only by learning the hard way. And that might take some time.

There may be no fool like an old fool, but in my experience most people outgrow their more abject foolishness once they’ve been making their own way for a few decades. I suspect that most people who don’t cringe when looking back on their younger selves are taking a highly selective view on the matter.

And yes, Emily, you were right. Each year does go by a little faster than the one before it.

 

[belfastboy]

I recall a then-elderly woman (long since deceased) telling me 30-plus years ago that each year goes by a little faster than the one before it.

“Dammit, Emily, you’re just depressing me,” I said, jokingly.

My sense of how not-elderly I am now is stronger than my sense of being young was then. I can do the arithmetic, so I know that I am now what we used to think of as “retirement age.” Still, it’s a crime against us as individuals and collectively to shove us aside. We know things worth knowing, things a person can truly know only by learning the hard way.

There may be no fool like an old fool, but in my experience most people outgrow their more abject foolishness once they’ve been making their own way for a few decades. I suspect that most people who don’t cringe when looking back on their younger selves are taking a highly selective view on the matter.

And yes, Emily, you were right. Each year does go by a little faster than the one before it.

I 'retired' early but at 60 decided that I needed some additional income and a job to assuage some boredom.

Getting hired at that advanced age is not easy but I got very lucky. I was hired by a consulting engineering company as a field technician. ….a job I was only marginally qualified for. As the job was physical they had been hiring young bucks. The young bucks had been turning out to be physically fit but unprepared for the rigours of actual work and discipline (showing up where and when, on time, delivering solid data). So the owner thought why not hire this old guy with a great track record, hope he can handle the physical side and perhaps make up for any deficiencies with his work ethic and discipline. I ended up working there for 10 years, just retiring last year. I became one of their key employees . I loved the job, gave me 10 years of an entirely new field of work...retiring only when the physicality became a bit too much and it took a long weekend for me to recover enough to go to work on Monday.

 

[tonyb]

I suppose that part of it might be poor personnel management, and that a larger part might be the personnel themselves apparently happy to have their heads up their hindquarters, but whatever’s to blame, I find myself positively gobsmacked by people’s failure to see just why the hell we’re employed here in the first effing place.

What do we do here? How do we do it? How might we do it better? Does anyone here know the definition of “efficiency”?

I’ve held positions for which I wasn’t particularly well suited, for whatever reason — lack of specific skills, lack of desire to learn those skills, apathy in regard to the enterprise itself, et cetera. I got out, usually, a step or two ahead of anyone suggesting I should. If a person can’t invest his head in the matter, if his desire to be better just isn’t there, then maybe his carcass shouldn’t be there, either.

 

[Fading Fast]

Just learned my first girlfriend died of cancer last December, having just turned 50. And I have a daughter starting high school in the autumn. And I am seven years and four months from (current) mandatory military retirement age.

Where did all that time go?!?!

I'm sorry for you - that's a painful experience.

A few years out of college, a girl, not girlfriend, I went to high school with passed away from cancer - it was stunning, frightening, sad and, for me, defining. Before that, when I was in high school, a classmate was killed by a drunk driver so, at least how it impacted me, I never had that indestructible feeling that many young people have. But that girl dying of cancer - a shy, quiet young woman who I chatted with regularly but nothing more - really made me sad for her in a deep way (I think about her often to this day and, again, we weren't even close friends) as it was one of those things that made me understand mortality at a young age.

 

[3fingers]

I suppose that part of it might be poor personnel management, and that a larger part might be the personnel themselves apparently happy to have their heads up their hindquarters, but whatever’s to blame, I find myself positively gobsmacked by people’s failure to see just why the hell we’re employed here in the first effing place.

This is a source of ongoing amazement for me. I'm sure not knocking on the kids here because I see it in all age groups.
Too many people simply have no grasp of the fact that their only purpose in employment is to accomplish tasks that contribute to the good of the organization. Or to be more direct, to make the owners of the business more money than you cost them.
When it is pointed out to them that they aren't kept on the payroll because the boss loves them they seem taken aback that there are expectations beyond making it in the door most days.
I would also include those in management. It is a mystery what some of them contribute that is of any value but having risen to a certain level they simply take up space there.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If I thought my only purpose in employment was to make money for the boss, I'd jump off the pier before another sunrise. And I wouldn't blame anyone else who followed my example.

I've been lucky, I guess. Most of the jobs I've had in my adult life have had at least the illusion of a purpose -- when I was a reporter, the purpose of my employment, as far as I was concerned, was to inform the public. WHen I was in radio, I considered my major purpose to be entertaining people. And in the theatre, I consider it the same thing -- entertaining people, giving them some small distraction or diversion that'll help them get thru another day.

A worker whose sole purpose is to profit the boss, be that an individual or a corporate entity, isn't a worker at all. He or she is a serf. And I imagine deep down most people in such situations know that -- and resent it. WHen I worked in the factory, or the meat-processing place, that's how I felt about those jobs. There was no reason for me to feel otherwise in those situations. And an employer who thinks that's reason enough for his employees to work deserves every slackadaisical goofoff or bitter saboteur he gets. Maybe the real answer isn't to crack the whip over their backs that much harder, maybe what really needs to happen is for humanity to evolve to the point where there's more to life for more people than decades of joyless wage-serfdom leading inevitably to the grave.

 

[tonyb]

While it might be darned nigh impossible to derive much job satisfaction on, say, the kill line at the meat packing plant (a job my grandfather held, btw), it remains that all except the most heavily subsidized of enterprises must eventually operate in the black, no matter how much or how little it offers its workers aside from their pay. Personnel contributing to that end, who bring more to that enterprise than they cost it, even when that enterprise is a not-for-profit, ought remain on the payroll. And those who don’t ought not, because they’re dragging down everyone else.

It’s largely my family and personal history (I’ve had some lousy [literally] jobs) that has me advocating for more than decent wages for those who perform the tasks that few if any people really wish to do but which need to be done nonetheless. The people who devote their time and energy to that — a big part of their lives, really — ought be well compensated.

Alas, the trend in recent decades has been in the opposite direction. My grandfather certainly didn’t love his job, but he supported a family of six on his paycheck alone. He bought a substantial house and a new Ford every three years or so. He retired with a pension and a Social Security check. That can’t be said for people doing that work these days.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Had more than one job during my college years where I felt as though I was reduced to a mere means of production: retail and manufacturing, both minimum wage. From the safe vantage point of nearly half a century's time, I suppose that there was a two- fold silver lining in those dark clouds. They made me appreciate good jobs that I subsequently had, and they were a sharpened trident jabbing my rear end, reminding me to stay in school and get an education so that I'd never have to take a demeaning job again.

Had I landed a "dream job" just outside of high school (say, working on a railroad as a freight brakeman or as a deckhand on a Great Lakes freighter boat, both of which would have paid well AND been an adventure to work) who can say what my fate would have been? Might have said "To hell with all of that damned book learnin' !" and stuck with them until my body felt every ache and pain in middle age. But I had a fire in my belly, so to speak, to really apply myself and get good grades in college that, I'll admit, I never had in high school. I wish that I HAD learned to work harder in high school: it was actually fun to succeed and get good grades later on in college, and all of my friends were National Merit Scholars and such back in those early to mid teen years when I was content simply to pass courses. As I said: working those demeaning jobs (which really were not so rotten, now that I look back) was perhaps the boot up my posterior that I needed at the time.

 

[Hercule]

I have way more past than future.

Ever since I read this comment when it was first posted some 7 years ago, it has quite literally haunted me. Yeah, it's been quite some time since birthdays were fun.

 

[Harp]

Chicago Cubs baseball suspected burnout.

Since Hendricks was relieved Seventh last game against Cleveland 'Sweet' '16 Series,
all through the next four seasons culminating Darvish's sudden hot paw handoff
to the Padres-Contreras dangled for a fast sell package deal-just cannot focus game.
Other stuff, serious stuff. Too much front office calculator metricks in dugout.
Chili Davis banishment and Joe G dismiss disavow...And the undeniable truth
Cleveland should have won the Series. Indian rotation just mowed down Cubbies
left and right. Also game changer antics. Glory hounds swinging for the sky.

 

[tonyb]

Almost but not quite all of my extended family one generation ahead of me are gone now, as are too many of my generation.

Get those conversations in now, while you still can.

 

[Zombie_61]

I have way more past than future...

So do I, and I'm fine with that. I've spent 60.8 years on this rock so far, and I'm not looking to add any time to my sentence.

 

[Harp]

If I thought my only purpose in employment was to make money for the boss, I'd jump off the pier before another sunrise.

I've been lucky, I guess. Most of the jobs I've had in my adult life have had at least the illusion of a purpose --

A worker whose sole purpose is to profit the boss, be that an individual or a corporate entity, isn't a worker at all. He or she is a serf. And I imagine deep down most people in such situations know that -- and resent it. WHen I worked in the factory, or the meat-processing place, that's how I felt about those jobs. There was no reason for me to feel otherwise in those situations. Maybe the real answer isn't to crack the whip over their backs that much harder, maybe what really needs to happen is for humanity to evolve to the point where there's more to life for more people than decades of joyless wage-serfdom leading inevitably to the grave.

In other words, Socialism. Or Communism. As Lenin scribed, From each according skill;
To each according need. In other words slavery. Lenin wished to control the people;
whom initially believed they would have a place at the table, not so. Nyet.

Labor has inherent purpose; also external reason. An individual is paid for his labor,
which serves purpose for his employer. An individual has free reason, freedom that
cannot be taken from him although it may be voluntarily forfeited. Dostoyevsky,
imprisoned saw this first hand in Russia, how men will either fight or surrender this first and last right. Milton framed this quality in his aphorism that the mind is its own place, it can make a Heaven of Hell, or a Hell of Heaven.

 

[Bushman]

A worker whose sole purpose is to profit the boss, be that an individual or a corporate entity, isn't a worker at all. He or she is a serf. And I imagine deep down most people in such situations know that -- and resent it. WHen I worked in the factory, or the meat-processing place, that's how I felt about those jobs. There was no reason for me to feel otherwise in those situations. And an employer who thinks that's reason enough for his employees to work deserves every slackadaisical goofoff or bitter saboteur he gets. Maybe the real answer isn't to crack the whip over their backs that much harder, maybe what really needs to happen is for humanity to evolve to the point where there's more to life for more people than decades of joyless wage-serfdom leading inevitably to the grave.

Alas, the trend in recent decades has been in the opposite direction. My grandfather certainly didn’t love his job, but he supported a family of six on his paycheck alone. He bought a substantial house and a new Ford every three years or so. He retired with a pension and a Social Security check. That can’t be said for people doing that work these days.

One thing I've learned working both front end job in retail to back end job in retail is that the work never ends, so don't let the work end you. It's EASY to get burned out on these kinds of jobs. The monotony and hopelessness in the infinity of the work is palpable. In the end, the trick is not to care about your job too much. You put in enough to make the boss look good, keep your head down, and put in minimal effort. As prideless as it sounds, in today's industrialized world, you put in only what you get out. Most people these days are paid bottom dollar for their work, and in return they rightly give minimal effort. As the saying goes, "they pretend to pay me, and I pretend to work."

 

[Harp]

Most people these days are paid bottom dollar for their work, and in return they rightly give minimal effort. As the saying goes, "they pretend to pay me, and I pretend to work."

ality

The quality of a man's life is directed by his pursuit of excellence.
As to ideals, again, freedom to chose is inherent. I have always believed
Oliver Wendell Holmes' observation:

If a man has the soul of Sancho Panza,
the world to him will be Sancho Panza's world;
but if has the soul of an idealist, he will make-
I do not say find-his world ideal.

There are no half measures in an ideal driven successful Life.
And in Life a man receives fair measure for what is given.

 

[Bushman]

Proverbs are fair and well for Oliver Holmes, but idealism and pursuit of excellence doesn't pay the bills. Opportunities in the real world are won by sucking up to the boss, not from the sweat of a man's brow. And if I'm to die a poor man, I'd rather die a poor man with a roof over my head and food in my belly.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^
I’m not much for sucking up. In my experience, people who maintain their “superior” status by being sucked up to are themselves a drain on the operation.

In the jobs I’ve held for any length of time, I’ve proven myself hard to be rid of. I show up on time, I know why I’m there. And I try to show the new people how to make this work no more difficult than it needs to be. It’s mostly a matter of paying attention, of getting one’s head into the tasks at hand, and not up his or her posterior. If that’s sucking up, well, then I’m a suck-up.

This is not to say that I haven’t found myself involved in work for which I was ill-suited. As I believe I mentioned earlier in this thread, I generally got myself out of those situations before people started suggesting I should.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The most disturbing realization comes when you realize that the roof you've sacrificed much to keep over your head is now riddled with holes. Not figurative holes, but actual literal holes you try to fill with that Flex-Paste gunk because you just can't afford to go further in debt.

As far as sucking up goes, I'm a trained actress. I can do what I have to do to survive, and convince myself I'm just playing another character.

 

[Woodtroll]

In the end, the trick is not to care about your job too much. You put in enough to make the boss look good, keep your head down, and put in minimal effort. As prideless as it sounds, in today's industrialized world, you put in only what you get out. Most people these days are paid bottom dollar for their work, and in return they rightly give minimal effort. As the saying goes, "they pretend to pay me, and I pretend to work.”

Well, this certainly explains a lot about the state of the current work force.

 

[Harp]

Proverbs are fair and well for Oliver Holmes, but idealism and pursuit of excellence doesn't pay the bills. Opportunities in the real world are won by sucking up to the boss, not from the sweat of a man's brow. And if I'm to die a poor man, I'd rather die a poor man with a roof over my head and food in my belly.

REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE

Raised Chicago Irish South Side; dad killed car accident; mother incapacitated stroke;
combat veteran Bronze Star valor, Purple Heart recipient; college Vietnam GI Bill;
law school night study Juris Doctorate; commodity/futures trade specialist; speculator
professional thoroughbred graded stakes handicapper

Worked through college, law school. Started KFC franchise 14yrs old
Ischemic stroke November 2021; retired

please reconsider advice given and good luck