When you’ve worked three-quarters of your life, you can find it difficult to adapt to retirement. But today, which is the third anniversary of my retirement date, I find myself appreciating it more than ever. In honor of Saint Joseph the Workman, whose feast day it is, let me count the reasons...well, a few of them, anyway:
- I write my own schedule.
- The coffee is plentiful and potable.
- No one gives me static about eating at my desk.
- I only need to get dressed if I choose to leave the house.
- And what I choose to wear is no one’s business but mine.
- If the phone rings, I’m allowed to ignore it...and I often do.
- I can answer the phone “Suicide prevention. Will you please hold?”
- (Granted, that’s not a good idea if the call is from my beloved wife.)
- All my reference books are at home with me, and are easily accessed.
- And I am never told that I must attend some pointless meeting.
After pondering the above, I think Item #10 alone justifies retirement.
My gosh, in all the years I worked with computers, assembler, DEC VAX, etc., the one thing that manifested itself EVERY WEEK was the waste of time going to meetings.
ReplyDeletePeople talked about stuff totally off-topic.
People restated stuff already said.
People said self-serving stuff having nothing to do with the topic.
But, the absoulte worst: Managers spent WAY too much time trying to make a meeting MEAN something when there was nothing to say. They talked for a LONG TIME telling us what we already knew and offered NOTHING new. All they were doing was what we now call "virtue signalling" by saying the equivalent of, "I'm here for you, talk to me, we want to do the best we can no matter what it takes,"
Well, to heck with you, you waste of space. I was already doing my best. You added nothing to my ability to do my job. You just wasted 2 hours of my time. And, when I needed to "interface with another team member" I went and talked to them.
Tim Turner
Fran, after one retires, every day is Saturday.
ReplyDeleteWelcome aboard.
ReplyDeleteBTW, you've made me either realize or remember (it's been so long) that I must have had the benefits of semi-retirement for most of those years I was IC.
You see I almost never had to attend pointless meetings, and I could care less what they said about me in my absence. The reason was that any criticism could work out to the disadvantage of the critic. The boss had decided to pay out real money for my services and any critic was a salaried grunt whom the boss would then infer was criticizing him. It often turned out that my being resented by the worst performers was part of my job. I found that out over time.
I do miss some things about teaching - I loved introducing kids to cutting-edge topics, and finding them following the story long after we'd moved on. Also loved seeing those whose experiences had convinced them they weren't 'science-mnded' realize that they COULD master the concepts.
ReplyDeleteHowever, meetings were generally a complete waste of time. Ditto with mandatory 'training' - the content was aimed at the clueless, and there was no 'opt-out' that one could claim due to competency at the subject.
Retirement has been great, interrupted by the need to boost my Social Security qualifying years through substitute teaching. I still manage to get a few days here and there to just putter around with my radio stuff or other hobby.
For me, the writing is not a hobby - I build time into my schedule to chip away at it regularly.