A Decade of Retirement

Today marks the ten-year anniversary of walking out of work for the last time. When I did, I thought I’d return for the occasional visit to see how old friends were doing. The reality is that I haven’t been anywhere near the place since. I’m glad to have at long last shed my corporate cloak, glad to have finally escaped.

I’ve very much enjoyed being retired. Finding something to do has never been a problem for me. Quite to the contrary, I’m delighted to have all the time to pursue my hobbies and interests.

And it’s done wonders for my overall mood and outlook on life. I’m a much happier person being out of the “rat race”.

A big truth here is that the corporate world always fitted poorly on me. Being a good corporate component was neither an easy skill nor one I particularly wanted to acquire. There are so many aspects of corporate life that oppose my values.

Two I struggled constantly with: truth and quality. My parents taught me to be truthful and to always do my best at any job. Those are not values always widely appreciated in the corporate view, especially the first.

As in politics, truth is often sacrificed in the name of appearances. Even companies that avoid active dishonesty are often selective in the truths they’re willing to express. There are legitimate corporate secrets that must be protected, of course, but contrast that with how tobacco and chemical companies worked very hard to suppress the truth about the dangers of their products.

One problem with the corporate system is uninvolved stockholders who care only for the return on their investment, care only about the size of their dividends. This introduces an element of soulless greed that all too often reduces the quality of the corporate product.

I’ve been in meetings where the topic of discussion was how much product quality could be sacrificed in the name of greater profits without causing our customers to go elsewhere. Such discussions were usually disguised in clever corporate-speak, but that’s what those meetings were really about.

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One of the sillier employee propaganda campaigns we were subjected to had the slogan “Quality is Free”. Somewhere on a dusty upper kitchen shelf I still have a coffee cup emblazoned with that slogan.

The intent was to encourage employees to always do their best. That they often don’t is a sad truth about people and the nature of modern employment. We no longer place high value on work ethics. The notion of always doing your best, no matter what your job, somehow got lost in the shuffle. We lost our sense of pride.

But quality is not free. There absolutely is a cost to it. For one thing, low wages are a direct cause of employees not giving it their best. Pay people what they’re worth, and some pride kicks in. (Or at least, it should. The modern work ethic has so badly declined that high wages are taken more as an entitlement than a reward for good work.)

A better example, and one that’s long stuck in my craw, involves customer service and user documentation. These things are invariably cost sinks from a short-term corporate point of view. Generally speaking, there is no way for a company to earn back — let alone profit from — what it costs to support their products.

What this short-sighted view misses, though, is the long-term benefits of customer loyalty and goodwill — admittedly a hard thing to measure on a spreadsheet. Further, the upfront cost of good user documentation (which can be notable) means fewer calls to whatever hotlines a company is willing to provide.

Modern technology, in the form of websites and AI chatbots, tries to fill that role now and allows a company to spend as little as possible on customer service. The result, at least in my mind, at least so far, is less than ideal.

[On a related note, I’m furious with Apple Corporation for the way they skimp on their free apps — the stuff that comes on your iPhone or iPad. They’ve shifted from making hardware with decent software to being a content provider. Be it Apple TV, Apple Books, Apple Music, Apple News, Apple Pay, this is the revenue stream they seek. So, their free apps are increasingly shit. (Their weather app is the worst I’ve ever seen. Utterly broken and useless.) On top of that, I’ve had horrible experiences with their customer “support” to the point I’ve vowed to never subscribe to any service they push. I used to respect them for their quality, but that ship sailed and sank. See also Depressed and Disappointed & I Hate Apple!]

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But enough yelling at clouds. (But I’m old and retired and therefore allowed to rant and rail. And get off my lawn!)

Ten years of retirement. How the time does fly. In large part because of being older. One’s internal clock ticks slower as one ages, so the world seems to move by faster. I still think the way a year becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of your life plays a minor role. [See BB #72: Perception of Time]

Perhaps less than the mere time fractions involved, it’s the storehouse of memories and experiences. Unless one actively seeks new experiences, one day becomes much like any other day. When there isn’t much to record in one’s mental diary, the days merge into one another. Much of our perception of time is bound to how much we remember about (or learned in) the past week, month, or year.

I’ve been focused on getting stuff done this year — finally doing some of things on my TODO list that I’ve been putting off for years. One consequence is that the past half-year feels longer to me than some recent entire years.

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The thing about being retired, especially if one is single, is that for the first time ever, your life is totally your own.

There is some degree of freedom before grade school, but at that young age parents tend to run your life (rightfully so, of course). Kindergarten is fairly carefree, but once you hit first grade, there’s a clock in your life five days a week. And class assignments and homework. And having to be around people you may not like (such as bullies and kids lacking in manners or good hygiene).

The workload and time requirements get worse in high school. Often that’s about the time one joins the workforce. The (usually small) paycheck is wonderful, but it also adds another demanding clock and a new set of tasks and requirements.

College amplifies both the scholastic and workforce demands. Worse for many, colleges (at least in my day) don’t nag you about performing the way lower education systems do (at least in my day). College expects you to know what you’re doing, expects you to want to be there learning, and allows you to swim or sink on your own. The demands now come from within.

After college, unless one is rich (and most of us aren’t), one has to support oneself. The roof, bed, food, car, gas, utilities, possessions, and entertainment all have to be paid for. (And many have to pay back school loans.) Now the penalty for not keeping the hamster wheel spinning is more than bad grades or expulsion. Now the clock really calls the rhythm for the tune of your life.

But once you retire, all that goes away. No more teachers, no more books, no more boss’s dirty looks. No more clock, no more maze running, no more spinning the wheel, be it hamster or grindstone.

Unless you want to. The choice, though, is yours.

[At least in the ideal case. I was blessed and lucky in this regard, and I’m very aware of that. Because my needs are small, my pension and Social Security provide an adequate non-materialistic life and give me the luxury of no longer having to give a shit. I don’t even watch the news anymore (and completely ignore politics). In consequence, my mental health is ever so much better.]

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There is some irony for me in how the work world evolved.

When I started as a field tech in Los Angeles back in January of 1980, even though most of us worked on machines with spinning motors and moving parts, we were expected to wear a tie. To avoid strangulation, we generally wore clip-on ties in case they got caught in the machinery.

At some point, in part due to complaints from the techs, in part due to a more casual world, they removed that requirement. A happy day for techs, and I doubt most customers even noticed the change.

I transferred to a national support desk job here in Minnesota in 1984, and while suits or jackets weren’t required (except for managers, of course), everyone was expected to dress in appropriate office wear (nice slacks and shirts for men, pant suits or nice dresses or skirts and blouses for women). You could get called onto the carpet, even sent home, by your boss if you violated the standard.

Then “Casual Fridays” became a thing (although not too casual — no sleeveless tops, shorts, or sandals). Eventually, Casual Fridays expanded to fill the week, and the dress code largely went out the window. Not entirely, of course. One still needed to be appropriate for a business environment (a friend of mine got in trouble several times for her short skirts).

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A more biting irony to me was how hard I fought to work at home versus the current environment that encourages it in employees whose work allows it. Obviously, some jobs require the employee to be there physically, but many do not.

I developed software, so my job definitely did not. I was far more productive at home than at work. For one thing, it was too easy for others to interrupt me when I was present and accounted for in my cubical. Studies have shown that, after an interruption to a mentally demanding task (such as developing software), it takes at least 20 minutes to recover your mindset.

I’ve often compared developing software to those old-fashioned variety show acts where the performer keeps lots of plates spinning on flexible poles. They’d dash around frantically keeping each plate spinning fast enough so it wouldn’t fall (and break — the best part for viewers). Interrupting that flow means all the plates fall.

It wasn’t uncommon during debugging to find a weird bug that likely came from being interrupted and having the plates crash. Often, a development task generates a sub-task, and that sub-task generates a sub-sub-task, and so on stacked for as many levels as needed. One has to unwind those sub-tasks properly. An interruption makes you forget where you are in the stack.

Working from home I put in longer days and did more intense (and more accurate) work. But convincing management of that was a battle. Most of my bosses weren’t capable of fully understanding my work. Few of them were results oriented.

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In the last years of my career, my perceived value to management declined. Metaphorically, I was an expert tailor who designed and made custom clothing. But The Company increasingly determined to buy off-the-rack, because it was cheaper.

The thing is, no one buys off-the-rack because it’s better — off-the-rack is never better than tailored. In fact, sometimes the difference is extreme. And when the fit is poor, or the seams fall apart, what are you going to do? Tailored clothing fits perfectly and your friendly neighborhood tailor is always there to fix any problems.

Things got so dicey in the later years that I ultimately decided to retire early despite the reduced pension.

I did the math and decided I could manage okay (because I’m single, have no kids, and my needs are small). So, ten years ago today, after some cake and good-byes, out the door I went.

Regrets: ZERO!

[For more work tales, see: Gobsmacked! & Ground Rush & Reflections: Work & Change. For the days leading into retirement, see: 10… 9… & 8,… 7,… 6,… 5,… & 4,… 3,… 2,… 1 & lastly Weekend Frisson.]

Stay retiring, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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