Ride

 

One day, after twenty-five years
Head of service at the local Sears
Helen Walker put her pencil down and walked away
And all they found was a little note
'Adios' was all she wrote
But as she left, someone heard her say

"Gonna buy me a ticket to the end of the line
Wanna feel the air, breathe the countryside
As long as those wheels keep rollin', I'll be satisfied
Gonna ride, ride, ride"   (Robert Earl Keen)

This is an important day for me.  It is my last day of work before I officially retire.

Yes, I am riding off into sunset.

Yes, I am heading out to pasture.

Yes, I am hanging it up.

No more meetings, no more phone calls, no more Zoom calls, and no more TEAMS. As the kids say, if you know you know.

I won't have to ask for time off to go to the doctor or the dentist or have some work done on my car.

Schedule a vacation?  Every day is a vacation!

I can stay up and watch the ball game or a movie if I want to.

Do I feel old?  Honestly, no.

How's my health? Outstanding, no complaints.

Neither one of my parents retired. They just quit working. My dad's reason was due his health and my mom quit because she had to look after my dad. 

I'm happy I can retire. I worked for the health system for almost 22 years and the insurance company for 17 years.  That's not too shabby.

I've gone through 7 Presidents of The United States: Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden.

I've worked in the Open Concept (no cubicles). Two desk cubicles. Quad cubicles.  A cubicle with a door. Finally, I've worked the past six years in my son's old bedroom that is now "my office".

I've worked with many different people from many different areas of the country, and that part has been fun.

But somewhere in the 90's, a school of thought appeared in the business world that said work life should be as miserable as possible. Also known as "The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves" paradigm.

Over the past 30 years, I've experienced some of that. I'd read "Dilbert" in the morning before work and dog gone if it didn't happen at work the same day.

Lay-offs. Natural work teams. "Huddles".  I have been in meetings where leadership said they could replace everyone in the office with people from the bus stop.  ("Johnson, what happened to all the people that used to work here?"  "Sir, I fired them all and decided to hire the people from the bus stop."  "Who is going to train them?"  "D'oh!")

When the insurance company decided to close the office I worked at, they sent the Executive Assistant Senior Vice President of Closing Offices who said, "Well, when you look at the numbers, it was a no brainer".  I'm glad he didn't have to think about it, that would have been bad.

When I started, I did everything manually. Then came the computers.  Now I have a computer with two monitors.

When I started, I had to wear at least a dress shirt, dress slacks, dress shoes, and a tie.  In 1996 everything went from Business Attire to Wal-Mart causal.  I've worn a tie maybe six times since.  Zero times since I've worked from home. 

When I started, people could smoke cigarettes at the desk. Then, they moved it the loading dock. That's where you got all of the good office gossip.  Then they banned it from work forever.

99.9% of the people I've worked with have been real gems.

As people of my generation used to say, it has been real.

Roger Hines, one of my teachers at Wheeler, said you'll sit around your first couple of months of retirement and then you'll go out and get something else because you'll be bored. 

We'll see about that.