Heck of a typo.
I almost posted in MPSIMS, so… not a typo. 
This bit reminded me of an old friend who retired about 15 years ago. He’d spent a career in local corporate IT and was generally a bright capable guy. Personable, not a nerdly goofball. So like you.
Anyhow, he got “laid off” a few years before SS age. After some casting about he ended up driving a long haul truck for a couple years. More as a Dirty Jobs once in a lifetime adventure than anything else. Found it super boring and lonely but it gave him a big dollop of peace and quiet. The work wasn’t bad and the income wasn’t great, but expenses were low and the net was positive enough that savings were going up, not down during that time. One of my bros is also an airline pilot; he also spent one multi-year furlough working as a long haul trucker. The upsides are: the training is quick and cheap and the jobs are plentiful. The downsides are, well, obvious.
Then he hit SS age and retired. And quickly got real bored. So went back to work full-ish time. And this is the part of his story that is most relevant to you.
He got a job at a counterman at an auto parts store. He loved it. No responsibility, but he got to talk to random folks, use his mechanical problem solving brain, etc. Being a LOT smarter than the typical modern retail store worker he was quickly the star of the place. He worked there 2 or 3 years then eventually retired for real. But he enjoyed that last run. And a lot more than the trucking.
My punchline to you is that counterman at a store that sells mechanical stuff, be it RVs, cars, HVAC equipment, pool supplies, hardware, etc., where people bring you problems to solve, not just buying food off your shelves might be a lot more fun and fulfilling.
Now that’s gonna be a taller order.
I’ve thought it might be fun to work at a hardware store.
Not at Costco… A friend who’s 50 just bailed on her home healthcare job and is (back) being a hostess at a very very popular breakfast joint. Super social, good pay, she seems to be enjoying it.
I retired rather than being laid off, tho it was sorta similar, since I was relatively young and I’d hoped to do 5 more years there, but the organization underwent a massive change that, well, I retired.
After a year, I was bored, and for the next 7 years, I did a series of part time or temp gigs as a mechanical drafter (after being an engineer for 26 years.) It was technical enough to keep my brain engaged but I didn’t have to go to meetings or any of that responsible nonsense. My last boss (I was in that job for almost 4 years) kept trying to convince me to be an engineer again, but I wanted no part of it. I was happy in my “demotioin” and I made decent money for what I was doing.
No advice per se - just an anecdote to roll around in your head, FWIW.
The problem with a retail job is you’re almost certainly not working 9-5 Monday through Friday. Instead, you’ll need to work weekends, evening shifts and so forth. You may not overlap with your wife’s work hours so you’re not going to see her regularly.
Sounds to me like they are going to be bringing you back - as a consultant, of course, and paying consultant rates for it.
That depends greatly on how much the Boss has a clue about the entire business she’s been running for ~6 months. And can directly connect the drop in revenue with the absence of the OP’s work. And how much her ego lets her admit she utterly screwed up.
An interesting side question. …
The OP’s employer is essentially a flavor of trade association. The OP’s role in it is take one sort of (very) dirty data from their member businesses, clean it up pretty, and pass it along to a larger org. The OP’s employer receives revenue from the larger org for doing so.
What happens if the OP stops cleaning the data and his former employer just passes the incoming dirty data up the chain? If they still get paid, what do they care how much they’re doing a public disservice?
Enshittification rules.
A year.
BMCRA runs the files through data verification programs. If there is anything missing or out of place (or if the aging amounts don’t balance) the record is dropped. If a record contains a ‘care of’ note in one of the fields, it is dropped. They used to pay us by the number of records that we sent. Now they pay based on inquiries (so we don’t make as much). Anyway, records not reported will not be inquired upon.
Another thing is that companies might be mis-merged with other companies if, as in my previous example.
I agree completely that clean data is something every business owes every other business they interact with.
But I’m trying to think like a profit-obsessed blinkered CEO. If your employer delivers shitty data, will any harm come back to your employer? Either reputational or revenue? Collateral damage to anyone else is simply not her problem.
It sounds like the answers are “No” and “A smidgen … eventually”. I also assume from our prior convos on this topic that your employer persuading the member orgs to send you cleaner, more compliant data is a non-starter.
Bottom line, IMO if you are actually providing value above your total cost of employment, now’s the time to document / demonstrate that to them. Because they sure don’t believe that now. If you can’t, there’s no hope of keeping the job or being called back as a contractor when their data submission process to BMCRA collapses in a heap on the floor.
will a drop in data quality even be noticed? … that is probably the most relevant question here…
is there a chance you can make them notice it pretty soon? an easteregg maybe …
I don’t know. This sounds like a cheap company with little to no data governance strategy or policy. It feels like a lot of the sort of consulting projects I would get called in on which are often some variation of “we need someone to fix our broken data infrastructure that used to be maintained by this one guy who left the company six months ago.” Well @Johnny_L.A is “that guy”.
When have you ever known a CEO to let their ego admin they utterly screwed up? And then what? Admit to the world that @Johnny_L.A has the ability to hold their business hostage?
If the OP can convince them to keep him on as a contractor that’s great (assuming that’s what he wants). But it might be better for the OP to move on and focus on whatever he plans to do next .
Yeah, it sounds like this is a really small company and my guess is that the president just doesn’t have the skill set necessary to understand what’s going on.
I think an important piece of info is getting missed - his employer is a non-profit company. They are most likely trying just to stay open at this point, given everything else going on. This may be a “trying to get blood out of a stone” situation and there just isn’t any money. If they don’t think they can afford him now, they certainly aren’t going to pay him a consultant’s rate.
And they may be cutting the role because it is less lucrative than other positions at the company. Johnny_L.A says that he brings in roughly double what his salary is. After employer payroll taxes, retirement contributions, and paying for whatever portion of his (and his wife’s?) medical insurance premium, there may not be a lot of money left over. Even if revenue from the data drops by 50% they may still come out ahead without paying for someone in his role.
If I were in your shoes, I’d be seriously considering taking one of the entry-level jobs you’ve heard about (assuming you can take the pay cut and that you/your wife will be able to get medical insurance). Costco, etc. are great employers but you probably won’t work the same hours as your wife. Although since she sets her own hours it might be possible for her to shift when she sees patients and help alleviate some of that disconnect.
And I would bail on your current employer as soon as you’ve got an offer in hand.
I need the medical insurance. She has TRICARE.
Yes. I will be professional to the end, but I’ll bail if I get an offer.
Nitpick - jobs like working at Costco aren’t “entry level jobs”. “Entry level” implies the job is a starting point (often unglamorous) to get your foot in the door and learn some valuable skills to build on for a much longer career in a company or industry.
AFAIK a job as a cashier or stockboy (or whatever the actual positions are) at Costco typically doesn’t progress anywhere. Maybe some kind of supervisor or manager for a lucky few.
Perhaps a better term would be “exit-level” jobs as the implication seems to be @Johnny_L.A doesn’t want to really advance in his career and is just looking to ride out his remaining work years doing a low-level job without a lot of responsibility.
A couple of thoughts on that:
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I’ve worked every manner of low-level job when I was a teenager. I don’t know they are any less stressful than a corporate job. And in many cases I find them a lot more stressful. They typically are low pay and zero prestige. You aren’t working with the best and the brightest (which includes their management). You often ARE working with the general public and all that entails. So psychologically, I know I wouldn’t feel great about taking that much of a step backwards. To me it’s dealing with at least as much work bullshit but without the compensation and prestige to go with it.
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I don’t know that these jobs are any easier to get. There’s a lower requirement to get in, but that means there are a lot more eligible applicants.
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Not knowing how much longer @Johnny_L.A has until retirement (is he in his 40s? 60s?) or his financial situation, it may be better to pursue something that might advance his career a bit. I’m not saying he has to go work for Google or anything. But try and leverage your skills and experience in a job or industry you are actually interested in instead of one you think will offer the least amount of effort.
Because to be honest, I don’t know that there are a lot of companies out there right now looking to provide do-nothing jobs for people looking to coast out the years until retirement.
Easy enough to miss in the thread, but the relevant context.
I think Johnny_L.A can afford to take a job with no likelihood of significant job growth. So long as it provides health insurance and enough income to pay the bills for a couple of years.
Ninja’d
I got a list of jobs from Indeed, and the first one was for an Accounts Payable Specialist with one of our members. I applied for it. I also sent an email to the contact name I have on my spreadsheet. (I’ve never contacted her, as our Portland affiliate sends me their files.) It’s 44 miles away, which is pretty good. I’ve commuted 35, 45, 65, 70, and 100+ miles in my life.
A non-profit membership company. They’re always saying that all membership organisations are losing members, and so are we.
ETA: In reference to that job I just applied for. I’m right in the middle of their pay range.