that’s terrible, I’m sorry for your loss Czarcasm.
My condolences to you and to his family. And yes we should have a better safety net. Medicare and Social Security are something but I’d agree not enough for those who have not saved amply or who have outlived their savings.
But I’ll risk sounding like the asshole here. Would this had been less of a tragedy if instead of your 83 year old friend a 45 year old person you did not know was senselessly and brutally murdered while on the job just “checking locks and making sure things are secure”?
It was a senseless brutal crime.
My condolences.
Well done. I am tempted to add that the event doesn’t meet the classic definition of tragedy with which I am most familiar. Instead, I’ll just say, to the friends and family of the 45 year old, yes.
Once, during a town hall meeting, a little old lady told then President Dubya Bush that she had to work three jobs just to survive, and the Shrub gushed over her wonderful American work ethic.
These are the kind of clueless creatures that are ruling our lives.
If he was 45 years old, I would still be grieving…but I wouldn’t be pissed off that he still had to work at his age, and/or that he had to be put in such danger at his age.
And if I grieved as much for all the 45 year olds that I don’t personally know whose lives ended as tragically, I would be sitting here screaming through the night.
How horrible. I’m so sorry.
Wow; that is a terrible, terrible thing that happened to Mr. Lyons. My condolences to you, Czarcasm and to his wife, his other family and his friends.
That really sucks. My condolences, Czarcasm.
That’s horrendous. I’m so sorry, Czarcasm, and my heart goes out to his loved ones.
My condolences, Czarcasm. What a horrible thing to happen to your friend.
I wonder too why he was still working. Some people continue to work after reaching
retirement age because they want to, not because they need the money. It might
sound nice to sit around the house and watch T.V. but after a few weeks or months
most of us would probably become bored.
Hope they find the person who did this terrible thing.
This is horrifying, Czarcasm. I echo your anger. We need to do much better. I’m so sorry.
We have “Social Security” which pays around $1200 a month for a single income worker once you hit retirement age, which is only enough to scrape by on without another job/pension/savings in unusual circumstances. You’d need some combination of living in a cheap part of the country, owning your own house, and low medical expenses. It’s the equivalent of a (slightly more than) minimum wage job, which young people, who already have low medical expenses, find it hard to make do with.
Plus, some people might not even get $1200 a month because it’s based on past earnings. Upper middle class people get slightly more than that, and lower middle class people get slightly less.
That crossed my mind too. I guess Czarcasm knows him well enough to know that that’s not the case here. But the current version of the OP’s link does say
It sounded like his employer didn’t expect this to be a dangerous job.
They may have to rethink that.
Or not. (People are killed senselessly in all sorts of jobs that are not in general dangerous and even just walking down the street.) But for discussion accept that it should be considered one.
Let’s assume that Mr. Lyons needed to work for the money. No one forced him to take that specific job. He applied for it and was hired. Should the company have not been allowed to hire an older man for the job? Obviously the company did not foresee the risk of some crazed idiots killing an unarmed night watchman on patrol checking the locks, but should they be deciding that it is better to put a younger person at that risk and that an older person who needs or wants the work should have their application declined?
I feel for Czarcasm’s loss. And the tragedy did not occur because his friend was old. If Mr. Lyons was a 45 year old on that job running into whoever it was doing whatever when on patrol (a drug deal going down? who knows?) he’d still have been just as dead and his loss would be the same tragedy.
If the job was patrolling a portion of the industrial park that contained truck parts and making sure it was secured ready to call in any activity that looked suspicious then being armed would not really be considered necessary and most truck part thieves are not interested in killing for the parts. And if dealing with someone or ones who are willing to kill if discovered then being younger or maybe even being armed would not likely likely helped too much.
The senselessness and tragicness of someone on a simple night patrol being murdered are unquestionable. The specific anger that the night watchman was older and shouldn’t have been “let” work that job? That part I don’t get.
Angry that some older Americans have to work to be able to afford a very basic lifestyle? Fine. That’s the case for greeters at Walmart and older Americans working at McDonalds too.
I guess I don’t understand why you’re stuck on this,** DSeid**. Tragic is tragic. If Czarcasm’s friend had been 45, there would’ve been a tragic aspect to his death then, too. He was a father, brother, son, didn’t have a family, etc. That this fellow was 83 is just a detail of his life and doesn’t diminish anyone else’s death.
If I may presume:
DSeid, this is a condolence and vent thread. Your comments are insensitive.
Helena330 the age was not presented merely as a detail about his life but as a reason for being “very pissed off”:
Others jumped right in making this a political commentary thread.
I offer my condolences and I agree with venting about those who cruelly took another’s life. But that’s not what the op is angry and venting about j666. Blaming this specific tragic event on our government not providing adequately for the elderly without savings and suggesting that the elderly should not be let work such jobs … sorry that that rubbed me the wrong way. The two have nothing to do with each other.
Stranger
Stop. This is not about you.
Did he need to or did he want to? My grandfather worked until the day he died at 86 years old. He was healthy, he loved being there and he had no interest in sitting around the house doing nothing all day long. I know quite a few other people that work(ed) until they were physically or mentally unable to do it any longer.
Sure, some do it for the money or insurance, but some do it almost as a hobby. The article made it sound like he enjoyed working.