About six weeks ago, I got tired of being angry all the time and gave notice. Then folks got sick, went on travel, they couldn’t find new employees, so I went on a semi-permanent on-call status. Since then, I’ve worked more than I have since I first started. (That’s a whole other rant.) But now it’s fine because on those rare occasions I give a shit, I tell them ratherly impolitely. The manager commented that I seemed to be happier, and I told her why. She’s had trouble accepting that as not a joke.
I turned 60 and started doing that “not getting undies in a bundle” thing at work.
I’m now pretending that I’m retired, or that I’m a consultant, and that nothing anyone thinks about me matters. Because I finally figured out that it doesn’t. If this were a workplace dark comedy, by not caring, I’d end up doing a better job. By ignoring others, they’d respect me more.
(My brother turned 60 and I texted “Welcome to the Not Caring What Anyone Thinks Of You decade!”)
To me another part is that my bullshitradar and shitradar have gotten better: I detect the problems faster. Stuff which would have blindsided me after months twenty years ago, now I see it before the end of the first week, day or even meeting.
I’m very grateful that I learned to say “not my circus, nor my monkeys”, but even so I don’t think I’ll ever learn to not be irritated by willful stupidity. Haven’t found any reasons why I should, other than “it’s bad for my liver”, but given that my liver profile is fine…
What I consider annoyances are precisely the things that keep the work from being done in any kind of reasonable fashion. Having to fill up a bunch of forms every week, ok, I’ve had bosses who needed more forms and others who needed less but they all need some kind of reports; the formats changing every week, improductive and therefore irritating. Clients having different ideas about how to do the same task, normal; having several of my so-called main contacts be on the project 10% of the time (or even 5%), or them having bosses who couldn’t be arsed to do the job but who also can’t accept what the subordinate says, improductive and therefore irritating. A company which has broad-strokes policies and details which vary by site, fine; one where the policies handed down on stone tablets don’t and can’t work on the floor, and where every factory has come up with a different solution to what’s actually a common problem, and where it is considered unacceptable to point out that this problem exists (when not only does it exist but it exists in each and every one of the factories): improductive, stupid and irritating.
I agree. Eventually the accumulation of micro-humiliations and degradations in corporate life reach someone’s personal limit. Even at decent companies you still face these, along with whatever middle-school fad management has adopted in their never-ending quest to believe they’re relevant. The latest trend seems to be open-office, which is the only thing actually worse than a cube. I guess we’re pretending to be Agile now too, but I really don’t care anymore. I’m still figuring out who Fagan was.
Here’s the most recent FU from the corp. Apparently some pisswipe in a suit decided to change the leave rules at our company this year. I was off for a week for heart stents and got back to discover I had been denied paid leave because it wasn’t a consecutive calendar week. And received a message that I was facing disciplinary action for being away from work without legitimate leave (I had entered the normal code for hospital leave, assuming nothing had changed). They told me I needed to do something about this immediately.
So I obliged them – Yesterday I chose the date and formally requested my retirement separation package. I’ve been considering it for a while but that pushed me over the edge.
Instead of a mental health day, I’m taking a mental health life.
Quick take: if it isn’t bringing in money, it’s not a business; it’s a hobby. Sorry, I don’t mean to come across as snarky, but I’ve been confronted with that reality myself when it comes to my own side-hustles. That doesn’t mean it can’t eventually become profitable of course, and I assume that’s the goal. But it’s always important to remember the bottom line and make financial decisions based on that.
Not quite 50, and I’m already there. 
But I need the money.
I don’t necessarily think that there is a back room per se, but one thing I’ve noticed over the years is that there definitely is such a thing as an inner circle in every workplace. There’s usually a clique or a group of people, which includes management and even management-wannabes looking for the next rung on the ladder, who informally discuss changes to the workplace, make decisions informally, and then present everyone else with what their brainchild has given birth to. Many of these in the clique are young and inexperienced but are tech savvy and think they know everything, and then they seem surprised when they get told that their brilliant ideas involving managing people might have flaws or might not work the way they anticipated. And then these young Napoleons or Queen Elizabeths get defensive and testy when people speak up.
This.
And also, don’t bring work home with you.
No offense taken, and I’ve heard that before. I was very flippant (in order to be brief) when I described my shop, and I agree that it’s currently at hobby levels. But it’s in it’s 4th year of existence, and after I rebranded/pivoted it last year it’s picking up momentum. Now I’ve settled into a pattern where I spend my time on it 50% order fulfillment and 50% marketing tasks. I take it completely seriously and run it as a business, with a business plan that I update annually, budgets and forecasts and financial analysis, and definitely the goal to be profitable. One of the things that has been really annoying me is having to sit at my paid desk job for hours each day pretending to work because there’s not enough to do, when I could be working on my shop. It’s an odd irony that I’m being paid to be unproductive while my side business that I actually can be productive at isn’t yet at the level to bring me a wage. But it will get there.
I’ll post more in a bit. I need to run to a 4-hour meeting for my paid job now.
I’m not sure, but I will definitely look for them. There are a million contracting and staffing agencies around, but I think the challenge these days is to figure out which are the body shops and which are legit agencies. I am also thinking of registering to work with several of the online ones like Upwork, Toptal, and Freelancer.com. I’m hearing bad things about all of them, but other freelancers have said that it’s a good idea to not limit yourself to just one. I also expect that it will take some time to get work. There are many more people freelancing than there are projects/gigs (at least on Upwork), so even freelancing is highly competitive. I do have my many years of experience in my favor, though. Also, I know how to present myself as a professional instead of a bottom-dollar hack. 
Ne’er were more tragic words penned…
I started drawing in meetings. So now I can tolerate the needlessly long ones, knowing that I’ll get some solid doodling time in. If you prop your padfolio just right, no one can see what you’re writing, and they’ll assume you’re attentively taking notes, especially if you occasionally look up and nod. (I’ve perfected the Raised Eyebrow Nod that says “Wow, you get what’s going on. I’m going to write down your insightful comment so I can reread it once a day.”)
And lately my side hustle is selling my drawings, so I can look around the conference room and feel superior, because I’m the only one for whom the meeting is profitable.
I had a sort of epiphany about 3 years ago, after working for the same company for about 8.5 years at that point.
I realized that NOTHING I had done outside of about a 2 years prior horizon mattered at all, other than it had kept me employed that long. Nobody cared about it anymore, and hell, nobody even knew about it anymore. And I reflected on a couple of co-workers who’d left a few years prior- nobody knew or cared one bit about their contributions; a few of us remembered them as people, but that was as far as it went. And along with this, I realized that I have very little inclination to actually get promoted very far and run things. I’ve seen my brother-in-law’s lifestyle (he’s a IT VP for an insurance company, while I’m a senior staff/jr. management sort), and I wouldn’t trade him for anything.
So I basically decided that none of it was worth the amount of stress and anguish that I was experiencing in trying to keep the wheels on around there. I found a new job in public service/government IT, and now I am much less stressed and worried about things. If it’s important, it’ll get done, and if it’s not, it won’t. Things have a way of sorting themselves out without me trying to force the square pegs into round holes.
About the only things that still make me clench my teeth are dumb-ass petty office politics and counterproductive policies (especially). For example, we’re bound by law to follow some byzantine and convoluted purchasing processes - a lot of stuff has to go out for competitive bid (lowest bidder). This sounds good from a cost minimization perspective, but for a lot of IT stuff, it’s not as simple as ordering a pallet of ballpoint pens, and the purchasing/bid process introduces a whole lot of ambiguity and confusion that private companies typically avoid. That kind of thing frustrates me, because it seems simple to solve, but nobody seems willing.
You, sir, are a God. Well done!
I admit that I spend too much time in my head. But I’m an introverted analyst, so… yeah, it’s hard to avoid the crazy. I think I do a fair job of hiding it from others, but I do make myself insane at times, and that’s when I start venting online. Anyway, after many vents and people telling me that my primary problem is that I care too much, I’ve been working on that. I’ve gotten to a place where I don’t care so things that used to enrage me, no longer do. But now I frequently wonder if I’m being so care-free that people are noticing that I don’t give a shit and I’m one step from being terminated. Now I make myself crazy by wobbling madly between “this is stupid, it shouldn’t be like this” and “not my circus not my monkeys, oh the director is glaring at me, am I acting too cavalier?”
:smack:
Best description of late-career work life ever!
I don’t know about that. My experience has been that freelancers and consultants are pretty easy to cut loose when they can’t unfuck the mess the company made.
I’m kind of reminded of Tommy Lee Jone’s quote from Under Siege: “I got tired of coming up with last-minute desperate solutions to impossible problems created by other fucking people.”
Of course, Steven Segal had the perfect response:
“All of your ridiculous pitiful antics aren’t gonna change a thing. You and me, we’re puppets in the same sick game. We serve the same master, and he’s a lunatic and he’s ungrateful. But there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Tolerance for asinine behavior/comments by colleagues does tend to decrease as one gets older, particularly as one begins to see the retirement light at the end of the tunnel.
I find myself emulating comedian Franklin Ajaye, who got through on-the-job annoyances by appending silent comments to his verbal interactions with customers.
“Do you carry Pierre Cardin slacks?” “Yes, sir” (but they won’t fit your fat ass).