Rick, fantastic news!
Time to buy a dog and take up whittlin’ on the front porch (which is where I plan to be in about 15 years).
YAAAA!!! Congrats my friend. I am very happy for you and your family.
YAY for dem Swedes!!!
(and I was going to offer to buy you a consolatory Mega Millions, which is at 177 million.)
I, for one, welcome our Volvo driving swedish overlords.
I should have checked the thread again before I emailed you. Last time I checked you had bad news!
Congratulations! Be sure to send pictures of your new toy when you get it. 
Congratulations, Rick! I’m glad things worked out for you after all. Enjoy your retirement!
Congratulations, Rick!
And thank you to those who answered my question. I appreciate you taking the time to help me out.
Congratulations, Rick! I’m so glad you weren’t left to the tender mercies of American-style capitalism, and were rescued by the more socialistic Swedes!
Socialism proves its general moral superiority again!
Yay Socialism!!!
Congrats on your upcoming retirement. Sounds like the best possible decision. (I feel for one of my coworkers, who has missed the cut off age the last TWO times they’ve offered this sort of thing, fortunately, we don’t have defined benefit pensions to worry about).
Do your boss a favor and make sure to let him know you found him supportive - send a note to HIS boss and copy him - bossing is hard work and you seldom here “by the way, I think you were a great boss.”
Actually I did that this AM when I had him on the phone.
There is more to tell, but I don’t have time at the moment.
More later.
Late to this thread, but… congratulations, Rick!
For those that don’t know, I work at the same company as Rick, and I’ve seen the same thing happening to the people in my group. A summary of everything that’s happened up to this point:
[ul]
[li]The company can’t compete in the current environment due to overhead (amongst other reasons).[/li][li]The company previously bought out thousands and thousands of UAW workers. Note again that Rick is not a UAW member.[/li][li]The company in an effort to reduce salaried ranks (such as Rick) several voluntary separation programs were offered.[/li][list]
[li]“Window” opportunities were given to those eligible for retirement already, or reasonably close enough to retirement to offer early retirement with additional incentives. These were non-contestable, meaning that if you accepted one, that was it; you were guaranteed to be accepted.[/li][li]Voluntary separation opportunities were offered to non-retirement eligible employees (such as Rick), which had a few benefits, the biggest of which was money according to your time with the company (IIRC, up to 13 months of salary). These were retractable according to demand. If too many people were to accept, the company could deny packages to people, as apparently was happening to Rick. If this were to happen, people with the lowest years in the company would be denied first, meaning the highest-year people would be allowed to leave with their package (I don’t say seniority, because we’re salaried; we’re not union-style “everyone’s equal based on seniority” crap).[/li][/ul]
[li]Some groups’ timings were changed for legal reasons. In my group, people had until [/li]February 19th to turn in their acceptance of an offer.
[li]They were also given a week (until February 26th) to retract their acceptance.[/li][li]In all cases, the last day of work was to be today (February 28th).[/li][li]So what happens? Management has no friggin’ clue who’s leaving until close of business on Monday. They can’t determine a cutoff point for denying packages – if any – until Monday night and Tuesday morning. Consequently they can’t tell anyone whether the hell they’re receiving a package until Tuesday. That’s yesterday. Today’s the last day of work if you’re taking a package. Anyone see how completely fucked up this is? People have been looking for jobs and in most cases have made commitments to other employers based on their financial situations in having a package. At least here in Michigan, accepting other employment increasingly means relocating, which is not cheap; in a lot of cases, what looks like “big money” to you will barely cover relocation and housing market depreciation. If this weren’t a voluntary program then who the hell cares; it’s your problem. But this ain’t a good way to treat volunteers.[/li][li](I didn’t accept a package myself; I could be separated involuntarily at a future date with decreased benefits.)[/li][/list]
[Paul Harvey] Now for the rest of the story[/PH]
At the beginning of Feb Volvo Cars Canada invited me to attend a technical conference scheduled for this week.
So on Friday the 16th I was told that I was on the standby boarding list for the early retirement lifeboat. :mad: I was told it might take until the 26th or so before we would know.
On Tuesday morning the 20th I was told that there was no more seats on the lifeboat. 
On Thursday afternoon, I was told that there was a seat on the boat. I told my boss that my teaching schedule was set up through the end of April and did he want me to teach till the end of April? Sure that would be great.
On Monday morning, I get a call from my manager. He asks what I am doing answering the phone at 5:30AM. I tell him I am on my way to the airport to fly to Canada. He tells me I may not be able to go.
Why, I ask.
Well your last day is Wednesday the 28th.
Bwaaaah? What happened to working through April?
Turns out it was not approved.
Well boss I have a bought and paid for ticket to Canada, what do you want me to do? He told me to go ahead and take the trip, but I might have to come home on Wednesday, not Thursday as I had planned.
So at noon on Monday I get a call from the bitch from HR. The conversation did not start well.
Hi Rick this is the bitch from HR, I need to talk to you about your termination.
Well bitch from HR, I am not terminating, I am retiring, which is a very special type of termination. I would expect that anyone working in HR to know and understand the difference between these two terms.
So after some chit chat she says, I understand you are in Canada right now? Yes, I am.
I don’t understand why they let you travel when you are leaving the company on Wednesday.
so I reply, Well to start with this business trip was set up long before I knew I was leaving. In fact, I did not know I was leaving until last Thursday afternoon.
Oh you knew before that, she says.
:dubious: Oh really? Were you sitting on my bosses lap when he called me? Can you prove that?
Well I know when
At this point I cut her off and said, look either you are calling me liar, or you think I can’t read a calendar. I tell you what let’s get the lady that handles the cell phones for the company on a conference call and have her pull the records for my cell phone, and I can pinpoint the call from my boss, and my return phone call last Thursday afternoon. however if you do this, I am likely to wind up telling you just how badly HR has screwed this entire process, and you will be very unhappy with me when I am done, so if you are smart you will drop this.
She dropped the subject. 
My boss called me back that afternoon and told me officially that I had to change my return flight home to today. Seems the company does not want me traveling on their nickel if I am not an employee. Whatever.
I spent most of the last two days answering phone calls from other employees wishing me good luck.
So I had a great time in Canada, they took me out to dinner, and as a going away present they gave me a video picture frame, and an SD card full of pictures to go with.
Very nice people the Canadians.
Anyway I am now officially unemployed. If you see a guy standing on a freeway off ramp with a sign that says “Will fix Volvos for food” it will be me.
Seriously I am going to take a month or so to finish my house, and maybe take a bit of a vacation. Then it will be back to find a job. I have a couple of good prospects.
[Paul Harvey]And now you know the rest of the story[/PH]
Just wanted to say that your exchange with your HR person is like every exchange I’ve had or heard of with HR people. No offense to any HR professionals on the Dope, who I am sure are very nice, very professional people, but what is it about that career that attracts such wankers?
You should come visit us in Calgary, too, Rick, now that you’ve got so much time on your hands. We’re very nice here, too. (Come in July for the Stampede! We’ll have a Stampede Dopefest!)
Well, a significant portion of their job is firing people. Whether it is justified or not, you would have to be a bit of a wanker to enjoy doing that.
One of the prospects I have is some temp employement in Canada. if that happens, I will for sure hop over to Calgary to see you guys.