I suppose I wasn’t clear that this is jurisdictional dependent.
I’m in Québec. The applicable laws are “ordre publique” (I don’t know the translation there?) and apply to anyone and everyone in the province. The penalties are fines but they apply to people who aren’t members as much as to people who are whether or not we agree with the law.
The law is, of course, different elsewhere. But calling yourself an “ingénieur” when you are not an active member of the OIQ is a legal violation in this jurisdiction.
It appears actuaries must be members of a national order, not provincial ones. I’ve never looked into it though. https://www.cia-ica.ca/fr/
I believe Canada regulates who can call themselves an actuary, but the US does not. Sorry, if you are Canadian, you probably can’t call yourself an actuary. But if you visit me in the US, you are legally free to do so.
(My professional organization serves both US and Canadian actuaries, so I’m often vaguely aware of what’s different between the US and Canada for actuarial issues.)
Ha! I don’t see a future where I’d ever call myself an actuary - that job is scary and intimidating to me!
I meant all this to be an explanation as to why certain jobs tend to have people specify they are retired while others don’t as much. It’s in part because they are required to, and people just stick to their professional obligations training for that. My in-laws are very careful to specify they are retired doctors (also in Québec).
I have a previous degree and I worked in an entirely different industry for a few years, and I do like to joke that I’m retired from that, even though I’m very much still working. It was not a regulated profession.
They don’t work for the government, they work for the Department of Defense. I did tech support for a sales call there once. Our sales guy asked for their card, and they just laughed at him.
They weren’t interested in our stuff, thank Og. Assuming they didn’t copy our code themselves, of course.
Depending on the context, I either say retired or mathematician. If it is a government or similar situation where they want to know where my income comes from, I am retired. But for the first 20 years after I retired, I was still doing research and publishing papers, so I called myself mathematician. I don’t know what should say now. Dodderer maybe.
This is interesting. In my circle, I don’t know anyone who identifies themselves in any way by his former profession. “I’m retired” is the standard. That includes executives, IT guys, carpenters, electricians, nurses. It’s not a question or decision that would have even occurred to me.
The further I get from my former field (advertising/public relations) the less I use it to identify myself. For one thing, the industry has changed so much with the decline of traditional media and the rise of social media that I no longer feel I would be competent if I went back to work. It’s like being a TV repairman from the 1950s.
Wow, if I could get a party time job, I’d consider getting a one!
Same here. My last job title before I retired was Senior Systems Analyst (3, if you want to be really pedantic), but I’ve never referred to this at all during the 10 years since retirement except for the time I was empanelled for jury duty, and I was specifically asked.
Retirees: do you identify as “a (whatever)” or as a “retired (whatever)"?
When I was working I never identified as “a whatever”. I am not my job or career. I am not my education. They are aspects of my life, markers of my place in society, but they are not “me”. I would certainly say “I worked as a [whatever]”, or “My job was [whatever] at [wherever]”. But in the privacy of my own mind I was never a [whatever]. And tried to speak in alignment with that belief.
I like the cut of your jib, Mister! She’s in the wrong, so smack her back, but gently in a loving way.
My Dad had a very comfortable retirement. Sadly he didn’t live too many years, but it was great while it lasted.
He found himself on lots of charity solicitation call lists. Years before email, text, or caller ID. He took great pleasure in f***ing with these folks. When they’d ask for money he’d put on a hang-dog embarrassed sort of tone and say “Well, actually, I’m unemployed right now. Can’t really spare a dollar.” He did have charities he supported well, but not the ones that called on the phone.
I haven’t had a chance to adopt his / your answer yet, but I’ve got it ready.
As to my real answer:
I’ve been retired a mere 8 months now. So I’m still learning how to play this new game. But I am loving it!
Many of my friends are former co-workers, themselves either retired or still active. I sure don’t think of myself as current at my former job; I could survive an attempted day at work, but it’d be ugly. Among that crowd the topic never comes up; everybody already knows that score.
I’ve had several overlapping occupations over the years, with airline piloting being the primary. USAF officer, software developer, COO, and small business owner / partner are the other main ones, but there are several more minor items in the history file too.
If someone asks about occupation in a social context, my answer was “I work as a pilot for XYZ Airlines”. Now my answer is “I’m retired from working as a pilot for XYZ Airlines”. I’m still in good enough shape that to look at me it’s plausible I could still be working or be retired.
As with @Hari_Seldon, sometimes the context deserves a different answer. When yakking with IT folks or business owners, that part of my life may be more relevant to emphasize. Likewise at an e.g. cocktail party full of people I’ll never see again. If I want to seem interesting and field a bunch of questions I say “pilot”. If I want to seem boring and uninteresting so they’ll move on I’ll say “IT guru”.
I think that has a lot to do with the age of one’s circle.
I was a condo prez from roughly my age 58-62. Of my 250 residents we had many retirees. Ages ranging from 50s who had just retired with a generous pension (or disability) from teaching, police work, or diligent saving and canny / lucky investing all the way to age 85 and a very few people just touching 90 while still living on their own.
The folks retired a couple of years tended, as working-age folks do, to use “what’s your (former) occupation?” as a canned conversation starter. The folks whose last year working was 10, 15, or 20 years ago not so much. I look forward to joining that latter group where my work life is irrelevant and how / where I’ve been partying / traveling / ???-ing since is the relevant question.
My circle might ask someone what they used to do for a living as small talk. But if someone asked where someone else worked, they’d say, “Oh, I’m retired.” Not “I’m a retired [fill in the blank].”
I’m 63, and I’d say our peeps are plus or minus 7 years of that.
When, say, at a cocktail party, I meet somebody new, it’s natural to ask each other “what do you do?” (it’s the polite way of deciding whether it’s worth it to both of you to keep up the charade of caring, )
But also, it’s a logical and perfectly legitimate thing to ask somebody. And answering with just " I’m retired" is very, very vague.
If I’m interested in getting to know someone, or them getting to know me, it’s necessary to give them some actual data about who I am . So I’ll say what I used to do.
Unless I really am participating in a charade, Then I’m just retired.
Now get off my lawn.
Yeah, as I mentioned, “what did you do?” is perfectly cromulent small talk, my circle included, and the answer would be something specific. But if someone asked where I worked, or when I get off work, or does your workplace have a cafeteria, etc., my answer would be, “Oh, I’m retired.” Unless specifically asked what I used to do for a living, it would not occur to me to identify my self as “Stratocaster, retired lion tamer” in any other context.
Maybe we’re all saying the same thing and I’m misunderstanding.
I think that may be part of it - as far as a lot of people are concerned, knowing what they did for a living (last) doesn’t really tell you anything about them. If I worked as a cashier in a shoe store , then at the front desk in a doctor’s office and then as an assistant at a real estate agency what does that tell you about me as a a person?
And how would I even answer " What did you do" if I had very different jobs? It’s not that difficult when you did one thing your whole career - maybe you sold different products but were always a salesperson but there are plenty of people who have had different jobs that didn’t have much in common.
It tells me that you are a normal person, and not an insufferable bore who will try to impress me with stories about her great career in investment banking, dropping names of big-time Wall Street honchos who I am supposed to recognize and respect.
(The next time I got invited to a cocktail party at that house, I didn’t go. )
My cousin and best friend is really a singer, and plays multiple instruments. She works as a tax preparer. She hates it, but is really good at it. Math and music sort of hold hands, so I suspect that’s a large part of it.
A nephew, also a good friend has a degree in anthropology. So he’s a barista and is trying to break into the music business. Not sure if he is in a band at the moment.
I dropped out of the only computer programming class I’ve had. I Hated it. That was back in punch card days. I now write code and manage databases for a living.
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