Retirees - what made you say good-bye to your job?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Everyone has that moment, right? The realization that it’s time to kick back and enjoy the theoretical golden years - time to travel or take up a full-time hobby or just veg and enjoy idleness. What was your trigger? Did it last?

In 2011, the command where I worked was going thru yet another reorganization, including a reduction in force. I was one of the most senior engineers there and not in danger of being booted, but I didn’t like what I was hearing about the incoming command structure. I was past my minimum retirement age and I had 37 years with the Feds, so I decided to take my crayons and go, in the hope that a younger engineer would be able to stay. And, for the record, having talked with my former boss, I did make the right choice regarding the new structure, so no regrets at all.

However, after about a year, I was bored, and I launched into a series of part-time and temp jobs, with several breaks in between, until early 2016, when I got the job I have now. I like the work, I like the people, the pay is crazy good for what I do, and the company really is a great place to work. But I’m tired - not physically fatigued, just tired of going to work regularly. At the start of this year, I went down to 3 days a week, figuring it’d be a good way to easy back into retirement. But there are days when that’s too much.

So I’ve decided Dec 13 will be my last day. That will get me past the current work crunch and ensure my last paycheck will be issued this year. I’ll be 66 in January and I’ll start collecting social security. Plus I won’t have to worry about taking vacation time at Christmas when we go visit the in-laws in FL. I really think I’m ready this time. We shall see.

2

In 2005 I was working as a consultant in the Cardiology Graphics Department of a major hospital. I had illustrated an entire textbook of cardiology, and was working on some other miscellaneous projects with them, mostly fairly boring.

Meanwhile I had been doing my own art work at home for abut 15 years, and was itching to be doing it full-time. My Partner (now husband) was making enough to support us both, so I decided to take the plunge. I’m now working more, and harder, than I ever did before, with never a day off.

3

After the military, I was in various jobs in construction and facilities management, taking on more and more responsibilities with each job. The last one I had was as the quality control manager for a $22M Air Force contract that was overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers, a bunch of jack-booted thugs that would have been right at home in Nazi Germany.

When I took over the job, the project was already three months behind schedule because of a fuck-up in the design phase. The ACOE unrealistically demanded that this time be made up, which caused a lot of tension and stress for the contractor I worked for. The pressure was intense, and the process of material submittals was draconian. As the job ground on and on, my health began to suffer.

Finally, I came home one day feeling like warmed-over death and asked my wife if she thought our financial situation would allow me to just quit working. Without hesitation, she said “Absolutely”. Turns out, she had been very worried about me for the past few months, as I had a gray pallor and no energy. I quit the next day with no regrets. I was 61.

4

Restraining order.

5

Mid-March, 1997. I had been working at this job for just over a month*, when the end-of-fiscal year documents were sent to employees, detailing things like their pension contributions. One line noted that the earliest date I could retire with a pension was Feb. 3, 2027, the thirty-year anniversary of the date of my hiring.

That sounded like a good idea to me, even then.

I’m much closer to that date now, and it just keeps sounding better.

*I went through about three years of un- and under-employment following grad school, but I had Unemployment Insurance and support from my parents for most of that time. And I realized having some money in your pocket and no obligations to actually show up at work in the morning was actually a pretty good lifestyle. My Dad retired during this period, and pretty much agreed with my assessment. I’ve found no reason to reconsider that opinion in the time since.

6

The 2008 recession. New York lost a lot of tax revenue and wanted to cut its budget. It was strongly suggested to those of us who were eligible to retire that we should do so.

7

The organization where I was working decided that new blood was needed, so they offered early retirement incentives to the employees who were at least x years of age and had at least y years of experience. The incentives involved both the pension and health insurance. I was about 3 years from my retirement date, so I jumped at the opportunity. Best career decision I ever made.

8

Haven’t retired yet, but I’m just marking time.

About 9 years ago I got a pretty big promotion to my current job. For the first couple of years, it was new and exciting. Then I spent a couple of years managing an office - which was also exciting - tho disillusioning. Then I got transferred to an office 6 minutes from my house. I make quite good money (IMO), and get to work at home 2 days a year. But I get zero satisfaction from any aspect of my job, many aspects are very depressing, and the micromanaging is unending.

So I’m just trying to figure out when I’ve amassed a big enough nut to quit. Going through the motions making widgets until then. Full social security is not for another 7 years. I really don’t think I can make it that long.

9

Retired at the end of June 2018, age 70. Last job was a temporary position with a state agency’s IT department. Factors, in no particular order:[ul]
[li]Age, particularly the fact that there’s no SSA benefit to working past 70.[/li][li]End of the aforementioned temporary position. They could have wangled another year or so (and they really did want me to stay on), but the bureaucratic hoops wouldn’t have been worth it.[/li][li]The commute, particularly during the summer months. Anyone who’s traversed I-5 through Lewis-McChord will know whereof I speak.[/li][li]Declining vision. I got into IT at the tail end of the punchcard era when the majority of work was either batch or dumb terminals, and the fact that I only have one functional eye wasn’t an impediment. 40-plus years later, the strain of working with web pages and java/.net forms was causing increasing problems.[/li][/ul]

10

I haven’t retired yet, but my time is short. I have all of the pieces in place now and I am just putting some cash away before I pull the trigger. I will evaluate after the first of the year, but this will definitly be my last winter working.

11

I haven’t retired yet. If the market continues to do well then our savings will allow us both to retire together in about 7 years. My wife is 5 years younger than I.

But my friend and his wife just retired. The wife came to work one day and was just tired of putting up with the BS, and she came home and told husband I Want To Retire Now! They talked, agreed, and a couple of months later they both retired.

So, politics and BS motivated that decision.

12

I was a college prof in Computer Science.

The students just weren’t doing their job at all. It was getting worse and worse. They were just putting in time to get a degree so they could get a job. (And one that paid more than mine.)

It was getting incredibly stressful dealing with that and other things. I was afraid I was going to snap someday. To preserve my sanity, etc. it was time to get out.

Fun fact: tenure doesn’t really fix things. So people should stop worrying about it.

13

Retired exactly a month now.

It was an accumulation of annoyances, regrets, fears, and the long-term sandpapering away of my life by the corporate… Sigh. You know what I mean.

I watched some co-workers wait too long, and they didn’t get to retire. I had a series of heart issues (solved now) and management was about to herd us into the new workspaces apparently inspired by cattle feed-lots. I decided if I’d reached a point where living in a cubicle would be an improvement, it was time to bail.

Odd you should ask this. I got another signed card today from my former co-workers telling me they missed me, and wishing me the best. And in the mailbox with it (coincidentally) was my final check from the company settling up bonus’, PTO time, etc.

14

I had had a sabbatical in 1995 so I was due for another in 2002, the year I turned 65. Although a sabbaticant is required to come back for at least one year, I figured they would be so happy to shed my salary that they would allow me to retire at the of the sabbatical. If not, okay, I would retire a year later. But then, in the fall of 1999 my chair offered me the following deal (this was available to everyone past 62): 3/4 of my pay between retirement date and the end of the month in which I turned 65 and giving me an annuity at the rate I would get at 65, and giving me the annuity at the old rate with was scheduled to go down significantly on Jan1, 2000 (this was public knowledge, evidently as a retirement inducement). I took the money and ran.

I enjoyed the teaching part of my job, absolutely hated marking papers and tests, disliked committee work, and loved the research. I have 28
publications dated 2000 or later, including one that will be published in a few weeks after minor revision, so it worked.

15

The World’s Second Best-Selling Commercial Jet Airplane Company decided that our entire organization would be better located in (non-union) Southern California. If I liked, I could apply for a job analogous to my current one down there.

I had no particular desire to take what would have amounted to a 25% pay cut due to cost of living increases, and even less desire to live in the LA area. And lately I’d been feeling a bit burnt out; and my top manager (who implemented the SoCal relocation scheme) was a cold, rude, and self-centered shark who I had no respect or liking for.

If I retired, it would be a bit early, so I wouldn’t get the maximum pension, but after a bit of calculating I figured I’d make out okay. So I decided to angle for a layoff. The union contract obligated the Company to find me another equivalent job, so I told my boss that although I felt I still had a lot to offer the Company, I really didn’t want to work at the Everett plant, where all the jobs were(an hour more commute each way), so if they needed to lay someone off… They eventually came up with a paper to sign which forfeited my seniority, so I could be laid off, with a generous layoff bonus. And then the instant I was laid off, I retired.

One of the things that made it possible was that the Company had the greatest retiree medical program imaginable: $10 a month for full coverage, until age 65.

My rule nowadays when getting together with friends is to never talk about the Company.

16

For no reason, my office was moved from 20 min. from my home to over an hour away, shitty commute taking over 2 hours out of my day with no more $$.
The owner & founder of the company had stepped way back & I had been hid direct report for 15 years. Now I’m working for his daughter & son-in-law for whom I could not gin up even a shred of respect. And who had no respect for me or my 22 years of experience or institutional knowledge.
I gave them a year of training my replacement IF they moved me back to the old location near my house.
MEDICARE kicked in & I bailed.

17

“I’m eligible, marketable, and get a pension.” - Me, in 9 years.

18

My last manager-but-one was a much younger woman who started easing me out maybe 7 years before I would have retired by not allowing me to learn or support any new technology (supporting the department’s use of many of their technologies was about 75% of my job up to that point). So that part of my job shrank, and report writing became the majority of my job. Report writing is a far more replaceable skill than the kind of stuff I had been doing.

Then my last manager, for maybe a year, didn’t even know who I was or ever talk to me (I ended up reporting to someone under her). Every month I had less to do, but I still kept the same salary (no raises for about 5 years, but I was still over paid). I was still 10 months out from my nominal retirement age of 66 when I did the math and decided that what I would lose was not worth sitting around for 10 months going crazy from boredom. So I pulled the trigger. My last day at work was Halloween. I came to work in costume, as a retired person.

eta: I had worked at that company for 34 years, in a variety of capacities, the peak of which was maybe 10 years before I retired. It was downhill from there. Also they lost all that institutional knowledge, but a lot of it was the in the “uncomfortable truth” family so I don’t think the current crop of managers were sorry to lose it.

19

I’m not retired, in fact I’m back working but in a different way. But I did take almost the last three years off to chill, although I did have some responsibilities during that time (going to board meetings and consulting on operations, helping with the occasional pitch).

Stress is the answer as to why I cut back. I closed down one operation and it was the ideal time to take a break from the daily work grind. I’m getting back into it now but I don’t ever expect to work at the insane intensity levels I have in the past. I would rather spend time with the family, go to car club events or whatever.

20

I’m not retired, but my wife is, and I’d be happy to share why she threw in the towel. She had 30+ years experience as a buyer in the college bookstore biz. A few years before she left, the store director decided that they were going to reduce full-time staff and supplement with part-timers. The way that they reduced full-time staff was, they eliminated all the full-time positions (about 20) then created new full-time positions (less than 10) and anybody who still wanted a job could apply for one of the open positions.

Several people that my wife worked with said “Screw it” and took their severance. I told my wife that she should too, but she figured she could hang in there another few years to retirement. So she applied for one of the new buyer’s positions that was similar to her old one.

One of the new positions created was the one that would be her manager. I told her she should at least apply for that one, but she wouldn’t. (As a side note, my wife never earned a college degree, but worked her ass off her entire career, and had tons of good experience. But she always let the fact that she didn’t have a degree keep her from going after jobs that she was easily qualified for.)

Anyway, the guy who became her manager had previously been one of her peers, although he was a lot younger and had less experience in the industry. He and the store director, who was female, were very friendly with each other. And even though he got along fine with my wife when they were peers, when he became her boss it was like a switch got flipped and he just turned into a complete asshole.

As it turned out, they did not hire nearly as many part-timers as they had said they were going to before the reorganization. And my wife had no employees reporting to her directly, even though she was in charge of two full departments and part of a third. So she had to do all of the ordering, keep the floor stocked, and assist customers all on her own. If she wanted help, she had to go to another supervisor who was in charge of the part-timers and request help. And the part-timers were primarily spoiled college girls who just wanted to get paid to sit in front of a computer and do Facebook or Pinterest all day.

One day a couple of these part-time girls were supposed to be helping stock some merchandise, completely blew it off, and lied to her when she asked if it was done. When my wife gave them hell, they went running to her boss and complained that “she hurt their feelings.” So who got reprimanded? My wife of course. It was obvious at that point that her boss would never back her up, and she knew she couldn’t go over his head because he was tight with his boss. That’s when she knew it was time to just get the hell out.