Not that I always loved my jobs or working in general, but even when I was in high school, I always found somewhat of a sense of purpose in having a job. Even a stupid low-paying McJob. You get out of the house, interact with other people, get a little coin in your pocket. The alternative is what? Sitting around the house all day watching TV and playing videogames by myself while the rest of the world is either at work or school?
Obviously as I got older, I wanted jobs that were more challenging and more intellectually fulfilling. And therein lies the problem IMHO. I would think that most people would want to work at a place where they would continue to learn and grow and help contribute to the growth of the company in whatever capacity they can. And I would think that most companies would want people who are interested in doing that. But by and large, I don’t see that. I see lazy employees who want to do the bare minimum or less but continue to get paid and promoted while the companies pay lip service to wanting to grow people and build strong cultures or whatever, but in reality treat their employees like disposable interchangeable cogs. Or they are so ambivalent and ambiguous about it you have no idea what they think of you or if they think of you at all.
Like with my current job of almost 3 years. I’ve written several threads about how while I like what I do and where I work, I constantly have this sense of unease about the place.
Part of it is the changes I’ve seen over the past 3 years. When I first joined, I felt like we actively managed our group (about 40-50 consultants of various levels). We (our leadership team and directors like me) met quarterly to discuss strategy. We managed sales and recruiting. We put together training programs for our people. Now it just feels like a pool of glorified temps to get shoe-horned into the next project that sells. We’ve had layoffs, however my coach (consultants don’t have “managers”, we have a “coach”) told me that I came up in discussions as someone who specifically is NOT getting laid off. Which is great I suppose, but still disconcerting that these are the discussions we are having.
The point being, that this is a decent enough company full of smart people with lots of skills in the greatest city on Earth where I’ve built up a lot of good relationships with coworkers, leadership, and clients. And yet it doesn’t seem like something that is sustainable long term to the point where I need to start thinking about my next move.
My husband sees this a lot in his clients. It is his primary complaint. It’s hard when you have a mental health disorder to do much of anything, but you have to push yourself if you want any chance of getting better. I didn’t understand this when I was young and unhappy, but I do now. Happiness isn’t something you suddenly feel, it’s an ongoing process, it’s a thing you do. And that often entails some kind of work. I’m not one of those hardass people who thinks everyone should be putting in 60 hours a week, I just think work of some kind is often conducive to mental health. I do think I’m lucky, however, to be doing creative and interesting and challenging work, because it would be a lot harder to be fulfilled in a repetitive job. But I still think I would take that over doing nothing all day.
I would take working at an unfulfilling job over doing nothing all day , too. But watching TV and playing video games all day alone are not the only things you can do if you don’t have a job. I’m pretty sure I get more fulfillment from learning how to bake and working on my garden than I would ever get from standing behind a cash register. I worked from age 12 until I was 58 - and it was always because I needed the money. Although I enjoyed some jobs, I never liked having to be at a certain space at a specified time, which is a requirement for many jobs and definitely any that I am suited for. So I retired as soon as I was sure I could afford it - and I only wish I had done it sooner.
This. I like my job. It’s intellectually stimulating, I get to work with some of the smartest people on the planet (they have certificates that say so), and I have a lot of freedom to chart my own course. BUT, there’s a lot of administrivia and going to work gets in the way of building furniture, or renovating my house, or volunteering, or running in the woods, or…
I like working and loved both of my jobs themselves, but the workplace issues were progressively worse. If I could have just done my work, I’d still be at it. I also enjoy being able to write (not a job, but certainly a form of work), read, go for walks, and wear sweat pants all day.
Those seem like work to me. You might only be contributing to yourself or your family, but that counts. I certainly consider my fiction writing work, some of the hardest I’ve ever done.
The problem is that unemployed people with mental health disorders don’t tend to do these kinds of things. Depression and anxiety have a way of facilitating inertia and cutting you off from the good things in life. As an author I read once put it, “The opposite of depression is not happiness. It’s vitality.” But I imagine some people, like yourself, make good retirees. For me I’d be concerned about my mental health without some work obligation to someone. I start to fall apart just being sick for a few days. Some people have to work hard to stay at baseline.
I think this is profoundly true. So many people make goals that they think will make them happy when they get to those goals. Then, they wonder why they’re not.
Whether it counts as work or not might be a matter of opinion - but they certainly aren’t jobs in the way they are for someone who does those same things for pay.
I worked for almost 20 years at a job I loved. Then I was laid off, and got another job that I liked OK. Then I was laid off again, and got a job I hated. After putting in a couple years there, I decided I had enough, and retired early.
OK, putting this here. Thru the end of 2019, my job as a tutor was ideal. Great fellow teachers, awesome students (for the most part), knew I did a good job. [for my poll it would get a 2.5 rounded up-I had some issues with the curricula we used]
Then in April '21 my boss, half my age note, started to gaslight me and blame me for a bunch of stuff which I didn’t do. The last straw was my having to save an ACT client, who was so confused by her last session with another teacher that she only did 7 questions out of 20 on her homework assignment, completely lost. [checking his log I noticed he was so oblivious to her state of distress that he went to a completely different chapter in another subject for the last 10 minutes.] She left in immensely better spirits after I explained everything.
So I get called into a meeting with my boss, who proceeds to blather about how “80%” of test prep students don’t want to work with me, incl. one young man I had for his first day who said “thank you” at the end of the session-then allegedly told my boss he didn’t want to be with me anymore. After I went over my salvage session, he just blithely said “Oh! Everyone wants to work with X exclusively, but nobody wants to work with you!”
I immediately notified him that I was officially putting in my 2 weeks’ notice and walked out. If we were in a bar or something I would have socked him right in the jaw, but I managed to maintain my composure. Then his mother just repeated his lies to me-note they both couched their horseshit in religious trappings, and I stuck with my plan to resign. At that point it would have been a -2 on my poll.
That was almost 3 years ago, been quasi-retired since, had to deal with my mother’s loss this past year after I had to move to her Ohio town to clean out both her house and apartment (she was a terrible hoarder and it cost me 40K to clean out the house. I may try to find a part-time position as an environmental educator this spring, but don’t need the income.
Sorry for the length. I need to setup some context at the beginning, but then I’ll get to the work related anecdotes. Unlike most of the other stories, these all involve young people.
For a bit less than 1.5 years my kid has had an in-home therapist using Applied Behavior Therapy/Analysis to assist with autism. We’ve interacted with 10+ different therapists over that time.
The in-home therapist is an entry level, non-degreed position. The people doing it have ranged in age from 20 to about 30. Some have undergraduate degrees, and others have been attending college or planning to attend college. My kid has had I think 7 primary therapists in that time. I think all of them have been new to the position. Many of the substitutes have more experience.
Each therapists gets 4-6 weeks of paid training, and then a few training sessions with real clients. The in home therapists are then supervised by degreed therapists with some sort of certification. I think we’re on our 4th therapy supervisor.
So context out of the way.
The in home therapists have left for a variety of reasons.
Medical — one had issues that were interfering with work, and officially took a leave of absence, but I don’t think has returned. There were many last minute call outs. Very frustrating, but I can also offer a great deal of sympathy. I’m positive she would have rather been working than home with a migraine, or in the emergency room with a concussion after fainting when standing up.
Mental health & personal responsibility — I hate to combine these two things, but from my end it is very hard to tell the difference. Several just didn’t seem to do well with the responsibility of having to show up at a place every day at a specific time. In one case I think this was mostly due to anxiety related issues, but others I’m not sure, other than just being “flaky.” Being yelled at by a kid for a few hours every afternoon is also stressful.
Not earning enough — At least two of the in home therapists left because they had been promised a full time job, but were only working part time. Most clients get 15-20 hours of therapy per week. Two clients makes for a nice full time schedule, but most clients are in school, so there is nothing to do until school lets out, and then only time in the day for one session.
Interfered with school — At least one thought the late afternoon schedule would work great with college, but found that working 15-20 hours per week was just too much when combined with a full course load.
I have no incite into why the therapy supervisors have left.
So that is a list of anecdotal reasons why young people aren’t working, or aren’t working this job. Some of these people were really fantastic at the job, and if they choose to pursue a career in child psychology or special education will probably do very well. Others, now know this isn’t for them.
My sister in law has already retired, before 60, combination of having enough money to be able to do it, and ‘can’t stand her dam’ fool boss anymore’ .
My brother has already gone down to three days a week and is looking to finish soon. Also not 60 yet.
But the report also shows that if you adjust for age, there’s actually a slight decline in percentage of the age group. So while overall there’s a lot more Americans who are retired, but there’s a slightly smaller percentage of people you’d expect to be retired who are actually retired. And the age breakdowns don’t consider people in their 50s.
I hadn’t thought for a while about exactly why I retired early, it’s been four years, but it boiled down to
some things going on at home that where my kids would’ve benefited more from having me around…50%. Not massive things, or this would’ve been 100%, but marginal things.
a peer I worked with who was such an overweening asshole that he just made many of my days miserable … I mean, pretty much any workplace contact, which was frequent because we were on the same leadership team…30%
A chance remark from a best friend/coworker, who changed her retirement plans because one of her friends died at 57… that really did stick with me 10%
tired of waking up at 4:38 every morning, 10%
So there’s your personal anecdote. I was privileged to even have the choice, but that’s why I made it when I did.
I’ll take this as leave to drop my own statistic. Somewhere between 200,000-400,000 people of working age died due to COVID in the US. There are about 210 million people of working age, so that might not seem like a big percentage. However, that is a lot of extra positions to come open.
This feeds into the ability of people to move up and get better jobs. And, has been mentioned, also into the reminders of mortality that push some people to early retirement.
This. I can never understand people who wouldn’t do anything productive if they didn’t work. I have an endless list of fascinating projects that I whittle away in my spare time, often thinking if only I had more time to allot them.
When I’ve been laid off, I’ve been on one hand truly happy for the time it affords me to advance my own goals, ranging from writing to crafts to music to fitness.
Maybe it’s because my social circle consists of artists, artisans and academics, but I don’t personally know anyone who would just sit and watch TV / play videogames if / when they didn’t work.
I watched the show Suits for the first time on Netflix a few days ago. (I had never seen it). I told my wife “You know what would be really cool? To have a job like Harvey Specter where I get paid a lot, breeze into some fancy Manhattan office with a fantastic view wearing an expensive suit whenever I feel like it, and smooth out some client issues no one else can figure out while making smug quips. Maybe even providing glib insight to some young protégée from time to time.”
My wife’s like “Uhh…from what I can tell that is…literally what you do. Why don’t you just throw on a suit and go into your office?”
Me: “Nah…I think I’m just going to work from home today.”
Really the actual reason is that with work teams so distributed or working remotely, even if I go to the office, chances are there are very few people there. My job has sort of become like George Clooney’s in Up in the Air after Anna Kendrick turned everything into Zoom calls.
Now I certainly don’t want to go back to living out of a suitcase 4 days a week for months on end. But the thing I liked about my work is mostly the perks like dinners and drinks with clients and the occasional travel to cool cities. Otherwise, it’s mostly just boring office shit that I can just take or leave.
I’ll have you over for coffee sometime and you can observe my wife.
To be fair, she does nearly all of the dinner cooking, and does a damn fine job with that. But, most of her days are spent in front of the TV with the phone in her face playing solitaire or candy crush. Weekdays and weekends blend together - all about the same. I guess when you don’t have a job/schedule constraint, “there’s always tomorrow.”