The Retirement Conundrum

As a non scientist, I can get away with saying just about anything and not have to defend my views with research data. (Hey! This is how I roll. Deal with it.)

One of the conclusions I’ve come to after 3 years of semi-retirement is this: humans do not do well doing nothing. Anyone who has been around the over-55 clubhouse, has seen that many retirees are prone to become depressed and unhappy - even sick - when they do not have something to do that requires them to get out of bed in the morning, take a shower and get dressed.
For a lot of folks who never had problems with alcohol, the boredom of retirement gets one to thinking that cocktail hour doesn’t really need to wait past 4pm - even earlier. Men who spent decades yearning for a life of daily golf or fishing eventually become bored with the same routine – (just like a work life, you say! )

I think I am typical of men of my generation who grew up in the 50’s and who worked for forty plus years, raised a family and owned a house. We spent our working years waking-up every day and smelling the coffee. Now we are grandparents and ready to kick back and smell the roses. Maybe take that road trip we always talked about.

But something is missing. We miss the Income. We miss the socialization. We miss being part of something.

Those Social Security deposits to the bank account are not to be sniffed at, but it is not a level of income that will allow retirees to enjoy the amenities of life that they were accustomed to when they were working and drawing a decent salary.
As bad as your coworkers were, they were better than having no one to complain about.
And there were some good times: Successful projects, ideas that worked, friendships, occasional recognition.
My attitude toward the work was not negative but my feelings about organizations were distinctly anti-authority. This attitude was not helpful to my career advancement. I couldn't help it. It was mainly due to my conviction that the power in organizations is generally misplaced. Instead of finding the best leaders, most organizations promote the most productive and ambitious do-ers.

I guess the theory is that they will show others how to be productive. Most of us know that isn’t what happens. What happens is elegantly explained by the Peter Principle: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence".

Most managers I worked for were incompetent and didn’t know it. They call themselves eagles. But there is no eagle in team – and it is only through team effort that anything worthwhile is accomplished in a bureaucracy.

So the paradox is that organizations promote people with ego-centric skills and put them in charge of teams of people. It s no wonder that the newly minted manager is unable to understand the motivations and personalities of his assigned team. He only knows one way to succeed and that is by outperforming the others. How can someone lead a team when he/she knows nothing about cooperation?

Thus the eagle tends to manage by dint of his power, that is to say, by generating fear in subordinates. This is how bureaucracy migrates into autocracy. Astute underlings rapidly adjust to the environment of command and control; nattering nay bobs are harassed until they either shut-up or go away.

Yeah, I still miss it. Much as it sucks, it beats watching The View or surfing the net for funny pet videos.