Newest coworker is oddly elderly for his position, which is entry level laboratory stuff. Pressing a button on a machine and writing down the results basically. He’s nice enough and friendly. Not great at his job but he’s only worked for about two months so that’s natural, plus again he’s on the older side, at least late 60s or early 70s.
Just learned today that he was retired, he’s on a pension, and he knew the owner from some business connections or something. Owner invited him to spend time at the company a few days a week. Dude is cosplaying as a worker. He doesn’t even have experience in this role, he was an accountant or something for a similar industry, then management for decades, and now he’s doing grunt laboratory labor for fun or something? What the fuck is going on
Dude I’m super glad you can have a job out of boredom. Some of us have to work for a paycheck and pay rent. Really glad that your retirement is so unfulfilling you can mingle with people who have student loan debt. Really cool that you can use the workplace as your adult day care so you don’t have to spend time with your wife or grandkids.
I don’t know how to feel about this and it’s instantly made stuff super awkward. I’m upset at his mere existence. Like my workplace is a soul erasing facility where I begrudgingly drag myself so I have healthcare and an apartment. This guy has a pension and Medicare and shows up with his thermos and steel toes like “hello fellow proletariat”
Edit: ok to be clear, this guy in his own words, plus the testimony of other coworkers. He’s told me he’s materially comfortable, owns multiple houses, and has far more than enough money stay retired forever. He’s showing up at a job just to have something to do. Which wouldn’t be so off-putting if it were something more interesting but this is glorified data entry.
Like go volunteer at a shelter, dude.
Eh I’m not feeling this post. I got worked up but it’s not a huge deal. The guy is friendly and isn’t a burden or anything.
My job sucks enough and I guess I got upset at the thought that I’m also entertainment for some bored retired rich guy. Personally find the guy odd but whatever. My day is basically the same regardless.
He’s friends with the owner. That makes him essentially a spy. I don’t think you’re wrong to get bad vibes from this situation.
Yeah definitely don’t talk about organizing around the guy, he might otherwise be benign but he obviously is not trustworthy from an organizing perspective.
There is something incredibly sad to me about this kind of guy. He really made it to retirement with the ability to do so comfortably and he gets an entry-level job to get out of the house? He has nothing he’d rather do? No friends or family he wants to spend time with? No hobbies he’d like to indulge in? No interests he wants to pursue? Nothing? God what a sad empty life
It is also frustrating that he’s taking an entry-level coded job from someone that actually is trying to get their life started/pay off student debt/start a career. It’s already hard enough for young people to get started now a days without bored retiree landlords looking to fill the time till they die. Like you said, if it’s just about connecting with people/staving off loneliness he could be volunteering somewhere more stimulating/rewarding. This guy can’t imagine a way to fill his time that isn’t work. I’m split between pitying this poor bastard for having such an empty life and being pissed at him for squandering an opportunity that most people my age will never have (that is actually being able to retire and be in a position to enjoy it)
Yeah this was what I was trying to communicate. This guy is both sad and frustrating to me. Really I shouldn’t care because I get paid regardless and he’s not really malicious towards me. He’s actually kinda funny and charming, also he’s gotten donuts a few times and made sure at least a few were vegan for me. But learning these facts about him really put a divide down mentally between him and me.
It feels patronizing. When I had an entry level job like his I was barely scraping by, got malnourished a few times, had student debt weighing me down (still do honestly). And this guy wants to try it for fun. I don’t know how to feel.
You hit the nail on the head when you said he’s cosplaying as a proletariat, and I don’t know where the other posters are coming from when they disagree. Between his retirement savings and landleech income he does not need this job, it’s literally play for him ie a way to entertain himself. He personally might seem like an okay guy in this context but I doubt he’d be as understanding if one of his tenants fell on hard times and was struggling with rent.
Maybe I’m just bitter because I’ve been through the ordeal of searching for an “entry level” job (all still require experience of course) and this bozo has one handed to him because he’s buddies with the owner and can’t think of literally anything else to do other than do mind numbing button pressing. I’d kill for the opportunity to have an enjoyable retirement and this fucker is squandering it while fucking over younger workers who need the job.
If I was in this guy’s position I’d splurge on random expensive hobbies and stuff. Idk like expensive camera gear and take pics of critters in the forest and sell postcards.
Right!? There’s literally an endless list of stuff I’d do with free time and even a modest/livable income before I got a boring job like that. Money is wasted on the wealthy
I have a coworker who’s like 20 and a totally brainrotted channer edgelord. Dude jokes about being a Nazi, and he’s Jewish.
One day I asked him if he’s seen the movie Come and See and he said “yeah”. And I was like “remember that kid who was hanging around with the SS with a skull painted on a helmet and was cheering them on while they burned the village down. I feel like that’s gonna be you when society collapses.”
He took that as a compliment.
I hate my job.
Its disgusting that we are so lacking in community that our elderly must sell their labor to find something even adjacent to it.
I once worked with a guy that had a yacht and wanted to play around at our job. He thought it was easy. He was a fool and fucked everything up and he was constantly lying about the shit he did. He eventually left when he got bored. He was a friend of some bigshot. I was forced to explain basic shit to him every day, which wasted so much time. Very frustrating.
This is kinda similar to my experience. I know I get paid either way but it’s very frustrating to think I’m training this guy, showing him the stuff, except he’s just here for fun and will be gone when he’s bored.
I guess it’s a trend that people that don’t need to work look for weird jobs, I heard of one that worked in the mailroom at an office building.
He probably just enjoys you & your coworkers company lol
What you soon realise, is that jobs become 1000% more enjoyable when you don’t need them at all.
Imagine any job, but you can basically just say no to anything you don’t like, and if anyone is an asshole about it, you can just leave and experience no financial repercussions. If you feel like it, you can just flip off your boss, everyone in the room, steal the stationery and then cartwheel out the door. Yep, even just working is better when you’re wealthy.
This will be work during communism I think. People will want to contribute because it’s in their nature, but without being forced to, and without the long hours, shit wages, stress of needing to find food or shelter or other requirements to live, etc it can be like this for everyone.
Sounds like a worker to me. Is there something I’m missing?
Like just because he has a pension doesn’t mean he can’t be a worker and it doesn’t mean it covers all his needs. Also even if he’s doing it just to get out of the house he’s still selling his labor for far less than it’s worth. Even if it is just pushing a button and writing down the results.
But again I could be missing something.
landlord
WHERE! 🔫
He has enough money to live off and even if he did need money, he’s vastly more qualified to do something that pays far more. He was some kind of c-suite before this.
Yeah, that’s a difficult one, because on the one hand you’re right that he’s ultimately cosplaying as a prole, but I think the deeper issue is that humans fundamentally want to at least feel like they’re helping. In an ideal world there would be plenty of room for old people to fill basic button pushing jobs that they just want for something to do, but he’s only able to do that in this world because of the wealth he’s amassed.
It’s probably best to just be friendly but avoid politics. It’s not like you can do anything to get rid of him without personal risk, so if he’s just being nice why bother?
This is kind of like the “continuing education” and many older PhD students. It’s a form of entertainment. Taken in isolation it’s not a bad thing at all. If you want to do something vocational or educational, glad you can do that. But when put into social context, this tends to mean a zero-sum displacement of some kind due to how academics is funded. A grant only has so much money. Should the person who doesn’t need a job get paid for a position that an undergrad needs and could develop from? If they become a volunteer, doesn’t that end up devaluing the labor price in aggregate (YES IT DOES)? Similarly, tuition is prohibitively expensive and financialized in the US, yet seniors get substantial subsidies so that they barely need to pay anything to take 1 or 2 courses at a time. While this does not need to be zero sum at the national level (tuition could be abolished with the stroke of a pen), it is often state or locally funded, which means hard trade-offs. Every state dollar spent on “continuing education” is one stolen from a school free lunch program and state-level austerity is constantly implemented while retaining these programs. It is a dramatic juxtaposition of priorities, particularly given how many people struggle.
I also have yet to meet anyone in this kind of situation that isn’t fundamentally a scab.
I don’t like this “taking our jobs away” mentality. Free school lunches, and tuition waivers, and jobs are limited only artificially. There’s no shortage of food, and there is always work to do, and there is mostly enough space for students, it’s just that the system is designed to starve kids and to keep 5% of people (mostly minorities) unemployed.
I think we can all agree he’s in a very enviable life position by most people’s standards, but he hasn’t actually done or said anything wrong it seems. I’d say play nice til’ he gives you a reason not to.
just dealt with something similar for the last 6 weeks. former higher up comes out of retirement, is basically allowed to do sub-par work out of charity from the bosses (one of their own).
unfortunately that’s where the similarity ended. it ended up being sad as fuck. he has a sick wife, needed more income to pay for her treatments. discovers he has early onset dementia while working, and resigns.
i drill into everyone i talk to about it that this shouldn’t have to be a thing that happens in our society. everyone agrees
As someone slowly approaching 50 with not enough for a house let alone retirement, I thank you for this comment.
I’ve worked with a few people like this. old retired people who got bored and got a job because they don’t know what to do with themselves. it’s both maddening and also pitiable. if I was retired I would never step foot into a job site again. it is a sad miserable existence to be given absolute freedom and then choose to spend your last few years laboring for a wage you don’t even need. start reading books, pick up a stick and learn to whittle, volunteer somewhere, go do literally anything else with the fleeting time you have left!!!
We are like dogs trained their whole life to do a single thing. When we become old and weak we keep trying to do that thing because we don’t know what else to do. Its pitiable more than anything imo
Some people actually like doing things that are considered jobs though. I actually love my job. If I wasn’t reliant on having an income then I would probably still spend my days doing the same thing only for free and for people of my choosing. I don’t get why this dude would enjoy lab grunt work but I also don’t get why anyone would enjoy collecting stamps or eating fish with ketchup. Some people are just into weird things.
Quit hating on the dude
Maybe his pension isn’t enough to cover medical, food, and other bills?
It is, also the income from the land he rents
Furthermore if he really needs work he’s vastly more qualified to do management or consulting, it’s goofy
Idk then. I’ve never actually had a job in the field I got my degree in, other than an internship while still earning the degree. A relative got a teaching degree and worked as a chemist, another something in health and ended up working in energy. With all my friends and family that are still living, only two ever worked in their field of study, and it took one working in food for forty years before finally opening their own business. I think this is happening more, lately. You see Baccalaureate in retail and PhD baristas.
now he’s doing grunt laboratory labor for fun or something?
Are you sure about that? Did he tell you this?
Yes, along with testimony from my other coworkers
