40 Years

There's this guy here at work who's retiring today after 40 years with the company. That just blows my mind... how before I was even born, he had already been working for over 17 years. During the next 23 years, I learned to walk, talk, use the potty, read, play piano, drive a car, and craft. I moved from unincorporated Downers Grove to incorporated Downers Grove to Taipei to Darien to Urbana to Champaign back to Darien and now to Palatine. I went through preschool, kindergarten, 1st-6th grade, junior high, high school, and college. All this time, he was in the same place, working at Northrop.

So me and some of the younger people here were talking about how we're always trying to just get through the week, and the weekend always seems so far away. And here's this man who has been through about 2000 of these weeks. I could imagine myself working here for a long time, but 40 years? That's just plain scary. Props to the old guy.

I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing, though, to be doing something for that many years. It reminds me of About Schmidt. When you've been living the same life for so long, and suddenly it all changes at age 65, how do you handle something like that? Man, if I left this job right now after 6 months, I would really miss it, the people and the work and the sense of accomplishment. And we've all seen how Jordan couldn't stay away from basketball after retiring, twice.

On the plus side, there are worse things that can happen to you in life than to experience 40 years of job security, work your way up in a large Fortune 100 corporation, retire with a lot of money, probably vacation and just coast the rest of your days, then leave a respectable inheritance to your kids.