A PSA from an older employee to employers everywhere.

[AngryOldDem]

Please don’t treat us like shit. Please show the same respect to us as you do your younger employees. Please examine yourself and your behaviors for any sign of ageism — latent or otherwise.

We will be out of your way soon enough. In the meantime, please don’t make the work environment any harder than it is or needs to be.

Thanks in advance,
An Older Worker.

[FalloutShelter]

1. I see a lot of this too.

Ageism is the last acceptable prejudice.

[Captain Zero]

3. They don't want us on their health care plans.

Plain and simple.

[Tree Lady]

9. One of many reasons why we need

Universal medical. Then it won't be a issue.

[area51]

14. THIS.

Even after all this time, we still don't have healthcare as a right, even with a pandemic, and with people suffering long covid. Citizens in the US are considered disposable. We desperately need universal healthcare.

[Tree Lady]

18. So true

I had mild covid and feel weird after, keep getting dry cough, feeling lightheaded just a bit off but testing negative.

[LT Barclay]

19. I'm sometimes off balance and I'm slurring speech a bit.

But no way I can stop working.
At least I do have healthcare.

[Tree Lady]

25. I get the off balance

I tripped getting out of bed while i had covid and smashed my toes hard into dresser. Foot and toes still sore, black and blue just starting to go away. Pain from foot and toes kept me up at night more than other symptoms.

[LT Barclay]

30. Sorry to hear that. I did read that "brain fog" and other neuro issues can be long term.

I'm concerned because I've still got them and I'm almost a year out.

[Backseat Driver]

24. Including "quality of life" old-age issues in: vision care, dental care, hearing,

geriatric nutrition, and geriatric "imminent end of life" medicolegal issues are ALL important coverages that should not be denied by Medicare with a single payer--many seniors of full retirement age have earned at least some coverage in some form of these universal ways to prevent more expensive financial penury and transgenerational trauma to the family lives of their survivors. It seems such common sense that they lead to more expensive catastrophic hospitalizations at the hands of middle-men and the corruption of the greedy manipulators of and by our fascist private overlords of private niche marketplace CEOs. Are we not a "family" of many Americans and non-Americans sharing the high costs of our inevitable illnesses of our older ages, our blindness to see it, our failure to hear the cries of those suffering dental pain, infection, and disease, and who we submit as mentally unworthy of sustaining with food, water, and foods, and shelter while we recover from the cruelty and violence of what we become under our own ungrateful perceptions of each others' and/or our own human experiences? SMH...

[Backseat Driver]

26. Did you mean "last acceptable" or "least acceptable"?

Last edited Thu Dec 22, 2022, 04:51 PM - Edit history (1)

Think most of us in this small family have been on the losing end of (not reverse) POC racism, misogyny, the transgenerationally wealthy and well-educated, the costs of caring for the disabled, and ageism. In many ways, we met the challenges inherent in the discriminations of those in the GOP/GQP and it turned those MAGATS crazy with TFG's incitement to violence.

DH is an only child; I was estranged from my parents and two younger siblings and now only one other, a younger sister, survives and has a severely disabled biracial adult child in her late 30s. who lives at home. Worst of all, though, we came from enmeshed families, traumatized by the Great Depression and WWII, with inflexible RW fundamentalist/evangelical religious roots. Neither family of origin invested for the long-term in Wall Street, their homes, kids, education, or social growth and change. Both invested heavily of their time and talent in their small church that no longer exists.

Our small family of two daughters are only 3rd generation Americans, one married an American son of immigrant Central American Latinx, one single who has been told "she doesn't bring anything worthwhile to the table"???

Both have four year degrees and jobs with good salaries. So there's much pressure on our only grandson just entering puberty who claims he's an omnist and has cycled from paleontologist, to judge, to high school history teacher as a possible occupation. It's really hard not to carry our family's "willfully ignorant" traumas and baggage. Is age now enough to make us unworthy failures and our kids further transgenerationally susceptible to the similar or worse ills, challenges, and trauma American society has visited upon us in our time as married adults, our children's time, and theirs? I want to be optimistic, but I know DH and I will never recover our retirement dreams, our financial investments in a future, and I'm quite terrified of living in poverty alone to avoid passing on those failures of ours in a time of high housing, health, and educational costs. Ah heck, costs of living in general. I am living at the edge of the next new great extinction, with a single leaf still budding on the tree of life...Of course, I do have regrets about what was actually done dodging those GOP and personal challenges; but I stayed through it all and it's so depressing in our mid 70s as being all too futile! It very definitely can get worse -- still, it seems that everyone ages out or just stalls out justice except SCOTUS judges!

[FalloutShelter]

27. What I mean is that

Younger people who are sensitive to all kinds of objectionable stereotyping seem to have no problem with negatively stereotyping seniors.

[zanana1]

34. So true.

It's strange that I didn't realize it until I was a senior.

[getagrip_already]

2. tell me about being laid off in your early 60's.....

Because you are among the most highly compensated tech workers and the company can simply hire 2 new grads for what they pay you.

Then try to find a new job..... I did, but it gets harder the older you get. You get fewer responses even though you have a solid track record and meet all the requirements. You get less than enthusiastic recruitment.

I get the distinct feeling they are hiring older people as a temporary workforce, no matter how valuable they are.

Look, I get that tech skills are a flash in the pan these days. A list of the hot programming languages contain many that weren't heavily used a few years ago. And in a few years, that list will be as foreign to today's programmers as todays list would be to someone graduating in 2010. Even a python 2 programmer might get passed over for a job requiring python 3 skills with experience.

But really, not every tech worker is a cutting edge programmer and skills honed are still in demand today.

And I can only imagine what more traditional workers have to put up with as newer workers hunt for those senior positions only to find oldies sitting there.

[AngryOldDem]

5. I'm pretty much stuck.

I’m vested in my retirement, but I don’t have the years of service that would enable me to retire with full benefits. I have to wait three more years until I’m 65. (Believe me, I asked about this.) If I wait until I’m 70, I’ll get even more money, but if I tried that, it would probably kill me.

I really doubt I could find a job now that will compensate me the same (and I don’t get paid nearly enough as it is), or have the same kind of benefits. Plus with the economy as iffy as it is, I’m scared to make a jump.

If anyone has any advice here, I am all ears.

That’s why I’m just asking for a little consideration to make my job easier in the meantime. I really don’t think I’m asking for all that much. I am the oldest one in my office now, since most of my cohorts retired over the past couple years. Believe me, it is DAMN lonely.

[markodochartaigh]

10. I wish you the best!

I can't give advice, but I can tell you that I'm so thankful that I was able to wait my thirty years for my public hospital nursing pension. It isn't as much as Social Security would have been, but I was able to take it a few years earlier than I could have taken Social Security. Time goes so quickly now, before you know it you will be looking back and congratulating yourself for hanging in there!

[nightwing1240]

16. Very sorry they are not treating you well

and the situation you are dealing with. I was the oldest in my department when I retired and know how difficult it can be with bosses that don't seem to care and other employees that dismiss you because of age. People like that haven't a clue as to how bad that is until it happens to them and it will in due time. Please hang in there. Once retired I never have looked back and am much better off as a result.

[Skittles]

28. do you talk to the younger folk you work with

honestly it sounds like staying put is probably the best advice for you but I wonder about the lonely part - I very much enjoy the young folk I work with, even though I literally have shoes older than some of them

[AngryOldDem]

31. I'm talking more about the difference in treatment from the boss.

Of course, it’s nothing so blatant that I could run to HR about — the man is not that stupid — but it’s there just the same. Cases in point — yesterday I was again out of the loop on a direction about how to handle a certain part of the work. I just happened to overhear him tell someone else who sits directly across from me, after hearing him tell other people the same thing Tuesday. Never saw fit to tell me. Later, I went to him with a question and he was dismissive, cold, and barely made eye contact — not how he treats the younguns. I walked away feeling like a dumbass. Not the first time that’s happened, either.

This is not a “perceived” difference in treatment. I just can’t ignore it anymore. I have tried to put this in perspective and rationalize it, but it’s just getting too hard. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if the man likes me personally. All I ask is for a professional work environment, not a constant, dystopian episode of The Office.

I do have to stay put. I’ve been trying to look at this from all sides, and I keep coming to the conclusion that it’s just too risky to leave at this point.

[Skittles]

32. that's terrible

no one should be treated that way

your boss SUCKS - may I ask how old HE is

[AngryOldDem]

33. If I had to guess, early 40s.

The guy he replaced was just as bad, believe it or not. Sexist AND ageist. Double whammy.

[Klondike Kat]

7. You never know when some of those older skills will be necessary again

A little background - I'm 66 years old and have been working in Information Technology since 1986. For the past 18 years I've been working in the I.T. department of a small county, where I've been assigned to the Sheriff's Office as the Network and Systems Administrator (that's the title - there are lots of "hats" that go with it).

About 11 years ago our Detectives were working on a case related to a "hit and run". They asked the State for a file containing some data related to a range of suspect automobile years, makes, and models and the State responded with the file and the record descriptions - which were in COBOL. Having worked with COBOL quite extensively back in the 80's and 90's I was able to extract and convert the data into something they could use in a couple of days.

I'm retiring in a few months. The rest of the folks in the I.T. department are about half my age. When I go, there will be a lot of "institutional knowledge" that will go with me. I hope they never need anyone that knows COBOL again - none of them have an inkling of what it looks like.

[AngryOldDem]

13. I can attest to this:

When I go, there will be a lot of "institutional knowledge" that will go with me.

Over the past several years, across all offices, we have lost upwards of 100 years of experience mainly due to retirement, and with every passing year it shows. In addition, the quality of job applicants declines every year — it’s quite shocking, actually. People with college degrees who can’t spell, and openly admit to using Auto Correct.

[SouthernDem4ever]

15. And those with the college degrees are running the place now

They hand down these policies as if they have never been tried before. Many of the policies already failed but they don't bother to ask anyone. They also don't give a rip about older technologies that their customers are still using. Doesn't make customers feel all warm and fuzzy about the company.

[Skittles]

29. I was a COBOL programmer in another life

I've worked on mainframe for decades......its imminent demise was always on my mind, yet it's still around.....training younger folk on mainframe isn't easy though as it has become much more complicated since I first learned it.....

[paleotn]

11. How soon they forget about legacy systems....

until they break and there's a mad rush to find people versed in languages like COBOL. A lot of old programming is still in use in many defense systems and commercial avionics. Ada and others, and sometimes even FORTRAN. They're time tested and reliable in cases where an "aw snap" Google program error message is not an option.

[LakeArenal]

17. It happened to me in 2009. Thanks to the housing fiasco.

[Harker]

4. A sad aspect of maintaining a workplace as a competitive arena

rather than an opportunity for the sharing of knowledge and cooperation toward shared goals.

[bucolic_frolic]

6. What music you listen to (unstated: Old Man)?

Stones, Blondie.

"Nice that you remember them!"

This an actual exchange with a medical professional.

Fry them, fry them all.

[TNNurse]

8. When I was retiring after 37 years at the same hospital,

I was told how much my experience would be missed. I told some administrators that if they wanted people who could mentor and support younger nurses, they should not make people in their 60s START working 12 hr shifts....then I walked away.

Also, taking health insurance from someone who had to work part time after coming back from cancer treatment was particularly awful. Fortunately, my husband could put me on his insurance. I was particularly pissed about learning about the insurance in the local paper and not a notice from my employer.

I did have an amazing supervisor who let me work out a flexible schedule of projects for her. Walking 12 hours around the hospital as a supervisor was simply not possible. I could do 8 hrs but then someone had to pick up the other 4, so after a brief time, I gave up that job.

It has been 10 years, and I still resent it.

[jaxexpat]

12. I represent that!

The very idea fills my heart with representment.

[Cassidy]

20. How do managers not understand how much they lose when they push out older employees?

My husband's small division was closed two years ago. It was only after the company closed it that they realized the division brought in tens of millions of dollars annually. They closed it to save money - most of the workers were older and had higher salaries. We looked into an age discrimination law suit, but didn't have the money, energy, and time for that.
My husband now works half the time as an independent contractor for them and gets paid far more than he did when he was a full-time employee. Although we landed on our feet, I know the other valuable employees have not done as well and I am very angry and sad about it.

Musk is far from the only fool in charge.

[Rebl2]

21. Both my

parents left work earlier than they planned. Dad around 57 and Mom 59. My Dad had a pension and they gave him a bonus for retiring early and eventually SS. My Mom got a bonus for retiring early and some kind of 401k as well as SS eventually. She was a banker and a wise investor.
Now my husband on the other hand worked until he 65 plus three months. He got more SS than my parents did, as well as a pension and something like a 401k. What really got me was they begged him to stay. They weren’t trying to push him out the door like they did my parents.

[Easterncedar]

22. Ageism is everywhere.

I got a lot of it from the younger coworkers, even those reporting to me. Totally open about it, too. I was online before they were born and they tended to assume I had just been introduced to technology. Worst was a woman my own age, though, who dismissed the seniors in the office for years even as she became one. Oblivious.

[AngryOldDem]

23. Thank you all for your kind replies.

It means a lot.

[Easterncedar]

35. On reflection, to be fair,

I have to say I have been guilty of ageism too. I made remarks that were meant to be funny highlighting the age difference between me and younger workers, and sometimes were just reflections of my own surprise at their not knowing things I took for granted as foundational.

I know this isn’t relevant to the OP, sorry. But you did make me think.