Hitting the 50s

I'm retiring from being a bum , will work for cookies .

 

I started this thread when I was a few months into selling out and getting a mind-numbing corporate job. Now I've been at it a year and have gotten used to some things like commuting, 4 kinds of office coffee, and insurance that's a LOT better than what I was buying during the Obama years. However, I have discovered that when you're an over 50 man, some doctors see only dollar signs.

So far I've had one suggest chiropractic (of all fucking things) another says I MUST get an expensive air pump and jam it into my nostrils when I sleep. One doctor's PA referred me to a pain clinic (old military injury, not quite covered by the VA for some weird reason). All of this ancillary shit would have cost me thousands. On the up side, I get a veteran's discount at AutoZone and an old geezer's discount at Barnes & Noble.

The job pays me just below 2/3 of what I averaged as a freelance instructor. As well it should since I don't do any instructing. Instead, I'm a "projects" guy who isn't attached to any projects, but I'm in all of the meetings for all of the projects. The business is an odd combination of a small precision factory that makes stainless steel valves for 1/8th inch tubing to 9 inch pipe flanges. Some for medical, most for water and steam handling. Pretty boring shit, but the whole factory is about the size of a 4 car garage.

The other side of the house is all about portable water treatment and desalination. They basically crammed all the stuff you need to treat water into a 40 foot shipping container. It's a tight fit for my fat ass at times, but then, I'm no longer in the field. The last time I crawled around in one of these things it was in a warehouse near the Atlanta airport and had severe damage to the reverse osmosis section because it had been neglected and allowed to freeze. I had to drive around tree limbs that had been dragged down by the snow to get pictures of the damage so my boss would look like a guy who had his finger on the pulse of the operation and deserves a promotion and a corner office.

And yet, I'll never mention how many times I've driven his drunk ass home. I bet he'd never remember. Anyway, for the most part the job isn't bad. My boss expects me to fabricate things out of thin air and remember shit that happened years before I came on board. Thanks to their reliance on 80s style paper copies in rows of filing cabinets (no joke) I have been able to keep up with him more and more in these weird discussions. I figure he's in a time warp, so if I work this right, I'll be his replacement after they fire him for aggressively seeking to slime his way into a position already occupied by a relative of someone with 9 lives.

And it's all because your Momma don't dance and your Daddy don't rock & roll.....................................................

There are times I wonder if maybe I'm seeing the world strangely

 

I turn 50 in two months and I have been hitting the health insurance pretty hard lately. I actually feel kind of guilty about it for some reason. I've had back problems for about 5 years and have been ignoring it up till now. Last Monday I finally went to an IMAC regeneration center to have some X-rays done; I haven't gone back for the results yet and don't really want to but I've already spent my maximum out of pocket for the year so I figured it's a good time to finally face facts.

 

I think more millenials understand than you would think. We're coming straight out of college with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, with the pressure to start paying it off right away. But then no employer in the field you majored in wants to hire you because you have no experience, but if you have no degree they don't want you even though you spent those "college" years working. There is literally fierce competition for jobs that pay 8 an hour and it's not enough to live on. We know we're fighting for scraps.

Then you work at McDonald's for shitty pay when they want 900 dollars for an efficiency apartment in a bad neighborhood and bus passes cost 100 dollars a month. Chances are those of us in our generation won't be able to retire at all. We know we're slaves. And insurance companies don't want to cover people who have pre existing conditions. You don't know how many people my age are on medication for anxiety, depression, etc. I have no insurance at the moment and I have a thyroid condition I need daily medication for. I get it, but not the way I should be able to access it. Our system is based on greed and greed alone. We make money for people who don't need it and we'll never see the fruits of our labor.

 

Oh I never meant to suggest that millennial-age people are without clue on these issues. It's impossible to ignore. I graduated from college in the early 90s a whopping $15,000 in debt. Think about that number, it's such a meager sum for a bachelors degree. Right? Well, it is today, of course. But it took me a decade to pay it off. Worse still, when I took deferments, they capitalized interest, magically turning it into capital, that I got charged more interest on. The loan was inflating like a cancerous tumor and I was working in retail. I had to start making more money soon or I'd be living under a bridge.

It was around the time that Jane, my wife, let me know that our first child was on the way. So I took a job in a machine shop (old Navy skill set) making nearly double what I made selling car stereos and answering machines. I worked nights in a building that was rarely below 90F turning steel forgings into automotive parts. It was brutal work, but I was quickly in the best shape of my life and our debts were finally slowing down.

So after Leroy (we figured that Elroy as a name would get his ass beat in school, so we rearranged the letters) arrived I worked as a machinist for another year to get my wife through her first degree. Then we moved to Florida, a state shaped like America's dick, because most of America's dicks have moved there. We did OK, but making progress on our debt was curtailed by our child, as one would expect. It was then that I decided to write fiction. Others would call it a resume.

I was aiming for a job with Spacely (of Schenectady) in Atlanta. I lied like a rug and created a whole new career using the backbone of my actual job experience. Nothing could be checked very far. But I discovered that huge corporations don't always do the legwork with applicants. They rely instead on their gut. So all you have to do is perform well, and you're in! Keep in mind you can be discovered and perp walked out by security, but only if you give them a reason to look.

The gig was for a year, but there was always the chance for extensions and I was offered several. But I knew I was a walking house of cards, ready to fall at any moment. I didn't care, I was banking those fat corporate checks. We paid off my student loans, bought a house and rode the gravy train for a year. I was actually looking forward to ending it so I could relax for a bit and quit worrying about being discovered. It was all going according to plan.

Then Spacely did the most horrible thing imaginable. They offered me a position, in New York, with a staff, for a special project involving maintenance audits (really boring shit, but basically easy). I should have turned them down, but it was a 25% raise and a weekly tax-free stipend of $500. So I packed up the car and drove from Atlanta to Schenectady. In December. The guilt set in firmly when I met my staff. They were all genuine articles, being led by a fraud. I carried this shameful burden for two years. By that time most of the lies on my resume had magically morphed into reality. Enough reality to get a job with another company closer to Atlanta. Making even more money.

Not that greed is my motivation, it's not. I'm motivated by staying out of debt. And I'm willing to bullshit my way into a job to get there.

We're not wealthy, but we are doing our best to keep our children in college debt free. Not having that millstone around their necks will put them ahead of where we were at their age. Maybe they'll be wealthy some day. And buy me a a big disgusting classic Cadillac with fins. It could happen!

 

almost 50, I really have no choice but to take my job in conway pa, 30min drive but I will be earning more, and less work. I may land job within the complex because thats the way it works up here. ive had a dozen jobs in this office complex alone. maybe go back to hvac maintaince with massive pay cut. painting curbs, but if I like it i can't complain ..

 

Oh no, I didn't take offense. I just wanted you to know most of us are aware how bad things have gotten. I basically had to fluff my resume as well to even get a call back. It seems like you either have to know someone high up or lie to get experience.

The debt from school is insane. My girlfriend went to Everest before they got shut down, for a criminal justice degree. She had 45,000 dollars in debt when she was done because she had to take out a loan. They started harassing her to pay when she was still in school. She's in a loan forgiveness program (which is the only way most of us ever get rid of the debt) and basically she pays them monthly and they eventually absolve the debt after a set amount of years. I thought about going back to school but hearing these horror stories, fuck that.

Our country is fucked because the only thing they care about is making money and stealing every dollar they can from us. You'd think with all the money we shoot into the economy, we'd get some kind of benefits. Taxes, health insurance, etc. It's about bleeding us dry and we keep slaving so we can live another day.

 

If its any comfort, most countries are fucked, the US just happens to be the Beverley Hillbillies of the bunch. People just have a natural tendency to organize like mindless chickens, but technology is about to catch up with the chickenshit crap.

 

George is right, most people will be fucked.

Time to use that university degree with the immigrant mentality. Shake my hand, better count your fingers...

Or go work at McDonalds. Fuck, may as well just rip off the government and sleep in until noon.

 

The better investment these days seems to be skills more than paper on the wall. I took all the Adobe and Microsoft free courses I could find. I can easily get a job as a SharePoint administrator, copy writer, maintenance planner (Maximo) or I can work in a kitchen if I must (I'm a certified cook). My degree is based on what is now antiquated technology (unless Fortran comes back), so I had to modernize my skills. Lean 6-Sigma was another good investment (I actually paid).

But I'm still working my ass off and I'm well into my 50s now. But some of that was poor planning on my part. The smartest thing I did was put Jane, my wife, through college a couple of times so she now makes more than I do. Not only that, she's 12 years younger, so she'll be earning peak for another decade easily. What we do now is bank every dime I make to keep the kids out of college debt. And I drive an 11 year old car and have been wearing the same clothing to work since I started this job. I'm a seriously cheap bastard.

 

Nothing wrong with being frugal. I only spend money on things I need.

 

making work need less people while making more people wanting work, seems to me, the solution to this, is if machines can keep us all fed, to quit whining about people being on welfare.
another way to "put more men on the job"(good benny hill routine) was/is "job-sharing" meaning part time with full bennifits.
the biggest mistake is making more things be about money instead of less.

of course that leaves us with more hands on our hands, but instead of making fake work, how about, just for shits and giggles, encouraging people to rediscover that creating and exploring, that its our imaginations that make us 'human'?

and with that, a happy new year and to all a good night

 

but the corporatocracy wants you to spend money you don't have, on things you don't need nor want, which they use more machines to make so the don't have to pay people to make them so the don't have the money to spend on buying them. nothing wrong with this picture, nope, not a thing.

logic says being less wasteful would make more sense. nature says this too. but money and its incentives says just the opposite.
gee, i can't imagine why we're having a problem messing up the environment.

 

Seems a few near 50s here

We should start a boy band

George Jetstoned and the Slipped Discs