Age 56. Can't be arsed at work anymore.

I think that "work" as a concept needs to evolve and change a lot.

It's not sustainable to work for five days a week, for 50 years. It's like being a slave.

Me too, only this morning I thought…another few months of getting up in the dark, driving to work and sitting behind a desk for hours then driving home in the dark….5 days a week! Also trying to put together a packed lunch that actually looks nice to eat, I haven’t got the patience any more!
hopefully mortgage will be paid off in next 12-18 months……I’m early 60s so still got 4-5 years to state pension. Desperately trying to see if I can pool my savings to have enough to stick 2 fingers up at work and have enough to live very modestly until then. I’m done!

I don't know what your situation is like. But could you buy a flat, rent it out on air b and b., and live off that income? And retire abroad early

The problem comes when doing your job to the best of your ability, and no more, becomes seen as under performing.

Getting to this age has given me a new perspective on matters and I wonder if so much of the ageism and sexism around middle aged women is that We Know Things, We Take No Shit and We Get Stuff Done. Sounds like a meme, but if you think of women over time like the Suffragettes, the WI, the Dagenham workers, the women who set up Rape Crises - how much did they rely on formidable women of a certain age?

And I'm going to frame it and throw darts at it.

I'm glad for the poster in question. And accept it's mostly entirely my own problem that I'm in the position I'm in. Everyone's different. The smallness of my 50s world is largely to do with unexpected widowhood which brings a surprising whiff of Typhoid Mary with it.

At 63 when I have my annual review I tell my manager straight that I am happy to do any learning required to enable me to do my job better (there isn't any) but I am not interested in the least in furthering my career and will not be undertaking any further training for that.

I am happy and willing to do my job to the beat of my ability, but that's all.

I feel like this at 39! God help me! Maybe we should work together 😂 Life is short and unless you really love what you do, than work pays the bills (only just for some).
My energy has taken a dip at40 approaches. Maybe I need my iron level checked.

I know former colleagues who have left the corporate world behind and set themselves up as independent consultants. From my perspective, that would be a frying pan-fire situation. Having to market yourself and network, negotiate contracts, deliver work solo with no colleagues to bounce ideas off, manage invoices and chase up the non-payers - nightmare! At least in the corporate world there are specialists to deal with all of the other stuff and I can at least do my actual work over 60% of the time.

And I still like and enjoy the actual work, it’s all the nonsense around it that I have very little patience for these days. Like Quarterly Town Hall meetings where we waste 90 minutes listening to VPs waffling on and answering questions they’ve picked from the brown nosers and not the ones people want answered (like whether any more redundancies are on the horizon).

Ive always presumed it was one of the silver linings to menopause, the realisation that I really do not give a fuck anymore about stuff that really doesn’t matter. Let me crack on with the tasks that are important and the rest of you can do the “initiatives”.

You can take a reduced pension at 55 not the full amount (to say nothing of losing 5 years pensionable service).

That's what stopped me going at 55.

I know exactly how you feel OP. I was the same at 56. Don't give up hope. I got offered voluntary redundancy when I was 57 and I grabbed at it with both hands.
The payment kept me going until my pension started at 60.
Here's hoping you have the same sort of luck.

I just want to be left alone at work. No daily meetings, no buzzwords, no personal development, no happy bunnies, no team building, no 1-2-1's, no mandatory bldy e-learning, no having to 'be nice'.
Just let me log on, do my work, wiggle my mouse because I am not doing extra just what I am paid to do

This! A million times this. A colleague has been trying to arrange a day where we all make presentations to each other. It’s pointless but he reckons it’s a good idea. We can put it down under personal development on our appraisals!

Just fuck off Sunny Jim.
.

I hear you. We have an entire department devoted to this nonsense. It's soul destroying.

I feel like this too. At early 50s, with primary/secondary school children, stopping work is not an option, although I really wish it was.

I'm well paid, so any move (& definitely retraining) would come with a significant pay cut, which I need to avoid at the moment. Also the Ts&Cs in my current job are good. But I feel so ground down by toxic management.

I have several former colleagues from previous jobs who've died in their 50s, while still working. Most of my family members have long term health conditions that have meant that any retirement activities are beyond them post-70. I have health conditions that I struggle to manage (despite doing all I can).

I just want to be able to enjoy life while I still have it.

When you are younger you can contemplate changing roles / companies to liven things up but once you reach your 50s you know that is incredibly hard to do due to agism

Agism also means that no one takes any notice if they are repeating mistakes from the past which wears you down even more - no matter how positively you phrase it " how are you going to overcome this aspect.." the answer these days seems to be ignore it and hope it goes away , or assume they will have found a new job away from the problem before it hits

So many of my contemporaries have already retired and look years younger - it's the best cure for wrinkles

I’m exactly like this as well - I’m constantly amazed that there are many people at my work who genuinely enjoy working, see it as central to their lives and identify, and are excited at the idea of getting a promotion.

I don’t think it’s necessarily a growing older and more cynical thing, more that people are wired differently. Some people are genuinely into their jobs, and others…. aren’t.

I have a really keen enthusiastic manager who is all about helping staff to progress and develop. Which is lovely for those people who do want to progress and develop. But she just doesn’t understand my mindset at all - I will do my job well, be reliable and be a good colleague, but have zero interest in progression.

I've felt this way for the last twenty years, and expect to feel it for the next twenty. I know full well if I changed to another career or field I’d feel exactly the same.

Im going to frame this post and read it every morning. Love it!

I actually really like the job I do, but not the appraisal, team building rubbish. Just leave me alone to do my work instead of inventing targets that really don't matter.
And stop talking corporate bullshit!

I dream of setting myself up as my own boss so I can avoid all the blathering on.

Yoga. Sounds silly but it helps with cultivating the "quiet mind" and switching off from all the bullshit

But they seem absolutely fine with ageism as they think those of us who don’t pander to the emperors new clothes ideology should just retire - making ageist assumptions

Yup. And if you haven't got with the program of pandering to genderism and "embracing" spouting pronouns everywhere, it's because of your "ideology" - you couldn't make it up!

No Edith, it's because we dare to question ideology and years of experience of patriarchal bullshit helps us to see patriarchal bullshit coming.

I do it voluntarily to be inclusive.

that’s entirely up to you, the pushback up thread is against making it mandatory.

but please be aware that by doing it you are signaling that you believe in gender ideology, ie that everyone has an innate gender that somehow lines up with one set or another of gender stereotypes. Many people don’t believe this, and I would view putting pronouns in your signature when they are the default pronouns associated with your sex as at best, virtue signaling and at worst as inappropriate as including a line from the Bible or other religious text.

As I'm freelance and wfh I don't have to deal with the sexist workplace structures directly, but sooooo many of the companies I work with have mostly female staff who run everything for less pay, and a highly paid male boss who doesn't know his arse from his elbow and keeps having bright ideas that just give everyone more work and are totally pointless.

The reason I think is that women don't tend to put themselves forward for the top job/s because of the inequalities in the home, family and relationships that mean they're carrying a lot more, whether domestically, with kids, caring for elderly parents etc. So they tend to do part-time hours and they're reluctant to apply for management/director jobs even though they'd actually all do a better job even part-time than Mr over-promoted bloke typically does.

Meanwhile mediocre men even if they have kids are free to keep going fo those jobs and their path is clear.

I don't think this thread is 'negative'.

Instead people are making very realistic comments about what it can be like to be an older worker.

As a part-time worker with a long term health condition classified as a disability, I have been treated very poorly by several employers (lack of progression or pay rise, discrimination, being taken from granted), patronised by younger colleagues and I have found it trickier to try to secure new employment. Those are facts.

I am not going to 'go the extra mile' or whatever nonsense my employer comes with if they treat me like an easily replaceable commodity.

Of course it is different if you have a decent, flexible job and your work is valued and rewarded.

I am looking at doing things like retraining, going freelance and so on as I have to keep working but I am quietly quitting my current job because they are only too happy to exploit me without giving much in return and I am done putting up with office and corporate bullshit.

Also having had some serious health issues I came to realise that work is not what matters the most in life.

I just need to make enough to live on but I am not dedicating my life to working for an employer who does not give a damn about me.

I am nodding so hard at these posts.

I think the problem we have (I am 53) is that although we have worked all our lives, many of us taking minimal maternity leaves (if we have children, of course many are childfree) - although we have put the hours, the years, and the decades in, there is no cultural persona for us at work, at this point in our lives, that we can easily step into that carries calm authority, the relaxed laid back but very experienced and efficacious mode that is appropriate at this age. We're always being treated as if we have to leap around like children, ever so enthusiastic, ever so jolly and encouraging and positive. If you sit back as a woman and don't flap about like a cheerleader you are considered to be stupid and / or lazy.

I have always been naturally a "snagger". If you want me on your team, you probably have someone else who is always like "we would make so much money selling hot chocolate on the summit of mount everest!" and you want someone who will ask "but will we? really? once we have transported it there?" Men hate it when women do that job. They need it done, but when a woman does it, it makes their willy feel small. This has always been my problem at work but now I am really old and really experienced in all kinds of bullshit, it's worse.

It's soul destroying googling "fedex costs to mount everest summit" for the millionth time but the alternative is saying "look chum, I'm not even googling the data for that pathetic idea" and you can't do that

The only views that matter less than those of a woman are those of an older woman.