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

[Whosaidthattt]

I'm a tired 56 year old. All these 'initiatives' and 'CPD'- I just can't be bothered anymore. Been there, did that 20 years ago. I have NO INTEREST in pretending to be excited/motivated by these 30 year olds and their enthusiasm! I get that they are young and excited about how they can change things but I just can't be arsed. Hoping to retire at 60 but that means another 4 years of excited puppies bounding about with their ideas. I'm not sure I can take it (or even care). How can I get through this final part of working life?? Help!!!

Exactly.

Quiet quitting, OP. Or leave earlier if you can afford it at all by looking at the budget and cutting down on some things. YANBU at all.

This thread is so depressing and negative.

Women wanted equality and to be more than 'housewives' and mothers or have mundane factory jobs.

We got that. More women than ever go to university.

You can be anything you want, within your own limits.

Women go into space, become PMs, leaders in industry, you name it.

Yet most of the posters here are wanting to do anything but work, even some in their 30s and 40s.

If you hate you work or enough aspects of it to want to stop, you're in the wrong job. Time to maybe think about what you'd really like to do and set the wheels in motion for that?

If you hate the 'culture' of the workplace, why not get into a position where you're making that culture and change it?

I do exactly this too! Honestly I think the average age at my work is about 25 and at over 20 years older than that the internal eye rolling I do on a day to day basis is excessive 🤣

Can you just quit?

I understand your point of view. But I hold a different one. I want women to be valued in the workplace. I don’t want them to have to hide their gender to be treated with respect. I don’t want to be considered ‘one of the guys’. I’m proud to be a woman.

And for those who prefer gender to be ambiguous as a way of combatting gender discrimination, then that’s surely an argument for respecting people who prefer to use they/them.

Anyway, I won’t derail this thread further by discussing workplace expectations on clarifying pronouns. I was purely pointing out that that people in their 50s have had to battle (and are still battling) discrimination and discomfort at work, including age discrimination, which is perhaps one reason why so many women feel so unhappy and under-valued at work as they get older.

Everyone’s entitled to their personal opinions on gender. But in a workplace, it’s best to treat customers/clients with respect, by addressing them how they prefer. And it naturally should extend to staff. I don’t think using pronouns on emails should be mandatory, any more than using titles (Mr, Mrs, Miss, Dr, Baroness etc). But if it saves someone from having to explain to me (and everyone else) they prefer they/them etc, then I do it voluntarily to be inclusive.

I think you're being rather naive. Women cannot be anything they want to be. Nor can men for that matter, but the restrictions on women are greater. The vast majority of us end up being whatever we are able to be based on our ability (to some extent) but mainly our circumstances and life chances. Its ridiculous to suggest that we could all have satisfying careers be floating around in space or running the country. How many astronauts and prime ministers ard required compared with office workers? There are only so many of the exciting opportunities to go round, and we still compete with men for those on the backfoot.
The majority of the population has to be engaged in the uninspiring but essential grunt work that's actually required and people will pay us to do. Within that I believe we can make the best of it with a positive attitude, and the OP appears to have done this for decades, but now has some not unnatural positivity fatigue.
Women on here are telling you their reality. Don't patronise them with myths about the world you think we should be living in when we can tell you from experience it's not like that.

Quite. What a negative thread. I got made redundant at the age of 63 at the start of the pandemic. I didn’t want to stop working or give up my income so I found another similar job. During my job seeking phase I am aware that I was discriminated against a couple of times, but that meant that those were companies whose values didn’t align with my own. I’ve moved again since, and been promoted in my current company even though I’m now past retirement age. No way am I giving up whilst I’m fit, capable and earning an excellent salary. I have ample free time to pursue my interests and I love working with a wide group of people from a variety of age groups and locations. I retrained for a completely different field in my 40s when my children were less dependent. If you don’t like what you do, do something else. It’s sad to write yourself off in your 50s and unless you’re rich enough to retire without drastically reducing your circumstances you’ll live in a smaller world and get old before your time.

I don't think it is depressing and negative. I think it's a little bit of dark humour, a bit tongue in cheek but mostly grounded in reality.

Me having a slightly cynical view of my firm's approaches to various initiatives, does not equate to me not valuing the opportunities I have had as compared to my grandmother and her generation. It's an oddly narrow lens you're applying.

Not everyone has the same opportunity to change and choose. I have a close friend with a child who has additional needs and will require life-long care. She works a small number of hours a week, around her caring responsibilities, for a supermarket. I'm not sure she'd welcome a lecture about how she's letting down the sisterhood by not trying to stand up her own co-operative, and not maximising the chance to enjoy her "career". She's got bigger things to worry about - the job is a job, it's a means to an end.

So Edith you don't like:
People not being respectful and kind or causing discomfort to others.
Being called a ‘guy’ (‘you guys’)
Sexism
Ideology
Not receiving equal pay
Sexualised dress codes
Sexual harassment.
Not being treated with respect and fairness

Hooo boy you need to do some research and find out about some (not all, but a very significant proportion) of the people who are identifying as transgender, and their attitude to women and their discomfort, fairness, respect and what you should wear as a woman. Guess what – it's not very feminist.

They have names for you that are a whole lot worse than "guy" I assure you.

What about when males are counted as women just because of "what they like to be called" and their higher pay is counted as women's pay and actual females get ignored and obliterated? What about when the same thing happens to sexual offending statistics? When actual females can't compete in sport because of what males want to be called, allowing them to dominate? Oh, all that's already happening.

If you are female, gender ideology is not your friend.

I don't think the point is that women don't want to work. Is that the system of CPD, promoting people for "innovations" that does not do anything new but sometimes give more work to people, over managing, etc. is just turning people off. This is mostly a women site, so you are hearing from women, but I am on the same age bracket as op, feel the same way as her, and all my male colleagues at similar age bracket also feel the same. We have been doing our job well for 20 years, but now, new blood with no experience and some questionable ideas have changed things, so there is so much red tape, the actual work is lost.

I don't think it is depressing. Neither do I think I owe it to woman of the past to climb the greasy corporate ladder. Sex Equality is not yet achieved.

@ClaireduLuney I'm just exhausted at 43 and maybe I'd be feeling less resentful had I not have had to work harder and be louder than any man to progress. I am not even that high in my company, just somewhere senior in the middle, but even now in bloody 2024 I witness young male grads entering the workforce and my manager, a man, is praising them as though they are the best thing since sliced bread. He doesn't even recognise that yes, they are enthusiastic (just like female grads) but they are still learning a basic job.

I once got really offended when he suggested I start involving one of those in my quite senior role after this young man had been with the company for just over six months and was already seeking a promotion. There would have been women or even more experienced men in the team that would have been much more suitable to begin learning my job simply because it would have been a natural progression from the experience they had already built up. Another young man, who is always unhappy with whatever job he's in, got a promotion to quite a senior level with not much to show for other than making noise. Of course he's now still not happy, but he also struggles to see that you probably aren't going to deputise for the CEO within 5 years of entering the workforce.

I am just tired of having to proof myself more than any man to be listened to and just be taken seriously, whilst fending off mansplainers and the constant hidden sexism at work. I'm tired of the politics, which I am having to play harder and better than a man, because I have to anticipate yet another man throwing me under the bus by 'subtly doubting my expertise' and undermining me in meetings. I suppose I have become this kind of stern and 'aggressive' woman at work, but it was either that or being walked over until the end of my days at about half my salary.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.