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!!!

I'm 53 and feel this way too. I'm not alone in the staff room. Quite a few of us have seen new ideas come and go. I just try to do the best I can, but recognise how much bullshit there is in the job these days.

Going to ask to go PT after Christmas, then I will apply for my pension. Work till I am 60.
Used to love my job been there for 20 years. But there has been staff that are so brown nosed and get promoted. Over time I am now feeling resentful and pissed off because of lazy colleagues getting paid more than me and do FA.
Fed up of coming home knackered, too tired to be bothered with housework, so do it all at weekends.
Life is too short!! I’ll be happy in my 70s sat with a cup of tea with my Hubby watching TV knowing that I have done the things like holidays etc.
Dad got dementia his life ended at 75 and FIL died of cancer at 74. MIL 77 in bad health can’t walk etc.
You just don’t know what round the corner….

I'm 57, left a 30yr job and took the pension as I'd didn't like the way things were going in my role.... I have an 'as and when' job with the NHS which is WFH, I usually work about 10 hours a week... I've found a great work life balance finally.
There us only me, so no one else to have to consider. I'm careful with my money, but do have a social life and can afford to go on holiday...so I'm grateful I put the years in to build my pension, and am now in a position to enjoy it

This is a depressing read. I’ve just turned 55 and need to get back to work after a number of years of ill health and previous to that I was self employed for a fair time.

Not convinced anyone is going to hire me currently but everyone keeps telling me someone would be lucky to have me working for them so let’s see if someone actually will. I have thrown myself at the mercy of the help people back to work schemes to help me blag a CV. They are very encouraging but I have chronic health conditions and the fatigue is massive just thinking about it all let alone doing it.

Same age range.

Graduates are a scourge at my work and seem so desperate to steal all the oxygen in the room.

I agree but there's also a fair bit of dead wood. I work in an old fashioned firm and we have a couple of late fifties people on the payroll who barely perform their jobs at all. Our bosses inherited them when they took over from their fathers. It's a built in expectation that these employees will receive pay rises, bonus and pension until they retire, there's no question of letting them go. I'm 53 and can't wait to retire, I'm a sort of halfway between enthusiastic and dead wood 😂

You want to move to Sri Lanka/

Intrigued......

So true. My dad, who had me late in life, died when my mum was in her mid 50s - he was 10 years older than her. They never had any retirement together. DH and I have a similar age gap and I really did not want the same thing to happen to us.

I M 64 and I have been feeling like this for some time. However, there is something almost liberating about not feeling overly enthusiastic about work. I jump through the hoops and enjoy the good things related to work: the fantastic clients I work with, some opportunities for creativity and the feeling that I am quite settled in terms of what I do.

As we get older, I think our priorities change a little, and we evaluate our life choices. I have learnt that my family is more important than my work, and the overwhelming caring responsibilities do not stop when our children get older. This means that, in many ways, I do not really care about perhaps 30% of what I do at work.

I have also learnt that health is precarious, and very precious. I want to enjoy some work free time before bad health and old age impair my ability to enjoy anything.

I am lucky enough to have some autonomy with respect to work, and to work from home. Fortunately, or perhaps not so fortunately, I do not have enthusiastic , energetic younger people in my immediate work environment.

This, and take the piss in a mildly amused way but never so far they will catch you out, the days will just fly by.

Also, do the bare minimum.

Grin and bear it OP, the bigger picture is your pension. You could always try and really get into a little nugget or niche part of your industry and motivate yourself that way. You’ve got to have little goals to be able to zone out the stuff you know won’t work but you have to waste time on. Or you could start a revolution to show them why it doesn’t work and the alternative is …. but you’d need way more time and energy to back that up

Oh dear Edith you haven’t caught up have you? Perhaps it’s you that should retire?

It’s a completely disproportionate measure that shits on women to appease a contested ideology. Given a free choice most people vote with their feet and don’t do it. It’s becoming more and more discredited as it makes more people ‘uncomfortable’. Why? Newsflash. Because most people don’t have a ‘gender identity’ - it’s all bunkum.

Absolutely. It would be fantastic if we managed to combine more experienced workers’ knowledge with younger workers’ energy and enthusiasm. Which requires mutual respect and appreciation.

I absolutely agree that many older people are unfortunately dismissed and their accumulated knowledge ignored.

But I also remember how it felt to be dismissed as an energetic and enthusiastic 20-something woman. And that was absolutely dispiriting as well. And I wouldn’t be surprised if OP and many other people on this thread made similar experiences when they first entered the workforce.

Which is why I stand by my original comment. Maybe OP‘s initiatives and ideas would have worked if her 50/60-yo co-workers would have participated (back then)…

(Probably not all of them tbh. But I’m sure OP had some good ones!)

Can you discuss this with your employer? I feel exactly the same (at 55). I have calmly explained that I know the value my contribution makes, that I keep up to date with developments that are role-specific or organisational. I am happy to not have regular 1:1s, but provide a regular update on what I am achieving and where the challenges are. I will complete role-specific or statutory training, but otherwise leave me alone in my corner to crack on with my job.

i appreciate this isn’t possible in all organisations and that this relates very much to ‘office’-based work. But in these roles, it may be possible for others.

If i go along with announcing “my” pronouns I’m basically saying I agree that people get to choose what sex they are - and I don’t agree with that and I think supporting that idea is causing massive harm. On top of that, I don’t support the idea that people have to use the pronouns they are told to even if that goes against what they clearly perceive, or else get into trouble- as has repeatedly happened. What about people with autism, learning disabilities, dementia, English as a second language, visual impairment etc? It’s discriminatory to all of them because they could unintentionally use the “wrong” pronouns and get hauled over the coals. I’m not being part of that. I don’t have a fit if some one mis-sexes me and I think it’s narcissistic and controlling for people to try to control others in that way.

I have felt like this since my 40s (I am 53).

I went part-time due to long term health issues which means that at least I have a good work life balance.

But I am looking at going freelance/starting a small business so I can check out of the office politics, endless meetings and being treated poorly by my employer due to my long term health condition..

In the meantime I just 'quiet quit' and do the minimum and work from home most of the time.

It is not working in itself that bothers me, it is the office environment and crap management.

But that doesn’t negate my statement about this situation being quite cyclical.

OP was once bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with „new“ ideas. Some of those ideas were probably good and might have been successful if the older people she used to with (aka the 50-60 yo coworkers) would have supported them.

Now she’s the 50-60 yo coworker faced with bright-eyed and energetic young people.

Your post made me snort loudly on the train on my commute so thank you!! A couple of years ago I changed from private to public sector and whilst I love my job the constant and wasteful change mgt progs combined with fast streamers with zero experience constantly telling you how amazing they are and how lucky we are to have them you whilst throwing you under the bus to get what they want is frankly exhausting. I keep going knowing that they will move on soon and become someone else's problem before suddenly 'leaving the business' without explanation when they monumentally screw up!

Absolutely!
Only one of my parents lived to state retirement age, and that was only just. I really resent the thought that I need to have some good luck and outlive them both to have any sort of retirement.

I work in a place where I am one of the younger ones at 49. It helps 😆

Find a hobby, something to look forward every day, a treat after work, listen to
music, yoga, meditation, whatever make you happy. 4 years will go quickly

People would like some time to slow down and enjoy life before they die or become infirm, after a lifetime of hard work.

This is partially it. I watched my parents both decline after 75. All the plans they had washed away overnight. I do not want to retire officially at 68 and only have 7 good years. I want more.

They worked hard, did the right thing and were promised a good retirement. In reality by the time they got there, they did not even have a free tv license.

You make sharp distinctions, don’t you, @PumpkinsAndCoconuts?
more experienced workers’ knowledge with younger workers’ energy and enthusiasm.
Younger workers don’t necessarily lack knowledge [just experience] and older workers don’t necessarily lack energy and enthusiasm.
Luckily I worked in a department with a mixture of generations whose opinions were sought, discussed fully, valued, and adopted when considered beneficial. It seems to me you have experienced the same but neither of us can vouch for the generations who came before OP, can we?
It was the full-of-themselves, newly promoted, inexperienced gobshites who pissed me and those 20 years younger off when they addressed the whole organisation and made mandatory their nouveaux initiatives which weren’t nouveaux at all. That’s when the ciiircles completed for me and retirement beckoned.

I'm 43 and feel like this. I did wonder if just a small change in job will bring me to life again. The 'problem' is I earn well and have shares which are going to be life changing one day, so I cannot leave my company. I could not find a job at another company at the same base salary without significantly more responsibility. Money is not everything etc. but I don't agree with this much. It is very important and even if I get ill I will be better off for having earned well in the past.

My personal life is a bit dull as well, so I am wondering if I just find a nice hobby or volunteer somewhere and then work will be a place to rest. I feel like a 59 year old would think like this as they prepare for retirement and I am only 43.

Depends what work you do as well. I am sat on my bum all day in a nice warm office or at home. It beats working for a living. Yes it can be stressful, but it's not back-breaking.

I come from a long line of manual workers who survived to tell the tale, back when there was no such thing as retirement.