When I'm 64...

The Beatles sang about it on their Sgt. Peppers album in the song, When I'm 64.  "Will you still need me?"

In the case of my job, the answer came down unmistakably, a month after the fact, from a manager either acting on his own or in tandem with the rest of the managers in my shop, in the form of an, uh, in-person communication from him that indelibly said, "No."  So last month I retired rather than report to an increasingly hostile and untenable work environment each workday.

After more than 25 years of outstanding service, it's a shame.  But that's the way the game is played these days, whether it's legal or illegal, by mid-level managers fighting to advance their careers above all else, when dealing with workers a generation apart from them.

The above is only my opinion, of course.  This particular manager announced shortly after I left that he was leaving to take a job elsewhere.

He'd been there 7 years, the last 3 as a manager, and he didn't want to "calcify," he reportedly said.  He needed new challenges.

In my opinion, he had way too much recent baggage to stay, being the chief henchman in driving out workers two decades older than he.  His fingerprints were all over two of the three sexagenarians in my former shop being forced to leave in the last year due to age discrimination, one via a forced transfer and in my case, a precipitous retirement.

He certainly never met the challenge of being an effective manager.  In my opinion, it was management by bullying.