Why I Had To Retire Early
By
I didn't know that I was going to retire early. My boss told me that there was a recession, so he was having to get rid of eight employees, and I was one of them. I was only fifty years old at the time. So I took a full-time refresher course in how to get a job, and spent a few weeks looking for a job...er..a few months...er...a few years.
It is illegal for an employer to refuse to employ me because I'm too old. So they told me that I am over-qualified. In most cases that was just a way around the law, but there was one case where it was true. I wrote a resume that missed out most of my qualifications, and only showed the bare minimum needed for the job of quality testing equipment from an electronic assembly line. I described myself as a technician which was true, as far as it went.
At the interview everything was going really well and I was sure that he was going to give me the job. Then he asked me a question which I answered unthinkingly while I was planning how to handle the closing minutes of the interview. His immediate response was "Sorry, you're over qualified, because you understood my question".
Of course, when I wasn't applying for jobs I had a lot of time on my hands, so I repaired the roof of my house, then stripped all the paint from under the eaves and repainted all the woodwork.
I also took extra study courses, some of them subsidized by the employment offices, so I soon had a diploma in computer programming, and a certificate of desktop-publishing, and a computer repair and upgrade certificate, and certificates in HTML programming, Advanced HTML programming, PERL and CGI programming...none of which helped me to get a job. They only made me more over-qualified.
However, none of the training was wasted. I've used bits of it at home for programming my own computer, upgrading my own computer, creating my own websites, desktop-publishing newsletters, certificates, cards, flyers etc for non-profit organizations such as barbershop singing that I belong to.
In other words, I got practical experience in so much that I was gently eased into a retirement that I refused to recognize for another fifteen years until I reached retirement age. So I didn't die from boredom as so many men do when they retire early. Now if I could only find a little more time to do all the things I would like to...I might have time to be bored.
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