Reflections

... Just finished lunch (at work) and been thinking about "things". I work at a digital printing company and all of my coworkers are younger (make that a lot younger) than I. The owners (husband and wife) are older, but the only other 60-something worker had a heart attack and died last October, 2004.

I don't have a problem working with younger people and to paraphrase Ronald Reagan's reply to Walter Mondale during their debate several years ago, "I don't hold their youth and inexperience against them". I've been working with/for younger people for several years now ever since I took early retirement from Pacific Bell in 1991 and started consulting. I've always been given a lot of respect by my younger coworkers because we were professionals (computer programming, system analysis, database admin) and I had a lot of experience and had helped develop many of the systems and processes we worked on. - I've since quit consulting and have worked at the printing company as web developer, dba, etc. for the last 4 years while I prepare for full retirement. I hope to fully retire next year -

The folks I work with now are really not professionals (no special education or degree req'd) and aren't impressed by experience and knowledge. They see only gray hair and wrinkles and they ask for assistance or for an opinion only regarding something they are too young to remember. Am I insulted? I don't know. Sometimes it bothers me, but for the most part, I just let it slide. The other day, I was talking to someone and they called me "GRANDPA". My reaction to this caught every one off guard including myself. I told him, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn't his grandfather and that I'm too young to be his grandfather. I also told him that I considered his remark as an insult and informed him that he was not to call me that again. He apologized later on which I accepted. I have grown children who could make me a grandfather, but that hasn't happened yet. Being a grandfather isn't the problem, but being called that by someone younger and with a little bit too much smugness is.

Back to work...