I think retirement is a pipe dream...

saintmdterps said
My summer job in college was construction. I noticed how worn out the older workers bodies were, and decided that's why I wanted to graduate college; I didn't want to end up like these men. Some of whom I saw later in their lives in my professional capacity as an occupational therapist. By the end of those summers, I was tired of sweltering from beginning to end of the day, and was ready to go back to college albeit to an unairconditioned dorm room :hihi:

One summer I noticed one of my coworkers seemed to be not quite your average construction laborer. I said to him, "You don't strike me as the average construction worker" He laughed and replied "Well, during the school year I'm actually the biology department chair at Salisbury State College. I do this job to unwind from the politics. Here, at the end of the day I have no other work to do. I'm outside, getting my body back in shape and clearing my mind. Don't tell them but I'd do this for free just to relax" he later echoed my sentiments that by summer's end, he was ready to go back to the college.

I also worked with a retired navy commander and several others who liked the summer work just to be outside and do grunt labor that didn't require the mind to work hard. On the other end of the scale, my first summer I was crew lead and got paid 50 cents extra per hour because I was the only one of the 5 of us with a drivers license :hihi:

Good for him being smart enough to work both sides of the grass.

I once was working a mentally grueling transaction with a younger lawyer and, IIRC, at one point he looked out at the conference room window at some landscape workers and said something like: "Man, they don't know how good they have it, working outside with the dirt in their hands and no mental stress." I just mentioned to him that more likely they were probably thinking the same thing about us in an air conditioned room with no physical element required.

Years later, that same young guy was working another deal and went out in front of his hotel to wait for his car pickup. There was a golf tournament at the time (the Westchester Classic) and one of the golfers (Vijay Singh IIRC) was waiting for his ride. As he told me the story, Singh was quite a number of strokes back at this time and, after standing there quietly for awhile, my friend's car came and as he was leaving with his big case of documents, he looked at Singh and said: "Isn't this something? We're both going to work." Singh came back to win the tournament, and my friend always took credit for putting him in the right frame of mind to win.