You look tired. Perhaps you should take the rest of your life off.
I've mentioned I have a coworker who loves puns. Haven't I? When I first met him, one of his bits that he did involved coming up with what they served for dinner on the Titanic. We're talking iceberg lettuce with thousand island dressing, that sort of thing. We'd also come up with ideas for businesses within a strip mall and what their shop names would be, though I'm blanking on them now. He does this to keep his mind sharp, and he's pretty good considering he's 71. But being in his 70s, one starts to think about retirement, and the body doesn't work the way it used to, and he's had some health concerns in the past couple years. You know it's something big when he has to take off work. In the entire five years I've known him, he's taken one vacation, back in 2015 when his niece got married in his native New Jersey. (If you remember my crazy July that year, he was one of the people I had to cover for, but again, considering it's the ONLY vacation the man took that I saw, it was fine.)
About a year ago, he asked to step back from working. He was there Monday through Thursday in the afternoons and evenings, and Saturday all day. He's not a morning person. He hated Saturdays, and the few ones I had to work with him, he'd be grumpy or grouchy in the morning for the first few hours, then would mellow out. He could also get kind of overwhelmed with certain situations and not handle them well, which could end up being frustrating for everyone. And, being older, he didn't always adapt to new things. I had a feeling retirement was coming soon, and literally within days of my having this thought, he announced he was done as of May 1st. He'd already stepped back and stopped working Saturdays, and he'd asked to stop working on Mondays as well, but having a three-day weekend ended up being good for a bit. And, honestly, he'd likely have kept going for a while if not for his wife. She started having her own health problems and is unable to drive. That likely was the turning point.
Yesterday was his last day. At our meeting in the morning, I brought it up, in part because we now have a scheduling challenge. But first, we needed to honor our employee, and my boss enlisted his mom to bring a cake. She showed up around the shift change, with my boss' brother, and we had a mini-celebration. I grabbed my camera and we got a few pictures with all the available employees. Our room renters are there by then, at least some of them, so we got one to take the final couple pictures so all the employees could have a group picture. Then, everyone around got cake if they wanted--employees, room renters, their clients. And here's the thing--my now-former coworker is going to become a room renter, starting at the end of the month, if not sooner. He has one client lined up and is hoping for more. So, he's not totally done with us, and I'm sure we'll still hear about the puns.
In the short term, we need to train a replacement. We do have someone who's been with us about a month who has been working with him to learn what he does, but she's not ready to be on her own. That's why, for now, I'm going to be working Tuesday evenings. It just so happens that every single other person has a conflict. And, in fact, *I* have a conflict in several weeks (T's final-final concert), so I talked with my young coworker and she's agreed to skip her thing to work that night. Bless her. I know she's missed her activity before so she's not hard up like me to keep going. :P I still feel bad about asking her, though, but what can you do. It's in the middle of our busy period and no one should be alone then, much less the newest person. The new person does learn quickly and has taken lots of notes, and it'll be trial by fire by that point, so I'm hoping by June it'll be better. My boss agreed to take the rest of the evenings during the week.
One of my now-former coworker's bits happens at the end of the week or month. He'll say to me, boy, I feel tired. What do you think I should do? Oh, I'll say, I think you need to take the weekend off. And, when the month's over, one or the other of us will say, on behalf of the management, you may take the rest of the month off. Well, yesterday was the end of the month, so I was like, how do I phrase this? I told him, wow, you look tired, the most exhausted I think I've seen you. I think you should take the rest of your life off. Well, he's not quite doing that, but I'm sure he's thrilled. He said he has a lot of video games to catch up on. One of his pet peeves is people playing with their phones while driving--he claims stop signs mean "start texting other people"--so I told him he could play video games on his phone while at a stop sign. He liked that idea.
About a year ago, he asked to step back from working. He was there Monday through Thursday in the afternoons and evenings, and Saturday all day. He's not a morning person. He hated Saturdays, and the few ones I had to work with him, he'd be grumpy or grouchy in the morning for the first few hours, then would mellow out. He could also get kind of overwhelmed with certain situations and not handle them well, which could end up being frustrating for everyone. And, being older, he didn't always adapt to new things. I had a feeling retirement was coming soon, and literally within days of my having this thought, he announced he was done as of May 1st. He'd already stepped back and stopped working Saturdays, and he'd asked to stop working on Mondays as well, but having a three-day weekend ended up being good for a bit. And, honestly, he'd likely have kept going for a while if not for his wife. She started having her own health problems and is unable to drive. That likely was the turning point.
Yesterday was his last day. At our meeting in the morning, I brought it up, in part because we now have a scheduling challenge. But first, we needed to honor our employee, and my boss enlisted his mom to bring a cake. She showed up around the shift change, with my boss' brother, and we had a mini-celebration. I grabbed my camera and we got a few pictures with all the available employees. Our room renters are there by then, at least some of them, so we got one to take the final couple pictures so all the employees could have a group picture. Then, everyone around got cake if they wanted--employees, room renters, their clients. And here's the thing--my now-former coworker is going to become a room renter, starting at the end of the month, if not sooner. He has one client lined up and is hoping for more. So, he's not totally done with us, and I'm sure we'll still hear about the puns.
In the short term, we need to train a replacement. We do have someone who's been with us about a month who has been working with him to learn what he does, but she's not ready to be on her own. That's why, for now, I'm going to be working Tuesday evenings. It just so happens that every single other person has a conflict. And, in fact, *I* have a conflict in several weeks (T's final-final concert), so I talked with my young coworker and she's agreed to skip her thing to work that night. Bless her. I know she's missed her activity before so she's not hard up like me to keep going. :P I still feel bad about asking her, though, but what can you do. It's in the middle of our busy period and no one should be alone then, much less the newest person. The new person does learn quickly and has taken lots of notes, and it'll be trial by fire by that point, so I'm hoping by June it'll be better. My boss agreed to take the rest of the evenings during the week.
One of my now-former coworker's bits happens at the end of the week or month. He'll say to me, boy, I feel tired. What do you think I should do? Oh, I'll say, I think you need to take the weekend off. And, when the month's over, one or the other of us will say, on behalf of the management, you may take the rest of the month off. Well, yesterday was the end of the month, so I was like, how do I phrase this? I told him, wow, you look tired, the most exhausted I think I've seen you. I think you should take the rest of your life off. Well, he's not quite doing that, but I'm sure he's thrilled. He said he has a lot of video games to catch up on. One of his pet peeves is people playing with their phones while driving--he claims stop signs mean "start texting other people"--so I told him he could play video games on his phone while at a stop sign. He liked that idea.