A while ago, when the opportunity arose, I took a so-called retirement job. It was a 6-week assignment requiring only 8 hours of work per week and located a short 10-minute drive from my home. The job itself? I’d be performing manual labor, working on a factory assembly line, and providing an extra set of hands to help a company get through its year-end crunch.
When the temp agency called and told me about the opening, it sounded like just the kind of work I could tolerate. I had retired from decades of working in organizational development and HR and felt physically depleted. I was done with the four-hour-per-day commute, business travel, and the sense that I needed to be perpetually available. I was emotionally exhausted too, having had my fill of office politics, compromise and days spent navigating through major and minor skirmishes. A retirement job with no commute, no cell phone, no discussion, and no need to negotiate with anyone about anything? Perfect, I thought. Sign me up!
Here’s what I found.
Work on the assembly line was oddly meditative, Zen-like almost. Lift. Remove. Fold. Insert. Check. Tape. Label. Stack. I repeated this sequence hundreds of times during each assigned shift, my hands and breathing synchronized in an easy rhythm. Further up the line, machinery hissed and hummed, providing white noise, a meditation soundtrack of sorts. A bell chimed when it was time for my shift to begin, another when it was time to take a break, and another when break time was over. A final bell rang to announce the shift had ended.
The muted voices of women chatting in hushed Haitian Creole served as a backdrop. These were my coworkers on the assembly line. Their hands moved constantly, repeating the same sequences as mine as they engaged in a continuous call and response, a kirtan periodically punctuated by laughter. Lift. Remove. Fold. Insert. Check. Tape. Label. Stack. I didn’t understand a word they said and it didn’t seem to matter. When necessary, we communicated via hand gestures. I’d point. They’d point. We’d laugh. Somehow, we figured things out.
May I introduce you to my coworkers? A woman at the temp agency shared that about 80% of the women on the assembly line worked 40 to 60 hours per week at the factory to supplement the income provided by their other, primary full-time jobs. After completing an 8-hour shift as a home health aide, or supermarket cashier, or fast food worker, they arrived at the factory in the late afternoon to put in another 8 to 10 hours. I guiltily asked the temp agency if I was taking coveted overtime away from these women but was assured that my coworkers were maxed out on hours and that the factory needed my help. I hope this was true.
The company appeared to be kind to its employees. The break room was well-stocked with free juice and cereal and coffee and bagels, and most of the women happily indulged before starting their shifts and on breaks. I felt guilty about that too and made sure I never ate or drank anything since I could easily pay for my own meals and snacks and suspect they could not.
I never saw anyone berated or criticized. And yet we were watched, constantly. A supervisor sat at his perch at the front of the room, arms crossed, not checking anything on his computer, not doing anything except observing us as we worked. I wondered if he would intercede if we women chatted too much or laughed too loudly. Then one day, he made an announcement, first in English, then in Spanish, and finally in Haitian Creole. “Talking is fine,” we were told, “As long as your hands are moving. Keep your hands moving … continuously.”
I suspect that my coworkers didn’t agree with my view of the assembly line as Zen-like nor did they find the work itself to be restorative. They might want to share a thing or two with me about what physical and emotional exhaustion really feels like.
Perhaps they’d find it curious that I write essays about the meaning of work or that I post my thoughts and observations on LinkedIn. And I doubt they chat about the merits and drawbacks of the hybrid office environment.
Our lives – our experience of work – barely intersected. And yet they welcomed me, cheerily greeting me with a “Hello Sweetie” when I arrived for my shift and offering a “Goodnight Sweetie” when I packed up to leave, well before their own workday concluded.
Six weeks after starting, my temporary retirement job ended. Shortly thereafter, I signed onto a long-term consulting assignment that’s more like the kind of job I held before I retired. Sometimes I nap on the train during my four-hour-per-day commute, but more often I need to respond to work-related emails and texts. I realize that on the assembly line when work was done, it was done. When I worked in the factory, no one texted me at night asking me to weigh in on a decision. No one sent me emails over the weekend with spreadsheets or presentations that needed to be completed by first thing Monday morning. In contrast, in my consulting assignment, my days are filled with meetings. There are tense conversations. And then at night my phone – and my brain – are always on.
I think about my retirement job on the factory assembly line and the purpose it served for me. Certainly, it threw off a little bit of cash, although the amount really was a pittance compared to my consulting income. It provided some structure, a diversion, and even an amusing anecdote for me to share with friends who asked how my retirement was going. The work itself and the environment provided me with a bit of a break, a much-needed pause for my head.
But mostly my retirement job provided me with a lesson in gratitude and a reminder of how privileged I really am. I’m grateful for the women I worked alongside of who allowed me to glimpse into their lives. I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn about a kind of work and workplace that is so different from the workplaces I have called home for many years. I’m grateful for all the abundance I have in my life, with or without the income provided by my retirement job and consulting. I recognize that it was a privilege for me to take on that retirement job – to work eight hours per week in an environment that didn’t overtax me physically or emotionally. And most of all, I recognize that it was a privilege, afforded to so few, to have the option to take on a retirement job and then to have the option to leave.
