I Retired

or did I simply quit?

This card arrived from one of the female analysts a few days after I left.

The Camel’s Back Finally Broke

I “retired” three weeks ago from my thankless J.O.B. I held for 21 years. I did it without fanfare or even a laurel and hearty handshake. I just walked into work for the day, did about 30 minutes work, signed three official separation documents and left. I think I purposely said goodbye to about five people on the way out.

Let’s talk about a little background for those of you new to my story. I have mostly held the title of Lab Analyst for a large public chemical company and was overqualified as a competent Bachelor’s level chemist. In my mind I tolerated a lot in my 21 years including having to watch incompetent boobs promoted and a corrupt union make side deals outside the rules along the way. I mostly just observed this junk and tried to stay under the radar and do my work well and collect my paychecks, saving and investing well every single year.

I also got discouraged in the middle 2010’s and stopped even applying for promotions. No longer tilting at that windmill made for a better life and working a regular day job starting in 2017 made that even better. I was part of a group of about five analysts but sat in a different building from the rest after the legendary Malevolent Missy left around 2021. The company didn’t replace her so it was just me and a PhD chemist boss the past 5 years. So, I had my analytical chemistry instruments mostly to myself and did decent work. My old school boss retired in 2022 I think and his replacement was a wonderful young lady about 27 years younger than me.

I must say we really worked well together more like collaborators in solving problems and less like some of the “button pusher” types in the rest of the group. I always told the new boss I would stick around until some genius told me I needed to go and perform the one crap task in the other building I didn’t want to do. I call the equipment Lightfoot’s Wet Dream after the scientist who bought and installed the thing. Suffice it to say the work involves suiting up in respirator and all kinds of personal protective equipment to handle more than 5 gallon volumes of nasty chemicals. Anyhow, I wanted no part of that slop crap and generally did enough high quality work to stay away from the Poop Task. The pay rate was sufficient and I was honest, capable, and fearless in executing my duties.

Things cruised along nicely until late December of 2025. I came back from a week of vacation to a copy of a memo from my boss’s boss to the plant manager detailing how I would train on the poop task. It even came with a training record form with expected dates of completion. I don’t think my boss was in favor of me having to do this but I guess nobody asked her opinion. The way I think it went was our short sighted plant manager thought she might micro manage the checkers on the checkerboard so everyone was cross trained on every task. People like her and out union leaders like to pretend all of us with the same job title are equally competent and qualified for every job. That could not be further from the truth. There are analysts in our plant who wouldn’t be allowed into the building where my analytical equipment sat. They’re fuck-ups and these delicate and expensive instruments would surely be fucked up within hours of some people touching them. It was always something unspoken but I’ll go ahead and speak it now.

To be clear, I have never even met Michelle Mattice, not even to say hello. My opinion of her from the LinkedIn machine is something like this, though. She has a fake engineering degree from a decent school. Any time you add “technology” to the title it means to me the person couldn’t or wouldn’t do the higher math and harder coursework of a real engineer. She also has one of those fake MBA’s from an online school. The interview pool must have been mighty shallow when we dredged up this one for plant manager. She must be a helluva bullshitter.

So after the holidays the boss and I discussed the plan going forward for this training. I told her I would not comply and would just retire if made to do it. She mentioned that to her boss who over the years has moved up the ranks and became a total politician. He said “I’LL GO TALK TO HIM” as if he was going to smooth talk it and convince me of the benefits of just going along. “Just do the training and check the boxes, you would never have to do the task except in an emergency” type of bullshit was what I heard from him. I told him I didn’t need to do this and could just retire any time I wanted. I am not sure he believed me but he should have.

Near the last week of January I was told Wednesday, January 21 would be the initial day of my training. At this point I had already decided to leave but though about maybe sucking it up until about April or May when it would be better to list our house for sale. I even had the alarm go off that Wednesday morning and instead of starting the morning routine I went down to my computer and texted in sick for the day. Then I requested the Thursday, Friday, and Monday off as personal holidays. Those are “use them or lose them” days. I think the boss had a pretty good idea what was going to happen Tuesday morning. I made sure I technically did a little “work” inputting some data into a spreadsheet and sending a couple of emails as you bet your ass some HR weasel asked if I really did anything considered work before I quit. Those snakes would do anything to try and take away that sick day and personal days but I knew the rules and anticipated their weaselry! (I made a new work)

I showed up that morning at 7:30 on time as always. The boss took the bad news (did i mention we really did enjoy working together?) and printed up my separation forms. I said goodbye to 4 people I think and anyone else who was around when I was telling them. Then at 10:15 I walked the fuck out of the plant for the last time but not before returning that critical training form.

There’s more to come that is all for today. Do you think they believe me now?