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| Tim Pike, center, on his retirement day in 2014 |
Tim Pike says, “. . . for a retired man, every day is a Saturday.” My grandfather O’Leary used to say, “A man judges himself based on the quality of his work.” Somehow, I must learn how to reconcile these two competing sentiments. Tim, a fellow named Jim Shea, and I, are the only three employees who have retired from the sales department at Subaru of New England. The good news is, there will be more. But that’s the way it is, now.
Today is my last day as a wage man. On my way home from Subaru of New England I stopped at my favorite Norwood salad bar, Lamberts Rainbow Market, the best salad bar in New England. I eat there every month. I went inside, and got myself something to eat; normally, when I stop there I am on a mission to grab some food and get on the road. Generally, I get onto northbound I-95 and I balance my salad on my knee while I drive home, manage the steering wheel with one hand, and with the other hand, I pick out morsels with a cheap plastic fork from the salad tray. Today, when I got back in my car and went to start it up, I paused and said to myself, “Wait a minute, you’re retired, you don’t have any time to be any place.” So, I sat in the parking lot and slowly savored, and safely ate, that salad. This is going to take some practice.Last night was an amazingly cathartic evening for me. Against my better judgement, and against my specific request to fade away like an old soldier, Subaru of New England held a retirement dinner for me. It was the best damn thing that could have happened to a fellow who didn’t want it to happen to him, in the first place. Being the center of attention has never held much interest for me. Not that I don’t like to take control of a room from time-to-time, and speak my mind, whenever I get the chance. Yet, having people gathered together to celebrate an event in my life, has never really held any appeal to me. I never had any interest in having a birthday party, for that matter, even when I was a kid. Just give me that German chocolate cake, baby! It makes me uncomfortable. Not the cake. The attention. Last night was an exception. I really enjoyed every single minute of that dinner.
Although, I will not miss the month-to-month grind that is the car business, I will miss the human
dynamic, the interplay, that occurs between people who have a shared goal and who, collectively, spend so many hours together trying to achieve it. One thing that I know for certain, is that all the people that mattered to me in my work life were, either in that room sharing dinner, or reached out to me, separately, to bid me a fond adieu. A handful of these people will end up being part of my life forever.
The owner of the company, Ernie Boch Jr., and the general manager of Subaru of New England, Jeffery Ruble, presented me with the obligatory plaque thanking me for my service and thanking me for spending my time productively at Subaru of New England. A commemorative plaque may sound like a hackneyed, almost cliché, gift form a former, more genteel, time. However, as hard as it is to imagine, these things mean something. I’ll hang that plaque on my wall in my own home office. It is a testament to those nineteen years spent working with the people who were in the room last night, or their predecessors, people who have moved on, but are not forgotten, people, who through their common effort, worked everyday in pursuit of the goals of a company.
There came a time in America, I’m not sure when, that we took the individual humans out of the work place. We replaced them with something expendable, something almost disposable, something less than human; we began to refer to people as the ‘headcount,’ making us analogous to a ‘herd,’ like cows or something. Words matter. This horrible change in lexicon, this term of employment art, serves to place another wedge between all of us; that is, those of us who do the work and those that make the work. That should not be the case; it should never be the case. Those that make the work are doing something socially redeemable. They are making jobs. Those jobs,
duly created and filled, allow us to have meaning, dignity, fulfillment, and they provide an avenue along which we travel to achieve our personal goals. Those of us that do the work are making sure that all of us can check those boxes in life that matter, including those of us that make the work. Making sure that we can pay for our homes, making sure that we can send our kids to college, and making sure that we can save enough money to have a meaningful retirement – those are the biggest markers to achieve during one’s work-life. There’s not much more you can ask from a company than being able to check all those boxes. I’ve been fortunate. Subaru of New England has been that company. I’ve never felt like just part of the herd, merely part of the head count. I’ve always felt like I was part of something that was bigger than me. I’m proud to have worked there, proud of the brand I served; yet, at the same time, I am happy as hell to be out of there.
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| Got a totally cool high end drone with a camera for my trip |
My daughter, Dawn, sent me a text the other day. She asked me if I was still experiencing bittersweet feelings about my retirement. My response was to deny that I thought things were bittersweet. I must have referred to that emotion at some point otherwise she wouldn’t have asked me the question. So, I think I misled her. Things are bittersweet. But that doesn’t mean they taste bad. Or that it leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth. It’s just that no thing in life is one way or the another. Nothing is exclusively good. Nothing is exclusively bad. The Chinese have balance in life, in the universe, expressed by yin and yang. There is opportunity in adversity. But, equally, there is adversity in opportunity.
When my other daughter, Lauren, was little, and she saw me lying in bed reading, she’d say, “Daddy are you reading a chapter book?” Well, that’s exactly what life is, isn’t it? It’s a chapter book. I’m on to the next chapter. It might be the last chapter – no pun intended. I hope it is not a short one, either. I haven’t abandoned life, I am transitioning, I’m turning the page to a new chapter, the next episode in a serialized version of another human life. Thank goodness, unlike watching Netflix, one cannot binge through the chapters . . . or the episodes. It’s one day at a time; and I’m very excited to see where this story goes. Let’s get this party started . . .
Today is my last day as a wage man. On my way home from Subaru of New England I stopped at my favorite Norwood salad bar, Lamberts Rainbow Market, the best salad bar in New England. I eat there every month. I went inside, and got myself something to eat; normally, when I stop there I am on a mission to grab some food and get on the road. Generally, I get onto northbound I-95 and I balance my salad on my knee while I drive home, manage the steering wheel with one hand, and with the other hand, I pick out morsels with a cheap plastic fork from the salad tray. Today, when I got back in my car and went to start it up, I paused and said to myself, “Wait a minute, you’re retired, you don’t have any time to be any place.” So, I sat in the parking lot and slowly savored, and safely ate, that salad. This is going to take some practice.
