Some of you know that I had been planning to retire Jan 2023. Well, that changed. My last day at work was last Wednesday Nov 30, 2022. After 32+ years at Ford Motor Company, it was time to say goodbye to one life, and hello to one that was waiting for me.

I had been planning to retire for a few years, now, with my eyes on 2023, when I was going to turn 55. There are several reasons, but I think I can distill it down to about three. For one thing, I was getting tired of certain negative aspects of work, to the point that those aspects began to outweigh the positive aspects. Not all the time, mind you, but more often than I was comfortable with, and more often each year. For another, I plan to do a lot of fun things in retirement, and I would like to be able to do those things while I’m relatively young and still capable of doing them, physically and mentally. Finally, it became financially viable. Cyndi(who is not retiring just yet) and I are fortunate and blessed to have had good, long, productive, rewarding careers. 32 years of Ford pension contributions add up, and, after reconsidering the options available in January, I revised my original financial plan, resulting in moving my retirement day to Nov 30, 2022.

I had announced my original retirement date at work way back in January 2022, and spent much of the year preparing my team for my eventual departure. In June, I had pretty much handed off most of my responsibilities, and devoted the rest of the year to training my colleagues to assume those responsibilities. This also gave me time to mentally prepare to leave, forcing myself to release the reins. This didn’t work out quite the way I had planned, however. My supervisor left the Company in June, so ironically, and against my will, I was given more reins at the same time I was trying to release them. But in the end, I was able to provide the training I had planned, as well as additional training the team had asked me for in the last several weeks. Unfortunately, we still didn’t have our new supervisor, but as Cyndi told me, “That’s not your problem to solve”

By the time the last day came, I was nearly finished with everything I had planned. Although we’d all been working remotely, I decided to come into the office and work my last day on Ford property. One of my colleagues, Bill, decided to drive in after lunch, to spend the rest of the day with me. That was pretty nice of him, because otherwise, I was alone in the office. As the day wore on, there were fewer and fewer things to do, and I realized that I had started inventing things to do, just to stay busy and prolong the goodbye. I even got a little emotional, just staring at the screen, thinking, “Wow, you’re done. There’s nothing left to do. The checklist is complete. Files are dispositioned. Training completed. Why are you still here?” At 4:30pm or so, I asked Bill to take my picture, shook hands with him, thanked him for coming in, and left the building. That night, I took Cyndi and Aaron out for a celebratory dinner.

I think it’s fitting that the picture he took made me look tired. I think I was tired: tired of working all day, tired of working all year, tired about worrying about my colleagues, tired of the emotion, just…tired. One of the things I neglected to mention at the top was that I cared about my job, I really, really cared. I cared about doing a good job, setting and trying to meet what I thought were high standards. I cared about my team, and both our throughput and quality of work. I cared about deadlines, I cared about expectations, I cared about the future, and preparing the team for it. And I became tired of caring, but unable to turn it off.

I spoke with my fellow retiring colleague, Jose, about this, and we realized and admitted to each other that we can’t half-ass anything. It’s not so much against our work ethic, but against some kind of hard wiring in our brains not to do a sloppy job. I suppose you can call it pride, really. We couldn’t stand anyone pointing at our work, and saying “What’s this? Looks like you half-assed it” But whatever you call it, it drove us to care. And frankly, we’re tired of caring. And the only way to stop caring is to take the job away from us and force us to stop doing it. So that’s what we did. I think that’s why I got a little emotional in the last hours. I don’t have to care anymore, stop caring about job already. It’s over. In a future post, I will tell you what I plan to do during retirement, but for sure, I am looking forward to not caring about work!

I will leave you with the final email I sent to my colleagues. It’s somewhat of a tradition, and, on the advice of yet another retiring colleague, fellow MIT alum Lori, with whom I started at Ford 32 years ago, I sent it in the morning, and was therefore able to enjoy many warm-hearted wishes and farewells throughout the day before my email was shut off.

“Dear colleagues,

   Like many others, today is my last day at Ford Motor Company. Overall, it’s been a wonderful 32+ year ride. I joined Ford because I was an engine gearhead, and I was fortunate to have worked in powertrain for my entire career, from intake manifold D&R, to Ford Racing, to powertrain CAE for D&R and finally powertrain CAE on the controls side. I got to work in some pretty cool jobs, doing some very satisfying work, on some very exciting engines and vehicles, in various roles, as GSR, supervisor and finally Senior Engineer. And I got to work with some brilliant engineers around the world, who inspired me to step up my game and improve my skillset and work ethic.

   It’s my hope that those of you staying at Ford arrange for yourselves a similarly rewarding career. There are lots of opportunities at Ford to do different kinds of things, especially with the transition to EV, so find the cool, interesting, satisfying jobs and roles that keep you excited”