Probably because the place where I live is a retirement destination, I never experienced any ageism at work until about 5 years ago. I’d taken a part-time job with a Federal agency that keeps track of retail prices. My city was part of the Los Angeles district as it’s right on the border, so I spent two weeks out of the month there and two weeks at home, due to their perpetual short-staff issue.
I’ve never met such a group of unhappy people. Everybody I met pretended they didn’t really need a job, they were just doing it for something to do until their ship came in, or something. The job itself was not bad – you had a route of businesses where you checked the prices on a list of specific items. It was decent money plus mileage and benefits.
From the very first they made it clear I was an oddity. Not only was I unapologetic about my choice of residence, as Arizona was practically a third-world country to them, they couldn’t get their heads around the idea that anybody would admit to being 55. To also want to work in public on top of all that, replete with wrinkles and grey hair, was something almost impossible for those Angelenos to comprehend. ;>
The only people they hated more than “old people” were mystery shoppers. Never did figure out why. The only correlation between the two jobs is that they take place in retail establishments. Go figure…
But because they were so anti-mystery shopper, I figured MS’s must be a decent bunch of hardworking, down-to-earth individuals, and I find I wasn’t wrong!
I’ve never met such a group of unhappy people. Everybody I met pretended they didn’t really need a job, they were just doing it for something to do until their ship came in, or something. The job itself was not bad – you had a route of businesses where you checked the prices on a list of specific items. It was decent money plus mileage and benefits.
From the very first they made it clear I was an oddity. Not only was I unapologetic about my choice of residence, as Arizona was practically a third-world country to them, they couldn’t get their heads around the idea that anybody would admit to being 55. To also want to work in public on top of all that, replete with wrinkles and grey hair, was something almost impossible for those Angelenos to comprehend. ;>
The only people they hated more than “old people” were mystery shoppers. Never did figure out why. The only correlation between the two jobs is that they take place in retail establishments. Go figure…
But because they were so anti-mystery shopper, I figured MS’s must be a decent bunch of hardworking, down-to-earth individuals, and I find I wasn’t wrong!
