Reflections on retirement and the ADA
November 24, 2024 :: 10:13 AM
I’m in that picture and I don’t like it.
My way cool, super sexy Logitech keyboard has a loose key and it is driving me nuts. Like seriously. It’s the comma key. Used for… commas and playing the Sims. Do you know how much I write?!? To have a comma key that bounces all over the place makes me want to hulk smash the damn thing.
Logitech also doesn’t sell spare parts (supposedly. I haven’t looked too hard), so if I can’t find what I need, I’m buying a new keyboard… this pisses me off so badly, you have no idea. I have a much, much, much older Logitech keyboard that I absolutely love. Love it so much that I had one purchased for me at the day job. This new one felt more Mac-like and since I live in two worlds - I go both ways - this was a perfect bridge. That bridge is falling down.
Let’s see… what else is new?
My buttermilk pancakes are AMAZING. I used to buy pints of buttermilk, but I wasn’t using it up before it went bad. (And do you know hard it is to find a pint of buttermilk? Cooking for one sucks!) I ended up searching the web and ended up buying some buttermilk powder that was recommended by America’s Test Kitchen.
OK. Enough stalling.
We have an employee who is disabled per the ADA guidelines. This employee is replacing one that is retiring (retired now). We were planning on terminating their employment because they were doing so poorly during training, but their disability made itself known at work and we weren’t sure what to do. It’s not a potion where we could work around any attendance issues caused by this disability - it’s a department of one and usually very busy. The company I work for is deadline driven, so if there isn’t someone at that position, everyone else has to chip in to cover and it leads to a host of problems.
Lucky for them, I am both HR and an expert on the ADA. That’s what happens when you get fired in direct response for asking for a reasonable accommodation. And it was reasonable. The fact that they then decided to throw all kinds of performance issues at me - without a single discussion - and send me to their shrink… yeah. I had a very good case against them and still decided it wasn’t worth trying to sue.
Anyhoo. We’re not big enough to have to abide by the ADA, FL is an at-will state, and we have documented meetings where we actually have pointed out the performance issues and the continued absences. So termination it was, but we gave them two more weeks to prove themselves. They spent one of those weeks in the hospital, as a no-call, no show so we had another justifiable reason to term.
When they got back from the hospital, the owner pulled them in and had a chat. Then I got pulled in for the update… somehow during that discussion, I talked about the Cats and how I got fired. How I job hop because I either get fired for being bipolar or I quit when I can’t keep it under control. (I also find really shitty jobs and / or bosses which help trigger a manic cycle…) He point blank told me that he thought for sure I was going to tell him I was leaving when I told him about the divorce.
My dumb ass said yes, I am moving, but I don’t have a timeline yet. (Liar, liar, pants on fire…)
Dude, the look on his face - we’ve had someone retire, we’re probably going to fire their replacement, and someone else wants to go to part-time. There’s a rumor that someone is moving to Puerto Rico to live near family because they don’t feel safe in the States anymore. We’re twelve people - that’s a lot of loss in two months. For a place that never had any turnover. Of course, people age out and nobody really thought that Trump would win a second term…
I told him I wanted to stay on, remotely, and he looked so relieved. He offered to hire someone that could support me if I needed someone in Florida. I then continued to blab on and on about how he’s the best boss I’ve ever had and how hard it is to want to move home when I just found my forever job… but I need to move home. I can’t continue to live in FL.
So, then we had the retirement party.
Jesus motherfucking crispy Christ on a fucking cracker.
All my emotions came pouring out - we really are such a tightly knit family and it really sucks to leave that behind (even if I work remotely, I won’t be physically based in FL). I know I don’t belong here, but I belong there. Some of my friends think that I should leave now and not look back and the other half think that because I’m agonizing over this decision that I’m not ready to move home. That second half is wrong. SO. VERY. WRONG. I just can’t figure out the timing yet. I just can’t walk away from the best boss I’ve ever had.
I’m spending today working on the layout of my business website. I’ve been looking at some books I bought on WordPress, and the more I read the more I hate the idea of using it. I just can’t wrap my head around how it works. ExpressionEngine is so much easier and now that it’s on version 7, a little better on the back end, too.
OK… I should probably get going. That code’s not going to write itself. *sigh*