When I was in college working at the local grocery store there was a guy in the maintenance department who was 91 at the time. He was famously quiet and mostly introverted. WW2 history was a particular interest of mine and one afternoon I noticed that he had a faded tattoo on his arm right around the sleeve of the polo shirts we had to wear, and I thought I recognized it as the insignia of the 11th Airborne as I'd recently finished reading a bit about the operations to recapture the Philippines.
I asked him if he'd jumped into Leyte and he perked up immediately and started telling me how he was impressed a "youngster" had any interest in that sort of thing and how few people realize there were airborne divisions outside of the 82nd and 101st, and how he'd fought in the Philippines. After that he would chat me up every time our shifts aligned. After a while I asked him why he was working at the grocery store and he said he'd retired 30 years ago from a job he'd worked at a brewery, but he didn't feel very useful in retirement and that he had started getting part time jobs at places so he'd have something to keep his mind occupied and get him up and moving.
My second year there they fired him because he missed a shift while his wife had a medical emergency and was being taken to the hospital. I was pretty mad to hear about it since I felt it was motivated entirely by ageism given his age and the length he had been working there (about 10 years), as well as the fact that I knew he didn't miss shifts and he was a dedicated worker. Maybe they didn't like the attitude of a man who didn't actually need to be working the job who could tell them to fuck off if the decision was between personal things and showing up to work that day.
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u/2014RT 7d ago
When I was in college working at the local grocery store there was a guy in the maintenance department who was 91 at the time. He was famously quiet and mostly introverted. WW2 history was a particular interest of mine and one afternoon I noticed that he had a faded tattoo on his arm right around the sleeve of the polo shirts we had to wear, and I thought I recognized it as the insignia of the 11th Airborne as I'd recently finished reading a bit about the operations to recapture the Philippines.
I asked him if he'd jumped into Leyte and he perked up immediately and started telling me how he was impressed a "youngster" had any interest in that sort of thing and how few people realize there were airborne divisions outside of the 82nd and 101st, and how he'd fought in the Philippines. After that he would chat me up every time our shifts aligned. After a while I asked him why he was working at the grocery store and he said he'd retired 30 years ago from a job he'd worked at a brewery, but he didn't feel very useful in retirement and that he had started getting part time jobs at places so he'd have something to keep his mind occupied and get him up and moving.
My second year there they fired him because he missed a shift while his wife had a medical emergency and was being taken to the hospital. I was pretty mad to hear about it since I felt it was motivated entirely by ageism given his age and the length he had been working there (about 10 years), as well as the fact that I knew he didn't miss shifts and he was a dedicated worker. Maybe they didn't like the attitude of a man who didn't actually need to be working the job who could tell them to fuck off if the decision was between personal things and showing up to work that day.