New Lease on Work Life : Some Retirees Find Leisure Time So Boring They Can’t Wait to Return to Daily Grind
You’ve worked for years--decades even--and no word ever sounded sweeter: retirement, that long-anticipated time of life when you no longer have to punch a time clock either literally or figuratively.
Ah, the good life: Do what you want, when you want, or don’t do anything at all--you’re retired! You’ve earned it. You deserve it. You should enjoy it.
“I’m going out of my mind,” says Bob Kost, who retired from his job as an advertising sales manager for a newspaper in St. Paul, Minn., and moved to Irvine last fall. “I had five months of playing golf, lying out in the sun, going to the beach and I can’t take it anymore. I just don’t like retirement.”
Welcome to the flip side of retirement, the golden years tarnished by boredom, a lack of purpose and a nagging sense of, “Is that all there is?”
The majority of retirees, gerontologists say, are content to succumb to a life of leisure, travel and other long-delayed pursuits. Then there are those, like Kost, who have tried retirement, don’t like it and can’t wait to get back to work.
“I’m not wealthy by a long shot, but I don’t really need the money,” said Kost, who is in his mid-60s. “I just have to find something to do. I’ve always had the theory that a man has to have a reason to get up in the morning. You just can’t sit around.”
Harold Kaufman of Laguna Hills finds himself in a similar predicament.
“I tried retiring, but after a couple of weeks or so I was going crazy,” said Kaufman, who found a job as a toolmaker at an engineering and manufacturing company a year after moving into Leisure World a decade ago. Then he was laid off after business dropped and at, 78, he’s looking for work again.
“Just sitting around watching TV, that’s for the birds,” he said. “I remember my father was the same way when he retired. It drove him nuts.”
Jean Pond, founder and president of Irvine-based Adult Careers, sees men like Kost and Kaufman all the time. In fact, both men have registered with the nonprofit agency, which helps place people 55 and older in jobs.
Most of the men and women seeking work through Adult Careers do so for economic reasons--because they need to continue working full time or they need to supplement Social Security income that doesn’t stretch far enough. But, Pond acknowledged, a sizable number are looking for jobs for psychological reasons.
“They’re people who must work because they were raised with a work ethic and have to continue to be productive because that’s necessary for their (well-being in their) retirement years,” she said.
“What’s happening is that every generation lives longer than the generation before and medical science has increased the quality of their lives. (At 55), they still have a third of their lives to live. They have to find a place to be productive if they’re going to enjoy that part of their life.”
Adds Pond, 74, a former English teacher and onetime office manager who came out of her retirement to start Adult Careers a decade ago: “They’ll have far fewer problems if they keep working and being productive than if they become couch potatoes.”
Santa Ana family therapist Andrea Kaye agrees. In fact, she says, depression is “very high” in the retirement age group, as is the suicide rate.
“If you don’t feel you have purpose, that’s a very scary predicament,” said Kaye. “You could be dealing with severe depression.”
At 42, Kaye said she personally can’t wait to retire. “I have a lot of leisure activities I think I can do. But for some people, having a job gives them that sense of identity and they’re lost not wearing that worker hat.”
Phoebe Liebig, assistant professor of gerontology and public administration at the University of Southern California, said most retirees are happy to hang up the workday grind “particularly if they’re the one who made the choice. If it’s forced on you, I think (boredom) is understandable.”
Indeed, the downsizing phenomenon of recent years, in which workers are given the option of taking an early retirement package, has caused many people to retire before they had planned, said Liebig, who is president of the California Council on Gerontology and Geriatrics.
Others, she said, may move out of the work force early if they have jobs that are no longer interesting, rewarding or challenging--”or, on the contrary, because of changes in technology, they exit the labor force because they feel they can’t keep up.”
Studies show that those with a high degree of contentment during their retirement years have planned for it--either through formal retirement counseling programs or having really thought through how they want to spend their time: They’ve developed interests outside their jobs.
“Those are the people who go into volunteer work--the retired carpenter who goes to schools and helps out or goes and works with some kind of youth program,” said Liebig.
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Although she’s not aware of any retirement surveys dealing specifically with boredom, Liebig said studies have been done on “levels of satisfaction” in retirement “and a lot of it essentially is (a question of) ‘Do you feel useful?’
“We still have a pretty strong work ethic, particularly the generation in their 60s. They were brought up with the idea that work is a good thing: It’s a value unto itself, regardless of whether it brings you money.”
Although many retirees return to work for financial reasons, Liebig said, “certainly some do it for the . . . feeling that they still have some contributions to make, or they like being with people and this gives them a chance to do that.”
In fact, she said, boredom may be especially acute among retirees who worked in occupations where they were involved with working with the public. “Those people really need that (interaction). That’s part of what makes them feel good about life.”
Liebig said most retirees who want to go back to work prefer part-time jobs. “The people who are going to be working full time often don’t retire. Those are people who are professionals and have no intention of retiring anyway--dentists, doctors and lawyers seem to carry on forever.”
Liebig said a sense of regaining lost social status may also cause some retirees to return to work.
“A lot of people derive a lot of status in our society from being somebody who works,” she said. “When people say, ‘What do you do?’ if the answer is ‘I’m retired’ I think people react to that very differently today. In the old days it used to be, ‘You’re lucky. Yeah, you worked hard and you earned it.’ Now I think people have many more complex reactions to retirement.”
Today, she said, people are concerned about their own retirement, worrying that Social Security may not be around--or it won’t be as good--when they retire. “So the status you used to have as a retired person has changed,” she said. “It’s a different reaction now, which is less positive or perhaps even negative.”
Yet another factor may be at play in a man’s decision to return to work. “Maybe,” Liebig said, “their wives don’t want them home all the time: It’s the old saying, ‘I married you for better or for worse but not at lunch.’
“For a woman whose career has been running the house and doing the things she does and someone comes along saying, ‘Well, you shouldn’t do it that way’ that could certainly lead to some tension. Suddenly, she’s got some efficiency expert she didn’t know she hired.”
If it sounds like the stuff of a Dear Abby column, it is.
Abby herself--Abigail Van Buren--acknowledges that “letters from wives whose husbands are really in their hair and don’t know what to do with a retiree” are not uncommon.
Citing a missive from a woman who was being “driven crazy” by her retired husband who sat around the house all day in his pajamas, Abby said the problem is finding something he likes to do.
“Usually, the retired man that can find that is blessed,” she said. “Many working men do not have that many outside interests. All they have is their work and that’s been their life. When that’s gone, they’re sunk.”
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Abby recommends bored retirees getting into volunteer work or finding a good hobby “to keep the juices flowing and keep them interested and doing something they enjoy doing and they’ll get out of the wive’s hair.”
Abby, who has been writing her advice column since 1956, said people often ask her when she’s going to retire.
“Retire to what? What would I do?” she said. “Boy, they’re going to have to carry me out feet first.”
Although there have always been many women who have worked full time all their lives, Liebig said, “when we looked at the issues of retirement we pretty much looked at men. It’s an area we should look at more.”
Liebig said, however, that “we do know that for a number of women who haven’t worked outside the home or who worked part time outside the home over their married life, their transition to the retirement period is less traumatic” than it is for men.
These women typically have a network of friends and outside activities and interests, Liebig said, “so that doesn’t change very much. But for men it often is a very big change.”
Gerontologists have also found that there is a husband-wife dynamic to retirement, Liebig said. “Sometimes what happens is the husband . . . retires or is forced into an early retirement package (and) if the woman is working she may not want to stop working. And that is really tough on the husband.
“For this group of people who are brought up that the husband was to be the breadwinner and the woman stay at home, to have that role reversal is really difficult. What we know is if she’s still working, within two years (of her husband’s retirement) she usually stops working.”
The reason, Liebig believes, is “because marriage is a partnership and the idea is folks want to spend the time together doing things. . . . If one person isn’t working and the other person is, essentially there needs to be some sort of accommodation to it.”
And, gerontologists find, people generally are quite happy being retired. Said Liebig: “They figure they’ve earned it. They can travel and have the time to do things they felt the job interfered with.”
For people like Kaufman of Leisure World, however, that’s just not enough. He tap-danced professionally in vaudeville and in Chicago nightclubs in the ‘30s and teaches a weekly tap-dancing class at Leisure World, but he still wants to work.
“My life has been active,” he said. “That’s the way I came in, that’s the way I’m going out.”
Agencies Offering Help
For retirees interested in job opportunities or in need of other services, these agencies may be of help:
* Adult Careers: A nonprofit community service corporation that helps Orange County men and women 55 and older find jobs. P.O. Box 17642, Irvine, Calif. 92713. (714) 261-0136.
* SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives): An arm of the Small Business Administration that provides management counseling to businesses. 901 W. Civic Center Drive, Suite 160, Santa Ana, Calif. 92703. (714) 836 2709.
* Senior Aids Program: A federally funded employment program offering 20 hours a week employment to older people with low incomes. Sponsored locally by the County of Orange and the United Way. 1300 S. Grand Ave., Building B, Santa Ana, Calif. 92711. (714) 567-7364.
* STEP (Senior Training and Employment Program): A program designed to provide part-time community service employment for people 55 and older on low income. 1000 E. Santa Ana Blvd., Suite 200, Santa Ana, Calif. 92701. (714) 953-0171.
* Area Agency on Aging: An agency offering information and referral services to seniors, from meal sites and centers to Medicare and employment. (714) 567-7500.
* AARP (American Assn. of Retired Persons): A nonprofit group that provides services for seniors, including referrals and discounts on everything from health and auto insurance to car rentals and hotels. Also provides Modern Maturity magazine to members. Membership: $8 a year. AARP headquarters: 601 E St. NW., Washington, D.C., 20049. 1 (800) 424-3410.
