We've all likely heard statements like, "Just keep living and you'll find out", "What goes around comes around", and "I know enough to be dangerous." These three sayings have occupied space in my head for the last few days, and I want to share a story about it.
When I started my first ever job in 1973, I went to work in the mail/copy room for South Central Bell Telephone Company in an entry-level clerk position. I worked there with other mostly twenty-year old's and we had a blast everyday. Our Supervisor, Libby, encouraged us to consider bidding on higher paying positions when they were posted. After a couple of years, I desired to make more money, so I bid on a job in the Accounting Department as an accounting clerk. I fell in love with "all things related to accounting" and quickly learned the many different tasks in the first office that I was assigned to. I was a quick learner and was able to crank out the vouchers that we audited. As many of the manual processes were being automated and some even eliminated, many of the older team members had a hard time learning the new processes and meeting the new production expectations. I was in my twenties and worked in a department with women who were in their late forties, fifties, and sixties. I just couldn't understand why they grumbled and complained because I was having fun and loved the challenge of learning new things. I'd tease them when they preferred to use the huge comptometers that sat on their desk rather than newer and more modern adding machines. Watching them contort their fingers to calculate numbers looked painful and silly to me. As process improvements increased and more jobs were eliminated, some of my older co-workers chose to retire.
I stayed in the accounting department for the rest of my career, except for a very brief stint as a Customer Service Representative. I wanted to make more money and bid out, but I quickly discovered that I had made a big mistake, and went back to the Accounting Department and worked there in multiple positions until I retired. In the early 1980's nearly everything that our office was responsible for changed from being done manually, some on huge spreadsheets with carbon paper, to being done on computers that were being placed in journal offices in all of the BellSouth states. A few co-workers nearing retirement, chose to leave rather than learn something else new and scary to some of them. Still an eager beaver, I enrolled in classes at a local technical school so that I could be ready for the new challenge. I jumped all in and was eventually able to detect errors and correct them before being notified by tech support. I didn't know everything, but I knew enough to be dangerous. I moved around in several positions and jobs over the years before retiring when BellSouth merged again with AT&T after my job was eliminated. I worked for a few years in temporary assignments around town before accepting a position in the finance department of a large law firm for six years before retiring for good a few years ago.
Since being retired, I am aware that I'm having a difficult time keeping pace with almost everything. I have to hand my cellphone to my granddaughters or nieces to help me with things. I have had to make multiple trips in the same day to The AT&T store for wi-fi issues because I didn't understand what I needed to do after they told me. Four months ago I had issues with my laptop that I didn't know how to resolve, so I just gave up and thought I'd need to just purchase a new one. A few days ago I decided to try again to see if I could log into my laptop, and after several password resets, it's now working. Fingers crossed, and I still don't know what the problem was.
I owe a huge apology now to my former co-workers of a "certain age" who I teased and failed to understand when they decided that things were moving too fast for them to keep up. Now that I am at a "certain age" myself, I get it. When I finally think that I've mastered using MAPS on my phone, I'm being told that I should now be using WAZE which is better. When I'm finally comfortable using CASHAPP, I'm told that most folks now prefer Venmo or ApplePay. And don't get me started about scanning QR codes to do everything from parking in a garage or lot to checking in on Sunday morning for church attendance.
I know that my whining and complaining about feeling lost and left behind might be strange, but "I'm a recovering perfectionist and an aspiring good-enoughist" ~Brene Brown, who thinks that I should still be able to keep up with it all. That cocky twenty-year-old who teased my older co-workers about not wanting to hang around and learn new things is now seventy-one and has been humbled by father time. I'm going to continue to write checks sometimes, pay with cash when I have it, and continue to use Facebook and do other things that apparently only old people do.
Marilyn
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