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Comment by vsskanth | Hacker News Reader

Slightly OT, as a foreigner living in the US, the thing that really breaks my heart is seeing a 70+ yr old greeter at Walmart.

I've grown up seeing many retired folks having their own tiny business or just running their family businesses, but the greeter thing doesn't sit well with me. I don't know why it makes me so deeply uncomfortable. It feels like some kind of a breakdown of a social contract.

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They aren't always working there because they need the money. My grandfather is in his mid 70s and works at Walmart so he has something to do.

My 74 year old uncle is the same. He collects a 6 figure pension, he doesn't need the money but he does need a place to go to be around people and being a door greeter at a Home Depot (pre-covid, anyway) was what he wanted to do.

Yep, my grandfather has a pension from working as an electrician his whole life, and now he works in the hardware section. He's getting too old and frail to do the activities he used to do, so working in the hardware section lets him feel useful instead of sitting around the house doing nothing.

The strategy of asking the oldest employee for advice has worked well for me at Home Depot.

Not sure if that's better or worse. It almost reminds me of the old ladies in Japan who get arrested on purpose, so that they go to prison and have company.

I've occasionally talked to Uber/Lyft drivers who've said the same thing.

My parents both retired in their mid 50s. My mom is a retired school teacher and my dad is a retired factory worker.

Shortly after my mom retired, she was offered a part time position with the school system to help at risk children. At the rate they were going to pay her. She could only work 10 hours a week without it cutting into her pension. She negotiated a pay cut so she could work more hours and still be useful. So she definitely didn’t need the money. [1]

They took the money she earned and went on three month cross country road trip.

After the funding was up for that, she tried to retire again and then another opportunity came up. By now they are both over 62 and getting both of their social security checks, her pension, and my dad is getting money from his annuity that he bought with part of his retirement savings.

She still was kind of bored so she made the same deal again. They took another three month road trip and used some of the money to both fix up their house and increase the size of it by 50%.

[1] most of the time you can work without affecting your pension unless it’s for the school system.

I would not read too much into it. I know a surprising number of nominally retired people with plenty of money who are recreationally employed because they enjoy it, often taking those kinds of jobs because it has such low commitment for them. It is a very social activity. I’ve talked to Uber drivers that were wealthy retirees who drove a couple hours per day just to talk to diverse and interesting people, it is an enjoyable routine for them.

Some of my teachers in high school were retired industry executives who taught for the love of it. At least in the US, “retirement” is often about choosing to be a productive and social member of the community without optimizing for the paycheck. It gives them a sense of purpose. I can’t speak for retirement in other cultures but in the US many retirees take an enormous amount of pride in generating value to society even if it doesn’t generate income. My grandparents and great-grandparents were all like this, and they loved it. Sometimes it generated income but they didn’t need it.

I could easily see myself doing the same thing as they did.

This sounds a bit condescending and has a lot of assumptions baked in. There are legitimately many reasons why someone at 70 wants to works as a greeter, including pure boredom or curiocity.

I totally understand. I have no idea about their situation and Its not a rational thing to feel. It just isn't something I was expecting to see in the US.

By the time a person retires they have spent the overwhelming majority of their life working. To a point that not much else makes sense. Working is the social contract.

> By the time a person retires they have spent the overwhelming majority of their life working. To a point that not much else makes sense. Working is the social contract.

No, what the first two sentences describes is institutionalization (or environmental socialization), not social contract. The same thing that extensive periods in prison, or war, or any number of other hostile environments do that make it hard for people to adjust to any other living situation.

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