At about 1130 on December 13th five years ago, I walked off a boat for the last time, quitting ACBL, a company that I had worked for twice, neither time by choice. The two periods of employment was separated by twenty years and the amazing thing was that in that amount of time, only the faces had changed, it was still a terrible place to work, and both times when we were bought out by them it ruined an already great place to work, Valley Line in 1992, and AEP in 2015. When it was announced in early 2015 that they were buying AEP, my wife and I set and executed plans to have our properties upgraded and for me to be gone by the end of 2016.
On the day that I walked off the M/V Cody Boyd for the last time, I stood on the dock at Hennepin and fished this ACBL challenge coin out of my pocket, and challenged it to swim.
It didn't. :-D
I burned my work clothes when I got home.
At the day and time that I would have been due back on board, I was sitting in the local Social Security office, getting signed up. So ends 41 years.
Since then, I've met and talked with many people that have retired out of a work life in transportation, and the common thread that seems to bind almost all of us together is that we do not miss the job after we leave. Some aspects of the job? Yes, of course. Some of the people that you worked with? Absolutely. But nobody seems to miss the job and especially not (mis)management.
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