Another Strange Retirement Paradox – Can You Miss Work After Retirement, But Not Miss Working?

Another Strange Retirement Paradox – Can You Miss Work After Retirement, But Not Miss Working?

I stopped at Zehr’s for milk the other day. A Barrie Fire and Emergency Service pumper was parked out front. Not for an emergency; they probably needed milk too. As per protocol, there were two firefighters in the truck while the other two went inside. The crew outside showed a bunch of kids the equipment and gave the parents some fire safety education material.

I recognized the captain; I had hired him over twenty years ago. A wave, a smile, and a nod, and we both carried on with our business. Then it hit me…right there in the damn dairy aisle! Geez Louise, I miss work! And I’ve been retired for five years.

Then I went to the frozen food aisle, and remembered that I genuinely hated getting up at 3 am in a January blizzard for a four-car pile-up. Yes, stupidity is cash for life for anyone who’s in any form of emergency service work, but there are costs.

By the time I reached the checkout, I realized that I missed work, not working.

You?

There was so much about work to love; that’s what helped me overlook the fact that working itself is kind of meh! Because work and working aren’t really the same thing, are they?

Perhaps a clarification is in order. I miss the workplace, the work environment, and all that it provided. From companionship and camaraderie to competence. And from laughter to emotional support. Yes, the paycheque and benefits were fabulous. But we expect our hard (and often dangerous) work to be rewarded, or at least compensated. It’s those other intangibles that make a paycheque, even a good paycheque, feel less like a grind.

Yes, there are many benefits to toiling. But I sincerely miss the intangible things that work provided. All the invisible supports you don’t even know are there…until you retire. Retirement has a funny way of revealing them—not all at once, but gradually, one ordinary moment at a time.

When I really sat back and chewed on that paradox for a while (I miss work, I do not miss working), I started to recognize what work had quietly carried on my behalf. Actually, what it’s inadvertently come to carry for most of us over time, because “work” certainly wasn’t intended to function this way.

Historically. Industrialization. And Back in the Day…

Human beings have always organized their societies around the work that needed doing. Literally, history: “through natural selection, we walk upright, have big brains, and evolved to live together in social groups.” (Dan McAdams).

For thousands of years, survival demanded it. Food, shelter, child care – Communities had to function collectively.

Every generation inherited the responsibility of preparing the next generation to take its place in the workforce, and because of that, societies became larger and more complex; so too did the systems that supported them.

The Industrial Revolution accelerated that process dramatically.

Two key players in creating the workforce that the Industrial Revolution needed were Binet and Taylor. In France, Alfred Binet developed an assessment to identify schoolchildren who required additional educational support to be productive working adults. He repeatedly warned that his work was never intended to rank permanent intelligence. But his IQ test is still with us today, and still categorizing people.

In the United States, Frederick Winslow Taylor studied factory work, asking how complex tasks might be organized more efficiently. He too insisted that his studies weren’t meant for people. And yet despite their resistance, they became almost synonymous with assessing and categorizing potential workers and maximizing human outputs with mechanized precision.

That is an oversimplification, of course. But factories required skilled workers. Cities required administrators. Hospitals required trained professionals. Schools expanded. Universities grew. Trades became increasingly specialized.

Education adopted the work of Binet, and modern factories maximized workflows and efficiencies of Taylor. Work quietly became the framework around which adulthood itself was understood.

The Birth of the Burbs

I’ve been reading some fascinating work by sociologist Ray Oldenburg. He argued that Western society gradually lost many of its informal gathering places—our neighbourhood pubs, cafés, barber shops, and community spaces. Without really noticing, we began expecting home and work to carry more and more of those social functions. He dubbed those social, communal places – Third Spaces.

Then, somewhere along the way, Western society moved to the burbs (both figuratively and literally). And with that came the gradual loss of the local pub, the drugstore soda fountain, and the corner cafe coffee shop; all the kinds of traditionally communal places where people gathered, made friends, and supported each other socially.

It’s fair to say that after World War II, North America experienced the largest suburban expansions in history. The government recognized the need for affordable housing for the returning servicemen and women. Their families wanted homes of their own, and the post-war economy was eager to build them. Entire neighbourhoods appeared almost overnight.

And so the sub-“burbs” were born.

Make no mistake, they solved an enormous problem; and millions of families found safe and affordable places to live. But even good solutions have unintended consequences; one being…the commute.

Single-family homes ensured that neighbourhoods spread outward, horizontally. And that meant that daily life became increasingly organized around the private home, the automobile, and yes – the commute. Zoning separated where we lived from where we worked, shopped, and socialized. The corner pub, soda fountain, local café, and barber shop didn’t disappear overnight, but many gradually became less central to everyday life.

Oldenburg believed we underestimated what those places had quietly provided. They weren’t simply somewhere to buy a coffee or have a pint. They were where acquaintances became friends, neighbours became familiar faces, and communities maintained themselves almost effortlessly.

As those informal gathering places became less common, something had to fill the social gap.

Work quietly stepped in.

Work, the Office, and the Friendship Factory

Yes, you read that correctly. Your workplace, and mine, became the largest remaining social ecosystem. Not since our school days and the playground have we had access to so many like-minded people with common interests. No employer ever built it that way. And I certainly never applied for a job thinking, “oh, this looks like a great place to make friends.”

But think about it. Work consumes our lives. Third spaces all but disappeared (and who had time to go there anyway). So that means your options for making friends are home and work. And, the chances are, your spouse isn’t home anyway…they’re at work too.

I’ll be honest, I noticed this one first. Seriously, think about the fire truck in the Zehr’s parking lot. How many people do you know from 25 years ago that would recognize you and give you a friendly wave and a nod of respect?

I miss those nods.

But more than anything, I miss laughing. I’ve said it many times. I worked with some seriously great people. I enjoyed their company, not just their competence. We genuinely laughed all day long. Yes, hard, purposeful work is important. But laughter makes the day just fly by.

And perhaps, once you’re away from work for more than just a vacation, you’ll notice just how much emotional support is provided. Invisible support provided by your colleagues and peers. I’m not talking about an emotionally available HR Department. This is more about the crew that knows when you’re having a bad day. The admin staff who never forget your birthday. The boss who knows all your kids’ names, even your new dog’s name.

Don’t think the friendship factory is real?

COVID accidentally became one of the largest social experiments in modern history. Millions of people discovered that working from home changed far more than their commute. Researchers found declines in spontaneous collaboration, creativity, social connection, and emotional well-being. It turns out the office had been quietly doing much more than providing a place to work.

Work wasn’t just a workplace. It had quietly become our Friendship Factory.

Work wasn’t just our friendship factory; it was our competence container

Take a minute, and chew on that one. For decades, work gave us problems to solve, decisions to make, people to teach, systems to improve, and crises to manage. It gave us a place to exercise our judgment, develop expertise, and watch our abilities grow. Day after day, often without realizing it, we accumulated competence—and work became the place where that competence was recognized, valued, and put to good use.

When you think of “competence” this way, only then does it make sense to talk about competence the way organizations do. But on a personal level, there’s more to competence than meets the eye.

Organizationally, competence through the lens of Human Resources means something quite specific: fit for duty. Can this person safely perform the job? Do they possess the knowledge, skills, and qualifications required for the role? In dangerous professions like mine, that’s exactly how competence should be defined. Lives depend on it.

Then time and experience make you highly competent; the workplace becomes the natural place to express it. We strive for it, and are measured, recognized, and rewarded for it.

Even when you change jobs, employers talk about transferable skills. Same competence. New container. Often with a better salary and a nicer office.

Retirement is different.

No one asks where all that competence goes.

Competence has historically carried a deeper meaning, at least etymologically ( I love that word about words). Cleo Elefteraides points out that the word competence is a bit of a container itself; traditionally it could mean five things. All or one of these: ability, knowledge, authority, sufficiency, and value. You can find her in the digital world at The Best Way Forward.

She argues that competence isn’t simply an individual characteristic. It’s socially situated. It is recognized, exercised, and given meaning within particular institutions, relationships, and expectations.

That observation stopped me in my tracks – because retirement removes exactly those things.

Not the competence. The context. The Container.

My competence was all dressed up, then had no place to go

My own personal experience with retiring was exactly that. When I retired, I didn’t lose my competence, just my uniform. I still knew how to lead; teach; how organizations functioned; how to solve problems of all shapes and sizes; how to write policy; and I still recognized patterns before others saw them.

It was all still there. It was simply…all dressed up…with nowhere to go.

And the real kicker came when I finally found a few places where I thought I could contribute; I was dismissed almost immediately. That surprised me. It hurt. It quietly implied that I have no value. (What did Cleo say: ability, knowledge, authority, sufficiency, and value?)

Not because I expected a job. But because I had spent decades assuming competence would always have somewhere to live. After all, skills are transferable…right?!

It turns out competence needs more than ability.

Perhaps competence isn’t simply something we possess. Perhaps it is a relationship between our abilities and a place where those abilities matter. The workplace provided that relationship. Every day. Without us noticing.

So what is my competence for now? Where does it go? And who will even recognize it if they see?

One of the quietest things work gave us was recognition.

Not recognition in the sense of awards or promotions. Recognition in its simplest form: people knew who we were before we opened our mouths. I was the Fire Chief. My neighbour was a banker. My cousin was the school principal. And so on.

The title on the office door. The business card in your wallet. The gold braid on a uniform. Even the company logo embroidered on a shirt. These weren’t just labels. They were social shortcuts. They instantly communicated years of experience, responsibility, and earned trust. You didn’t have to explain yourself because the institution had already done it for you.

I remember walking into meetings wearing the gold stripes of a Fire Chief. Before a word was spoken, everyone in the room already understood my role. They knew why I was there. They knew I had authority to speak on behalf of my organization. That recognition wasn’t about ego; it was about clarity.

Retirement quietly removes those signals. That intangible, unspoken, and instant recognition and respect.

You don’t suddenly become less capable. You don’t lose your judgment, your experience, or your ability to lead. But the visible markers that once introduced you to the world disappear almost overnight.

Now you’re simply another person standing in line at Zehr’s.

Nothing inside you has changed.

Everything outside you has.

Perhaps that’s one reason some retirees describe feeling invisible. It isn’t because they’ve lost their identity. It’s because the world no longer recognizes it as effortlessly as it once did.

The Emotional Support Blanket

One of the most overlooked things work provided was emotional support.

Not counselling. Nor wellness programs. Not even the Employee Assistance Plan.

I’m talking about the ordinary, everyday support that quietly accumulates when you spend years working alongside the same people.

The firefighter who knows you’re unusually quiet today. The administrative assistant who never forgets your birthday. The partner who can tell something’s wrong before you’ve said a word. The boss who asks how your daughter is doing because he remembers she was applying to university. The colleague who notices you’ve been carrying a heavier load than usual and casually offers to help before you have to ask.

None of that appears in a job description.

It isn’t measured on a performance review.

Most organizations never consciously set out to provide it.

It simply grows over years of shared experiences, difficult days, inside jokes, small kindnesses, and ordinary Tuesdays.

Then one day you retire.

Your spouse still loves you. Your family still cares about you. But they didn’t sit beside you through budget meetings, midnight emergencies, impossible deadlines, or the thousand ordinary moments that made up your entire working life. They know your story. They didn’t live your Tuesday.

Perhaps that’s why retirement can feel lonelier than we expect. It’s not simply that we’ve left our jobs behind. We’ve also left behind the people who quietly understood our everyday reality without needing us to explain or justify it.

Meaningful Decisions

One thing I never expected to miss was making decisions. It sits tightly alongside competence.

Not ordinary decisions. We all make hundreds of those every day. Milk or cream? Chicken or fish? Can I wash white towels with white linen blouses? The answer is no, by the way!

I’m talking about decisions that carried weight.

For decades, my work required me to solve meaningful problems. Sometimes those decisions affected the safety of firefighters. Sometimes they involved million-dollar municipal budgets, emergency planning, or the allocation of equipment and personnel. They were complex, consequential, and intellectually engaging. They demanded judgment, experience, and the willingness to accept responsibility for the outcome.

Then I retired.

One evening I found myself standing in front of the refrigerator trying to decide what to make for dinner.

And I remember thinking, I’d rather be figuring out where to strategically position a fire apparatus than deciding between chicken parmesan and pork chops for the four hundredth time.

That isn’t a criticism of cooking.

It’s an observation about cognitive engagement.

The workplace didn’t just give many of us something to do. It regularly asked us to solve difficult problems, make important decisions, and wrestle with complexity. Retirement doesn’t necessarily remove our ability to think at that level. It simply stops asking us to.

Perhaps that’s another reason some retirees feel restless without quite knowing why. It isn’t that life has become too quiet. It may be that the kinds of problems we’re asked to solve have quietly changed.

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So do I miss work? I can answer that with gusto – yes!

Why? Well, if you think of work as just a job, and nothing more, then missing any facet of it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But if you consider all of those intangibles, and you start to think of work as the entire ecosystem of people, problems, recognition, competence, friendship, challenge, and belonging that surrounds it. And you function within that ecosystem for the bulk of your adult life.

Now that has weight. That is something to be missed.

Modern retirement reveals what modern work had quietly become.

Related Reading

If you enjoy following ordinary observations that turn into bigger questions, you might also like:

• How to Make Friends: The Forgotten Science of Adult Friendship
• Why the First Trip After Retirement Carries So Much Weight
• The Science of Why Retirement Feels So Strange
• Retiring Feral
• The Story Gets Better Every Time

• Oldenburg, R. (1989). The Great Good Place.
• McAdams, D. P. (2006). The Redemptive Self. Oxford University Press.
• Bridges, W. (2004). Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes.
• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness. Guilford Press.
• Taylor, F. W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. Harper & Brothers.
• Elefteraides, C. The Best Way Forward.