At the end of my 30 years at the same plumbing shop my boss told me he was not paying my foreman's pay anymore. I suggested that was a relief not having foreman's duties like payroll, job meetings and negotiating extras. My tenure ended shortly after. I went to another shop doing even higher stress jobs but at least they paid for it. My last two jobs were a surgical suite addition at a hospital and geo-thermal in an existing high school.
The moral is, the reduction in stress since retirement has been good for me.
I had an interesting (bizarre?) job for about 18 months back in 2005-6: I was [outwardly] an Electrical Controls Engineer in a [now-defunct] airplane manufacturing company. When I went in for the initial meeting with the VP of the division I would work for, he asked me a few questions and then took me into a small conference room, closed the door and drew the blinds closed(!!). Then he asked me to not tell anyone what he was about to say: I thought maybe he was quitting or something and wanted to let me know before I might start working for him (or...??). Instead, he proceeded to draw an organization chart of the Group I would work in if I took the job. Then he drew the 'line of communication' like you usually see in these charts, connecting me to the Electrical Group's Manager, who worked for him. Then he drew a DOTTED line around that and the middle manager above the Electrical Group, between my new position and his(!). Then he plainly stated that if I would take this job, I would work for and report to the Electrical Group Manager, but he wanted me to communicate directly with him on every Friday before going home. When I asked him 'why' he said they had 'burned through' over 200 engineers in the last 5 years from the pace of the projects and they were about to go into production with the airplane, but he wasn't sure that it wasn't full of troubles that were not being reported properly, because there were many "hurt feelings" working there.
Well, hmmm...
So I told him I was OK with not making any new friends there, as I grew up moving State-to-State every 4-6 months from the time I was old enough to remember (5?) until the end of 1958, so I never had close friends where I worked: they never stayed around! But, I also told him I would need more $$ to justify that sort of work, and he made me an offer that dropped my jaw, so I agreed.
After about 5 months there I figured out the issues within the Electrical Designs and the unpublished issues with the airplane(s) that needed fixing. As I brought them to him (8 of those would have grounded the whole fleet if known) and he issued "fixes" directly, my immediate Manager started figuring out what was happening, although it took him 7 more months to figure out it was me: turned out he was the source of most of the problems, but had been with the company since its beginning, netting him 'friends in high places' who protected him. I wondered if this was how such things happen in other airplanes (like jetliners?) and also how a company might solve them, tricky work! About that time I 'discovered' Dilbert, and it [still] reads just like that company...
In the end the company failed, a good thing. There is only 1 of those airplanes still flying, which was the "X" plane used for all modification testing work (I saw it overhead 3 weeks ago, reminded me of all this stuff again). But, the day that the company closed without notice, at 3 o'clock the middle management called an all-hands-on-desk meeting to discuss who should become the new Director of Controls Engineering, as the new machines to automate all the handwork they had been doing had arrived and were [literally] sitting in the parking lots, on their delivery trucks, as we all met. The group unanimously voted me (!!) to be the new Director, something I had not even thought about. So, I left the meeting at 3:20 to go to another scheduled meeting in the hangers, where the CEO and CFO announced the end of the company, effective immediately, and handed everyone their final checks.
So, I was actually a Director of Controls Engineering, for almost 30 minutes! But in the end, the only part of that job I miss was the amazing salary and the challenge of carrying concealed at work when it wasn't allowed, because I was always looking over my shoulder...
