I was sixty-five when I decided to leave my job as a food and beverage manager. This industry has been in my blood for many years and I will always love it. The long days and busy weekends were just as brutal as they were invigorating.

There was a certain management style I adopted based on years in the business, from my role models to my history of successes vs failures. Once I figured out what worked, I stuck with it, tweaking here and there. In my mind I thought this style would work forever but I was mistaken.

Some years before leaving my job I noticed certain aspects of the industry changing. Where I worked had an amazing reputation and most of the two hundred employees were there for years and very dependable. Being a seasonal business, I could always depend on all the employees returning to their jobs and searching for new workers was not needed.

As seasons passed it was necessary to hire more employees. Hiring new workers wasn’t the problem, the dependability and loyalty once they were hired became an issue. It was no longer about being the best, helping your team and working toward a common goal. It became more about “what’s in it for me?” My management style didn’t apply in this new environment and I was at a loss about how to navigate around it. And that ladies and gentlemen is when you know it’s time to retire yourself.

My baby boomer generation was raised quite differently and the thought of me having to “dummy down” the food and beverage operations and staffing was never going to happen. I was brought up that you gave 100% as much as you can, as often as you can. The world had changed in what seemed to be overnight, so I left.

I went from making a decent yearly salary to zero in five minutes.

Now what?