I just submitted the official university paperwork resigning from my appointment as of April 2027. One more year, and then I’m outta here.
Don’t ask me how I feel about it yet. Ask me a year from today, when it gets real.
Right now I’m mainly stressed about the fact that Boeing sent me a letter saying they overpaid on my mother’s death benefits, and they want $5000 back right now. On the one hand, that’s peanuts for Boeing, they can go overcharge the government for a bolt to get that money back; on the other hand, do I really want to get in a fight with Boeing?
Yes, fight them on general principles. What are they gonna do — drop a airplane on your head?
@1
While the odds of Boeing landing a suit safely in court may seem low, it would cost money to fight them. If it would cost more to fight than you are going to lose, then it becomes economically questionable to fight.
No takebacks! Make them pry it out of your cold dead hands. It always surprises me how often people are willing to give away their money when the demand comes on letterhead.
Were you at Morris in ’97 ’98? My late brother in law was there then and probably would have been in your class if you were.
Congrats on having an exit date. I stopped clinical practice a couple of years ago and I still don’t know how I feel about it.
But who’ll look after the spiders?!
Offer to pay it back at $1 a month.
On another note. Now that you are retiring what happens to your spider research and your lab? Do you get to continue to do research with some sort of quid pro quo with the university?
#4: No, I started in 2000.
#6, #7: The spiders will come home with me.
I am touched that people are concerned about the spiders.
Do you have a legal plan as one of your employment benefits? You might get a free hour consultation to discuss the situation. What about the attorney who handled the estate? There is a time limit for recoupment that varies by state, maybe they waited too long.
I’m retiring in 16 days from my job at a large technology company after 12 years in my current position, total of 26 years as an employee with the company over three jobs since 1984, plus innumerable contracts between jobs.
For what it’s worth to you…or anybody: it’s friggin’ complicated and difficult to retire.
Retired attorney here. I had the same worries as I approached retirement. They vanished in the first year. No one can take away the things you’ve done, or the person you are.
One thing you REALLY have to plan for is a list of weekly, daily, monthly mental, physical, and social activities that keep all of your bodily and brain juices flowing. So, so, many people I know have retired and in 2-3 years — DEAD. Likely of boredom. Keep up your level of activity, particularly social activity, and you can have fun and fulfilling retirement.
PZ, that’s great that you have made your retirement formal. When the time comes, ‘take the money and run’.
On the last day, give each student a pet spider.
Here are a few (bad) ideas on how to deal with an abusive corporation:
1) Tell Boeing that you’ll pay them back over the number of years of Boeing employment.
2) Send it to them in pennies, $10 at a time.
3) Pay it in some form of failing bitcoin.
4) Tell them ‘the check’s in the mail’ and wait for their response
5) Send them a check on your mother’s closed account and tell them it’s their fault if it goes ‘boeing, boeing, boeing’
6) Send them a bag of sand and a hammer and tell them to ‘go pound sand up their ass’
Seriously,
You have our best wishes for a pleasant and active retirement and a painless resolution of the boeing claim.
@10, @11: OTOH, I couldn’t wait to stop doing only mildly interesting work and attending soporific meetings. So much that when the $$$ looked right, I informed my manager that I’d be leaving in about eight month’s time, so if by chance some head-count reduction thing came along before then….which it did about four months later, and I got over a year’s worth in severance. Which was 12 years ago, and since then I’ve gotten a BA, done a bunch of stuff (and more planned) across about three hobbies, traveled a bit (and more planned), taught myself (basic) Latin, read a lot….there aren’t enough hours in a day.
I’m pretty sure that PZ will find plenty to occupy himself. He seems like that kind of person.
Congratulations! You’re going to enjoy retirement. I know I am.
The pandemic pretty much retired me early. Now my time is entirely my own, and I can get on with the truly important work of my life. All that important stuff that I do now. Yeah, stuff. That I do. So much stuff. I can’t begin to tell you.
@1 Walter Solomon: “ What are they gonna do — drop an airplane on your head?”
Well, this is Boeing he’s talking about. They seem to be better than they should be at dropping airplanes out of the sky. But to the larger point, even without a lawyer you can pester them for documentation about the error and make them work for their money to the point where they may just change their mind. That has worked for me before. “I dispute that this debt is accurate; please send me written documentation via certified mail to this address:…”. And once you retire you will have plenty of time to write annoying letters to follow up on whatever they send you.