Middle-aged people know how to make things happen
Bosses! You wouldn’t take a classic sports car to the scrap heap or bin a rolex watch just because it was older and more expensive than more decorative, plastic items. Yet when it comes to people, a fair number are finding themselves in the dole queue for simply committing the crime of reaching their 45th Birthday. Or, they’re going freelance or scrabbling for interim work because they’re not rated where they work.
Everyone knows that people over the age of 40 are at the top of our game. Knowledgeable, calm, less likely to be found drunk, weeping or engaged in kinky stuff in the staff toilets. We have it all – relatively good health, no little kids waking us up all night, no texting suitors or constantly checking Grinder or Tinder or whatever it’s called.
So why are we not valued at work? 400,000+ people over 50 are registered as unemployed in the UK. And more than half of them have been out of work for a year or more. Granted, that’s less than for young people, but you only need to look around any office to see that if you’re not a senior leader by the time you’re 45, skid row is never far away.
Let me tell you. Middle-aged people know how to make things happen, how to weather the moods of their bosses, how to stroke their egos without being ridiculous. We know when to pick our fights. I’m sick of seeing us people treated like idiots. We’re not.
