Reunions

Christmas time still makes me think of office parties and work-related meetups of various kinds, even sixteen years after I retired in 2005. Isn't that curious? As if I've never let go, and would still like to go back. 

Of course I wouldn't, not now. I was relieved to retire early at age fifty-two, and I did it with no backward glance. I didn't become one of those rather sad people who keep closely in touch, and pop by often, hoping to keep up with office news, and see all the old familiar faces, because they have nothing else in their lives. Nor did I turn up for successive Christmas parties. I followed Dad's advice, which I quoted in an essay I wrote in 2006 called The Job. I published it eventually as a blog post in early 2010. This is what I wrote:

Dad advised me never to go back: to turn down, as he had, dinners, lunches and reunions. Certainly never to visit the office again. I knew he was right. Once gone you were old news and just a ghost from the past. What indeed was there to discuss, cut off from the day-to-day life of the office? Did people really want to know how much I was enjoying unlimited leisure on an ample pension? And would I want to learn that all my cases had been completely forgotten? Or that one or two had embarrassed the department? 

Who would know who I was anyway? I had expected to slip from people's minds within six months. Even if this were not true, and I was long remembered, I was in effect a dead person, and must not return to haunt the living.

Wise words. And I followed them for six years. 

Then in February 2011 the chance came to meet up for lunch in Croydon with three other still-working former colleagues, and nostalgia got the better of me. And it went well! We repeated the experience in April 2012 and November 2014 with the same success. For the latter occasion, my old boss joined us. I remember finding him pre-lunch, perusing a book at Waterstones in Croydon's Whitgift Centre, and I didn't walk away before he saw me but took the initiative in saying hello. He hadn't changed, apart from being dressed casually, instead of in a smart suit. He was affability itself. If he felt like raising his eyebrows at the latter-day me, he didn't show it. (Nine years into retirement, I'd completely shed my old office demeanour, and was chirpy and relaxed, if not actually frivolous) Here we are in the restaurant:

By now he'd retired himself, and was pursuing his interest in canal boats to his heart's content. The joys of the leisured life! Just as I was enjoying ever more adventurous caravan holidays.

Two more meetups in the near future were proposed, and I readily agreed to come. But this turned out to be a mistake. They were my final reunions.

The first of these final events, in December 2014, wasn't an intimate reunion of a few former colleagues. It was a full-blown office Christmas Lunch, involving many people from an entire floor of the high-rise building that I once worked in. Not from the sixth floor though, where the Investigating Inspectors like myself were housed: from a lower floor, for more junior grades - the support teams. My being there was literally a visitation from above, retired though I might be. It might well have seemed to some that I had been foisted onto their celebration. What was I doing there? Who indeed was I? Nine years on from 2005, there weren't many who recalled exactly who I was, and what had been my function, beyond the bare facts that I'd been a long-serving senior officer mainly involved with corporate investigation; and that I'd been one of the lucky few who had managed to get out when the chance came back in 2005. 

I had indeed been lucky. Here's an extract from another essay I wrote in 2006 - clearly I had things to get off my chest about the work I'd done, and the guilt I'd felt for walking away from it so easily. This other essay was called The Pension. I published it as a blog post in February 2010, as a sequel to The Job. Reading it now, I think it describes the circumstances at the time - at least as I saw them - rather well. This was an important episode in my personal history, but I still apologise for the length of the extract. And my inability to get the font right. 

At length an announcement was made in 2004 by Gordon Brown, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the Inland Revenue and HM Customs & Excise would merge in 2005. And that in consequence as many as 12,500 of their staff would be surplus to requirements, and must leave by the end of 2006. The unions were aghast. But, on reflection, how could numbers be reduced? There were to be no redundancies. If you were not going to force people to leave, you’d have to make them an offer so good that they couldn’t refuse. But how paid for? No special funding would be provided. So my opinion was (and colleagues agreed) that there couldn't be another retirement deal. We braced ourselves for less congenial measures to get rid of people, such as a programme of transfers, shifting staff around, making their working lives worse. This would encourage the required ‘natural wastage’ - people getting out to avoid inconvenient daily travel, or an unwanted change of duties.   

 

But then in early 2005 - completely out of the blue - an early retirement deal was suddenly offered to those over 50. Approved Early Retirement it was called. This included me. As a deal, it wasn’t universally attractive. If you were in a low grade, or had not built up many years of reckonable service, your pension would be small; and there was no lump sum unless you had stayed with the old 1970 pension scheme. I had opted for the new scheme in 2001, which gave me more pension, but no lump sum. Even so, the arithmetic came out well for me, and I immediately applied for early retirement on the basis offered. 

Another colleague, older than me, with a wife in the Revenue who would also be able to go - and both in the old pension scheme - stood to do exceptionally well out of it, and they applied too. But for others the decision was more difficult. Generally the pension would be too small for their needs. Most had family responsibilities, children still at university, or soon to go. Some male colleagues had younger wives who did not want to retire, so that they would be kicking their heels at home, with nothing in particular to do. They feared boredom. And some other people said the scheme was not nearly good enough for them; they thought that another would follow, a better deal altogether, and they preferred to wait for it. This seemed like looking a gift horse in the mouth. But belief in a succession of ever-better schemes was common. It was thought that if the government were serious about reducing staff numbers, they were bound to offer more and more in the way of inducements until they got the numbers they wanted. So it was almost foolish to accept the first deal, which was just to test the water. How wrong this view turned out to be!   

And yet it seemed obvious that any Inspector who applied stood only a slim chance of success. The staff most needed for the new HMRC were the experienced investigators, people like me in fact. Clerical staff were not needed so much, and in some areas would indeed be surplus to requirements. Clearly the cuts would fall first on the junior grades. And they were the lowest-paid, the cheapest to retire. In the light of this, people like myself - Inspectors with experience, on relatively high salaries - seemed unlikely to be released. Inspectors more senior to me especially so. The government wanted droves of clerical people to respond instead. It became known that London Region expected 1,000 applications for its area, and it published a pecking order in case the scheme were over-subscribed. I and my investigating colleagues were depressingly low down on the list. But, undaunted, we made our applications, sometimes in the face of dry comments from senior management that we were wasting our time, as we would never be allowed to go. 

It did not turn out as expected. There were 600 people in my office at Croydon, but only 18 there applied, most of them Inspectors. It was a similar picture elsewhere. The clerical people just could not afford to give up work, or did not want to. 

After a month of anxious waiting we 18 had our applications approved, amid whoops of joy. There was an immediate party atmosphere for not just a day, but for all my remaining time there. A feeling that the strain was off. Even those too young to apply, or who had refrained from applying, seemed full of goodwill and smiles. Amazed senior managers congratulated us on our wonderful luck. Even accountants (if we told them) more often than not offered their best wishes for the future, and regret at the severing of a good working relationship. I thought I detected some dark mutterings on other floors, among lower grade staff who had fallen victim to work restructuring. And I remember one accountant who made sour remarks about my wanting to shut down a case before I went, putting his client under pressure to agree to some settlement proposals. But these grumblings were not typical. On the whole we 18 were the darlings of all who knew us. Even senior managers could find comfort in losing us. Although awkward in some ways, our departure created a perfect opportunity to renegotiate targets reluctantly agreed with London Region. 

It was all a fantastic piece of good luck. Common sense told me to accept it. But I could not help feeling that, for me, the luck was not deserved. I had not been a star investigator, just someone who had stuck it out for thirty-five years, had no family to support, and could afford to apply. I had not ‘earned’ this reward. But I was making a basic mistake. Approval to retire was not a reward at all. It was just incidental to the government’s wish to reduce the staff figures. As long as somebody - anybody - accepted the deal, that wish was on its way to being fulfilled. Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, would have thanked me. But it would be thanks for making the government’s job easier at Question Time, not thanks for the work I did over all those years. My personal past performance, poor or perfection itself, was completely irrelevant.      

  

I heard in September 2005 that this particular early retirement scheme had turned out to be the only one that senior staff could freely apply for. It had been a unique chance. I didn’t feel smug at the news, just glad that I hadn’t hesitated for a minute. And glad that I hadn’t tried to be clever, or greedy, waiting for a better deal.   

I mentioned dark grumbling in some quarters, from staff who had miscalculated the chances of a better deal, or - unable to apply for early retirement - were disgruntled or fearful concerning their future prospects, and envious of those who could leave and escape the coming departmental merger and the difficulties it was bound to bring. These resentments were soon intensified by a long-lasting department-wide pay freeze imposed soon after I'd gone - while, in galling contrast, my pension was increased annually in line with inflation (and continues to be to this day). Small wonder that a few at that Christmas Lunch must have felt I needed a smack in the face, and had no right to bust in and be merry. 

So I felt slightly unwelcome. An interloper. And most certainly, an unsettling presence. An eagle mixing with pigeons and sparrows. 

Well, undaunted, and wanting to please, I entered into the Christmas spirit as much as I could. Here I am, being genial and having fun in a cowboy hat:

But it was an awkward experience.

And then, in January 2015, just over a month later, I attended the second of these final events - another big lunch. I can't quite remember now, but either someone had got promotion, or they were leaving the big Croydon office for another equally large office elsewhere in London. The preliminary drink in a pub, with my old boss and some former colleagues was a success.

But again, at the lunch itself I knew only a handful of people, and although seeing them was pleasant, I was still rather out of it. And the gang was breaking up. One of our original meetup group back in 2011 hadn't been able to come, and two others were talking about moving away from London. So it looked as if this would, anyway, be the last of our Croydon reunions.

And it was. There have been none since. 

Perhaps just as well. Even in 2011, I'd been shocked and saddened to hear of the death or dire ill-health of colleagues I used to know. It's certain that the roll call of those tragically struck down by ill-health or ill-fortune will have grown longer. Possibly very much longer, for many colleagues had been hard-drinking types - or smokers, or both - during their career, and had undermined their chances of a long life in good health. 

And while I wouldn't be the only retiree who had looked after herself, and kept her fitness intact, I would definitely be one of an ever-diminishing minority. I've aged quite a bit since 2005, but there'd be those who must have drastically changed, becoming a frail grey shadow of their former selves. I wouldn't want to see them in such a state, nor make them feel awful for seeing me in good shape still. 

So it's better for everyone if I heed Dad's advice, and stick to it. No more reunions!