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retirement party in an apple orchard
Friday, October 29 2021
I stopped working at 4:00pm, at which time Gretchen and I set out to handle some landlording errands on our way to the retirement party of the head honcho of the company I work for. We bought a carbon monoxide detector at Herzogs, and, while there, I saw a fire extinguisher and thought I'd buy one for the cabin. I've never actually used a fire extinguisher, but when you need one, you really need one bad. From there, we went to the brick mansion at Downs Street to deliver the carbon monoxide detector to the apartment on the second floor. [REDACTED]
The retirement party was at an apple orchard [REDACTED] a little north of Red Hook. For some reason the head honcho had decided to graft his retirement onto a Friday evening event that happens at the farm anyway. It seemed like fun; there were so many cars in the parking area that I had trouble finding a place to park and there were multiple fire pits with people sitting around drinking various relaxing weekend beverages and eating food from a food stand. I didn't really know where to go, but then I saw my co-worker Joe get some food and walk around the side of a barn, so we followed him and and found my co-workers.
Mind you, I've never interacted much with any of my colleagues and for the past year or so I've mostly just worked with my boss Alex. On top of that, most of the people working for the company are anti-social loners or out on the spectrum somewhere, so it's not like they're big on forming office friendships. So it's no big surprise that initially all Gretchen and I did was talk to my boss Alex, who seemed very relived that we'd shown up. Unfortunately, his wife Celia (one of Gretchen's good friends) was teaching a class and couldn't make it.
The head honcho came around and told us how to get free beer, hard cider brewed on premises, and burgers. And there veggie burgers were an option. He seemed like he was already enjoying his retirement, and why not? Meanwhile Marc, the team's non-legacy backend developer, was taking candid photos, including of me pouring myself a local stout (part of my new interest in this kind of beer). While Gretchen talked with Alex about our Adirondack cabin, his nervous feelings about the future of the company, and possible places to move (he's been looking at places in southern Virginia), I went over to a table where Jason and Scott (the only two guys who are ever in the office with me) were sitting. Joe and his wife were there, as was a guy named Sebastian and his wife (he's the only Black guy still in the company). I got to talking with Jason and he mentioned something about a friend of his who works for a radio station called "the Sound of Life," which I know to play a lot of dreary simple-minded Christian music intercut with occasional talk programs featuring horrifyingly troglodytic politics. "I know the Sound of Life!" I blurted out, saying that its frequency is near the one I use for my pirate FM broadcasts. I then added that its mostly music trying to get me to... follow Jesus. I would've said something more disparaging, and that I sometimes listen to it ironically, but Jason had said, "tread lightly; I listen to the Sound of Life. It's pretty much the only station I listen to in my car." I hadn't figured Jason for a Christian at all. I know he's kind of weird in that he's in his 40s and still lives with his parents and that the only girlfriends he's ever mentioned lived in poor Eastern European countries. I immediately felt bad for making light of something he takes so seriously, even if it is a head-scratcher. But that wasn't the only revelation happening at our table this evening; evidently Jason had no idea that I'm a vegetarian. That's because, as he apparently is about whatever worldview makes him listen to the Sound of Life, I am completely non-evangelical about my eating habits (which, as you know, are more strict than simple vegetarianism).
Later I moved to the other end of that same table to sit between Alex and Gretchen. At some point Gretchen and I ordered veggie burgers at the food stand outside and waited for it to be prepared as the head honcho gave a long but interesting speech about the history of the company, including a mention of a period of hard financial times when it wasn't clear if paychecks would go out. But ultimately he managed to sell the company to a private equity firm shortly after I was hired, and that ultimately made it possible for him to retire.
At some point the buzzer I'd been given by the food stand people started to buzz, and Gretchen went and fetched our burgers. They'd been made with cheese, it turned out, and the cheese was clearly the real thing. It didn't exactly make us wish for the bad old days before we became vegan; as Gretchen put it, it kind of tasted like snot. But we ate it anyway. As for the patties, they were old-school veggie patties made from beets, cauliflower, and other things. They were a bit mushy but pretty good.
By this point in the evening, the head honcho was being given his retirement gifts, which included an old-timey brass navigation compass (he likes to fish from a boat) and some sort of gift card, probably to a place that sells fishing supplies. (I'd contributed $55 to these gifts but hadn't helped in picking any of them out.) Gretchen turned to me at some point and said this was the first company party she'd ever been to. For some reason she'd missed the big Yahoo.com holiday party of December of 2001 (shortly before I was laid off) wherein I ended up with a group of previously-unknown co-workers in a limo prowling the streets of Manhattan.
At the end, Gretchen and I walked up to the head honcho and I wished him a good retirement. It was awkward, as all my interactions with him have been. But his company has been good to me, and I sincerely wished him well.
Alex left with us, and we chatted as we walked through the darkness to our cars. He once again reiterated his uncertainty about what the future for the company would be, since it had become such a manifestation of the outgoing head honcho's personality. For better or for worse, he'd deliberately cultivated and encouraged chaos at the expense of other things. Now his replacement, hand-picked by the stodgy overlords of private equity, will almost certainly have a very different management style.
At the retirement party tonight at Rose Hill Farm north of Red Hook. Alex is on the left and Gretchen is on the right in the foreground. Cameron, our only female employee, is behind Gretchen. Marc, the guy who went around taking the candid photos, is the standing guy wearing a hat.
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