“I had to work!” – 84 year old Barbara Walters on NPR, talking about her retirement this week from TV.
For those who don’t know, I run the company my 67 year old Mother started, with help from my 84 year old Grandmother, over 30 years ago. I was raised and influenced by two women who had this same philosophy — “I have to work”. My Mom was a single mother, raising two kids. My Grandmother was married, but was raising 5 girls and she needed to help my Grandfather supplement prom dresses, makeup, hair salon appointments, etc.
The only time you hear this phrase, it’s usually coming from a woman. I don’t say that with negative connotation. It’s just one of those statements, in our culture, you usually hear from an older female who ‘had’ to work because they didn’t have a man paying the bills, for whatever reason (divorce, never married, death of a spouse, etc.). It’s very common for single mothers, of which, Barbara Walters was, thus her comment.
Read the whole post over at The Tim Sackett Project (an FOT contributor blog).
If you Google “Tim Sackett” you’ll find our Tim, and a truck driver chaplain. Our Tim is NOT the truck driver chaplain, although how awesome would that be if he was!? He is a prolific writer in the HR and TA space who just happens to also run an Engineering and IT contract staffing agency (HRU Technical Resources) out of Michigan. He also writes every day at his own blog, the Tim Sackett Project. Weirdly, he’s known as an expert in workplace hugging, which was kind of cool years ago, but now seems painfully creepy, but we still love him and he’s fairly harmless. Tim is also on the board of the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP), lifetime Michigan State Spartan fan, husband to a Hall of Fame wife, 3 sons, and his best friend Scout. He also wrote a book with SHRM called The Talent Fix, you can find it on Amazon.