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Floyd Martin retires after nearly 35 years as a mailman tomorrow

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Re: Floyd Martin retires after nearly 35 years as a mailman tomorrow

#101

Post by rhombocombus »

xeromal wrote: post #98
kasey_junk wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story takes place in Atlanta. The metro area has something like 6 million people in it. Not a 'mega city' but also not a small town. Perhaps it's not the city that is causing the lack of community with neighbors?

This happens in Marietta which is a sizeable city but not Atlanta. It's outside of Atlanta like how Irvine is outside of LA. My family lives in Acworth an hour a way and there are chickens wandering people's yards. GA is a bit different in that regard.

As a former Atlantan (I lived in EAV or near it for 12 years) now living on the west coast I think the trend follows here as well: twenty minutes outside of Portland and you're in the "sticks." That said, the folks who live in the further flung suburbs, exurbs, and "sticks" outside Portland tend to be a good bit nicer than their Atlanta area counterparts in my experience

Re: Floyd Martin retires after nearly 35 years as a mailman tomorrow

#102

Post by lifeisstillgood »

mcflibbles wrote: post #78
decebalus1 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason, your comment reminded me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MVyQNNFobA

My 2nd ever comment on hacker news, and already someone has managed to segue from my innoncuous comment into an attack on feminism. And further more, they've done so by using a video of someone with schizophrenia, or some other serious psychological problem. People can downvote this all they like, I'm gone.

No ones downvoting you.

Stay. We definitely like at least 2/3rds of all your comments :-)

Re: Floyd Martin retires after nearly 35 years as a mailman tomorrow

#103

Post by awinder »

phjesusthatguy3 wrote: post #97
rafaelvasco wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely that's the lesson here. Spread love wherever you go, to everybody, anytime.

>Spread love wherever you go, to everybody, anytime. Sometimes that really fucking hard . And I know I'm part of the problem. But if that's not what we're all working for, we might as well just give up now.

Some of this is tied up in wishful thinking I’m sure, but focus on the macro and not the micro. I don’t think any of us can be the best version of ourselves without learning from the worst versions of ourselves. I’m sure that mailman had bad encounters; if not player 1 alert.

Re: Floyd Martin retires after nearly 35 years as a mailman tomorrow

#104

Post by [deleted] »

phjesusthatguy3 wrote: post #97
rafaelvasco wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely that's the lesson here. Spread love wherever you go, to everybody, anytime.

>Spread love wherever you go, to everybody, anytime. Sometimes that really fucking hard . And I know I'm part of the problem. But if that's not what we're all working for, we might as well just give up now.

[deleted]

Re: Floyd Martin retires after nearly 35 years as a mailman tomorrow

#106

Post by lupire »

colechristensen wrote: post #100

Responses to stories like this make me uncomfortable. I grew up on a small family farm in Iowa. Along with farming my father also took a substitute job as a rural mail carrier mostly for health insurance. I can't find a better word than fetishizing to describe how – what I would call city people – think and talk about the world I grew up in. Talking about where I came from and reading how people respond to this makes…

City people are "fetishized" too. People are often curious about people who are different from themselves.

Re: Floyd Martin retires after nearly 35 years as a mailman tomorrow

#107

Post by njepa »

retiredcoder wrote: post #58
mcescalante wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I was just reading some messages on the gofundme for his vacation (mentioned in thread) and one of the families on his route said that he remembers every childs names, even after they have left the house, which to me is something you would only expect of a good friend. It seems like he is just a genuinely good guy who cares about these people and as you said, has the ability to connect with them on a level that…

Or maybe he didn’t have to go thru daily stand-ups and have to say how many letters will be delivered today. Just kidding, kudos for him and some people are indeed gifted to make friends and connections intuitively. On the other hand, there are jobs that make connecting to other people harder if not impossible. I used to work for Microsoft during the poignant stack rank time and it was utterly hard to build trust wit…

Absolutely. I am all for making the best of things, but the conditions have to support it as well. Today more and more things are temporary, from doctors and workplace to where you live. Of course it is hard to make those connections. Especially since it also gets even harder as less people have them. That is why it always annoyed me when people say things like "just move", "just quit" or "it isn't a right to ...".

Re: Floyd Martin retires after nearly 35 years as a mailman tomorrow

#108

Post by lupire »

ryandrake wrote: post #73

Happy story, but I'm also supremely jealous. The thought of retiring after only 35 years of work! That's the outstanding accomplishment here. Either he has a great pension (remember those?) or has been a terrific, disciplined saver over those years. My Boomer parents all had generous pensions and they also retired pretty early. Us younger folks are stuck with crappy 401(k)s that place our futures in the hands of Wall…

Your perspective is deeply distorted.

You have social security which is currently forecast to be funded 73% of current goals (not perfect but not 0 either), and 401(k) averages 7% return over decades, and you have massive quality of life improvements via technology thanks to boomers' collective work.

Re: Floyd Martin retires after nearly 35 years as a mailman tomorrow

#109

Post by badpun »

maxxxxx wrote: post #6
nemo1618 wrote: post #4

Stories like this make you question whether it's worth being paid all this money to spend your life staring at a screen in a climate-controlled cube solving abstract problems that provide approximately zero benefit to your family, friends, and neighbors.

Agreed. Sometimes I feel like I am wasting my life solving business problems I don’t really care about and nobody close to me understands even remotely.

Read Bukowski’s „Post Office”. In his account, working in the post office, or as a mailman in the field, was hell.

Re: Floyd Martin retires after nearly 35 years as a mailman tomorrow

#110

Post by the_gastropod »

ryandrake wrote: post #73

Happy story, but I'm also supremely jealous. The thought of retiring after only 35 years of work! That's the outstanding accomplishment here. Either he has a great pension (remember those?) or has been a terrific, disciplined saver over those years. My Boomer parents all had generous pensions and they also retired pretty early. Us younger folks are stuck with crappy 401(k)s that place our futures in the hands of Wall…

The number of work years needed before you can retire can entirely be determined by the % of your take-home pay you save. For example, to retire in 35 years (assuming a 0 net-worth), you need to save 21.5% of your money. If you're on HackerNews, you probably have a high enough salary where that's absolutely doable. Bump it up to 35%, and you can knock another decade off of your working career.

You can play around with the numbers here: https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement

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