He retired before Google existed. The vest says otherwise.
Retired in 1998. Standing at the store entrance in 2026. The smile is real, which is the part that’ll get you if you look at this too long. He’s not holding the sign in protest. He’s holding it the way someone holds a fun fact about themselves, like it’s trivia and not a summary of the entire pension system. Twenty-eight years between the party and the vest. Somebody did the napkin math on his fixed income and the answer was “greeter.” He seems fine with it, and that’s the bleakest part. The economy turned retirement into a word that means “the first job you take after the career you already finished.”