Bill Cox earned a law degree in 1979 then immediately began working in the local district attorney’s office, first
as an assistant district attorney and, since 1996, as the district attorney general.
Les Meek, owner of Meek’s Antique Auctions in Red Bank, has been in the business since 1965. He opened his first antique store/auction house on Dayton Boulevard in 1988.
Bebe Heiskell, the sole commissioner in Walker County, Ga., has
been working in the same location
as a public administrator for four
decades.When Hamilton County District Attorney General Bill Cox made the decision last year to not seek re-election in 2014, it wasn’t because he was tired of the job. He just thought it was time to hand over the position to a younger attorney.
Like many baby boomers, Cox, 66, has no intentions of putting himself out to pasture anytime soon.
“I don’t intend to retire,” he says, noting that he’s tossing around some options, one of which may be to teach a law class at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “I taught a class there last semester and really enjoyed it, but I definitely won’t surrender my law license.”
Like Cox, there are folks who have been working the same job – sometimes in the same building – for decades. But that kind of loyalty, both from the employee and the employer, is now a rarity. Lynda Gratton, professor of management practice at London Business School, wrote in the Financial Times newspaper that workplace loyalty is a dinosaur, “killed off through shortening contracts, outsourcing, automation and multiple careers.”
In generations past, including baby boomers, staying at one company was almost the norm. You got a good job working for the automotive industry or at an insurance company or some other longstanding business and there you stayed, getting regular raises and promotions and building up your pension, waiting for the day you could retire after about 25 years.