I'm 55 with a college degree, working in retail to stay afloat. It's been hard to get past the shame and find purpose.

At first, I felt shame about working a retail job.

Now, I'm grateful to be doing it and recognize the value of helping others in different ways.

Tammy Rabideau At 55, I took a part-time job at a department store.

I didn't expect to be working retail at my age.

I have a degree and decades of experience in social work, but I liked this job's flexibility.

This job offers less stress and only slightly lower pay than another role in my field I applied for.

I'd been up since 4 a.m., sitting at my computer with an email ready to rescind my acceptance of a customer-service job at a large department store.

It was August 2025, and I was supposed to start that morning.

Shame had me hovering over the "send" button.

I wondered how it had come to this.

I had a college education, decades of experience in social work, and had spent the last six years writing for major publications.

Yet here I was, back in a department store, doing the kind of customer-service work I had first done as a teenager.

Only now I was 55.

I didn't think the work was beneath me, but at my age, I believed I should be "further along" in my career.