Lifestyle

At 62, He Took a Full-Time Garden Center Job He Didn’t Need. Four Weeks Later He Folded Up His Vest: “I’m Done. I’m Out.”

By Mike Harper · November 10, 2026

David is an artist who spent years as a sales manager in the furniture industry and once ran his own company with four retail stores. As he was about to turn 62, he started thinking about what retirement would look like for him, and he came up with a plan.

“I decided back in January of this year, 2025, that I was going to get a full-time job. And it wasn’t that I needed the money,” he says in a video on his YouTube channel (@HeirloomCementCo). He wanted to stay active and stay in shape, and he pictured a garden center as a fun place to work, helping customers load bags of mulch and answering questions about plants.

He applied online for an outdoor garden sales job at Lowe’s and got it after an interview that he says went very well. The pay, as he remembers it, was about $15 an hour. He says the hiring process and training took far longer than he expected, including about 10 days of computer training with many tests before he ever worked on the floor.

The job itself changed quickly. He says that about three days in, his immediate supervisor was sent to work at another store in another state, and he was left alone in a garden department he describes as massive. Spring deliveries of mulch, soil and flowers were arriving by the truckload. He says he sometimes loaded 2,000 to 3,000 pounds of mulch in a day by himself.

He visited other Lowe’s stores nearby and says he counted three to six workers in their garden centers. “I was doing the job of at least three people every day in this garden center,” he says. He says he raised the staffing problem with managers three separate times without a lasting fix.

He tells the rest of the story in his video on YouTube.

The breaking point came after he helped unload two semi trucks of mulch and returned to find a line of customers, one of whom loudly complained that nobody would help. He helped both customers to their vehicles. Then he went to the HR manager’s office.

“I worked at Lowe’s for a total of four weeks,” he says, counting about a week and a half of training. He says he had always given two weeks’ notice in past jobs but did not this time. “I folded up my red vest, put it on her desk and looked her in the eye and said, I’m done, I’m out.”

This is his account of one store, and he says he does not know whether other locations are different.

His story fits a larger trend of people working later in life. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 26.7 percent of people ages 65 to 74 were in the labor force in 2025, and it projects that share will rise to 29.1 percent by 2035. For ages 55 to 64, the 2025 rate was 66.6 percent.

If you are thinking about a job after a long career, a few things can be worth checking before you start:

Ask how many people usually work your shift and department, especially during the busy season.

Ask how long training lasts and whether it is paid.

Ask what lifting the job requires and how often, and be honest with yourself about it.

Think about what matters most, whether it is pay, staying active or being around people, and whether part-time work might fit.

For David, the goal was to stay active, and four weeks told him this job was not the way to do it.

This article is for general information and reflects the creator’s own account of his experience. This article was produced with the assistance of AI and fact-checked against the sources cited by LightWave Reports.