[jcwade]

I worked in the field in a union job for 14 years.
Then I did 14 more years as a supervisor.
The last 13 years I was a manager.

As a manager, the budgets and staff meeting and looooooooooong hours sucked.
Disciplining people I'd worked along side for years sucked even more.
There was always an adversarial relationship between the union members and management.
A lot of them hated me for doing my job, but not the ones that matter.

In the end, the manager was more interesting.
I didn't have to do the same thing everyday, except for the endless calls (sometimes 5 a day if things were going badly).

All told, retirement is better.