Jim:
"Our president stood in front of the whole management team, many of whom had at least as much time as I did, and told us they did not expect to see 30 year employees in the future!! "
I had the same experience. This happened at about the same time they began talking about possible benefit changes. They got focused on the idea of "portable" pensions and such, because they said the modern worker would move from company to company every 3 or 4 years. It all sounded bizarre to me, and when I began separating the wheat from the chaff and began reading between the lines, what I concluded was that the company wanted to tinker with one of the most robust pension funds in the history of business. This led to my decision to take an early retirement after 30 years service. I calculated what I would receive with early retirement bonuses at age 52 and found I would have to work until I was age 63 to simply break even. I had always planned to retire at age 55, so it was a no brainer for me.
When I look back, God must have been guiding me. I was able to invest the extra money I received into the 1992 stock market, which at that time was just beginning to explode. And within a year Bell Atlantic eliminated the lucrative early retirment offers. Glad I made the break when I did. Now I no longer recognize Verizon as even remotely similar to the company I retired from. I still worry that they will somehow find a way to cut retirees loose, but so far that has not happened thank goodness.
Re the Spirit of Service painting... it certainly was real inside the walls of any Bell System building. I can still remember blizzards where it took people half a day to struggle through the elements to arrive at work, only to turn around and struggle back home. Some young people would say that was a complete waste of energy and was unsafe. Our generation would say it was pride in the Spirit of Service.