I have been retired at least 10 years now - but your post reminded me of my twilight working years. At the time I was certainly in the 1% of the workforce when it came to age. Much older than a typical manager. I had also reached the point where I really did not care about my 'career' any longer.

From time to time I would need help at my desk from (say) someone from I/T to replace a computer part or figure out a networking issue. If someone came to my office and spent a half hour or so struggling to resolve the problem - I would chat with them during the visit. When they were done, and things were working properly, I made it a point of writing a 'thank you' note to their manager (and often his/her manager's manager) - praising the the work of my young visitor.

Let's just say that that kind of recognition was not in the corporate culture...

 

Wonderful that you did this, and sad that it wasn’t a normal part of the corporate culture. Reading this helps me be grateful for my workplace, where formal and informal expression of thanks and recognition of good work done is very much a part of our culture.

 

Years ago, at the end of one of my daughter's school years when she was in middle school, I wrote a letter to her social studies teacher, whose class she loved. She didn't much like school in general, although she was a good student- she just thought most of it was boring and they were trying to push the kids into some kind of mold and she was quite an independent thinker.
I thanked him for his teaching style and that his class had been the highlight of school that year for her. When I next saw him, he told me he had never, in all his years of teaching (he wasn't young) gotten a letter like that from a parent, only complaints. My gratitude earned his.