14 'polite' ways you're talking about ageing that are actually rude

"People have been underestimating me because of my age for decades and saying I should retire," says Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the 104-year-old nun who went viral for her cheerleader-level antics while working as the chaplain for the Loyola University Chicago men's basketball team. And not only is Schmidt still working as a chaplain, a role she's held for 29 years, she just published her first book Wake Up with Purpose! What I've Learned in My First Hundred Years. And she's certainly not ready to retire, a suggestion she finds funny. "Just because I'm old doesn't mean I can't do things," she says. "I've lived this long because I do things I love." Schmidt's not the only person to encounter these assumptions about getting older. There's still a strange stigma around age - and we say 'strange' because the fact is that we're all ageing from the second we're born. There's no escaping ageing except, well, dying. And nobody wants that. Even though we're all getting older (right now, this very minute!), somehow we never think we'll be 'old.' As a result, ageism runs rampant in society, not to mention in the workplace. These ageist attitudes lead to an us-versus-them mentality (hello, baby boomers and millennials), which just continues the cycle of negativity.