The younger workforce.

[kenmac]

Help is very hard to find & keep. I have firemen ,they are my best workers.. I'm their part time job

 

[tbrooks26]

I think the issues are much wider today. Yesterday I was thinking about why. Why are so many people around here, a sleepy apparently old fashioned country place, either high on or dealing in meth....and that includes middle aged folks too. Why is my neighbour with two young kids, rolling drunk (actually paralytic), whenever I see him. Why are people especially the younger generation so determined to blot out life so that they can't feel anything any more.
The answer I came up with is that they kind of know deep down that the good times for our culture are coming to an end. The wealth from the Anglo/US/European industrial revolution and the international power which came with it, is almost done. I reckon they think, why work, let's party 'cos it's going to end soon anyway. Not saying it's right, but I think that's why everything is turning to manure in our society and few people these days, seem to care very much about anything or anyone except themselves.

I think the reason is there's just no reason to work hard. If mommy and daddy won't pay their way, the gov't will. It is the same around here with drugs (and most places don't have testing around here). I know of 3 young families off the top of my head, at least one parent has had and kept a decent job, and they have struggled for years, barely able to even keep 1 good vehicle running. At least one of these guys, with a lady and 2 kids, makes almost double what I do, and made a comment to me about my nice vehicles, and the property I just got, saying he would like to be able to afford that. He has no clue what I make though and probably thinks its more than him. He is a good hard worker though, does tree work. People just don't have the desire to go after their dreams.

 

[newbury]

I think the issues are much wider today. Yesterday I was thinking about why. Why are so many people around here, a sleepy apparently old fashioned country place, either high on or dealing in meth....and that includes middle aged folks too. Why is my neighbour with two young kids, rolling drunk (actually paralytic), whenever I see him. Why are people especially the younger generation so determined to blot out life so that they can't feel anything any more.
The answer I came up with is that they kind of know deep down that the good times for our culture are coming to an end. The wealth from the Anglo/US/European industrial revolution and the international power which came with it, is almost done. <snip>

I don't think that most of the "slackers" (my term for them) act that way because they "know deep down that the good times for our culture are coming to an end".

I don't think they are that bright or think that deep.

When I was in college in the early '70's I figured then we had reached a peak in civilization and it was probably going to be down hill from there.

I think I'll blame the decline in our society on my parents and their cohorts. When they raised me and my peers they did not make it difficult enough. And many of us thought "that was good", so we will make it easier for our children. I had to work nights to pay my way through college, and I'm sure it affected my grades. And I didn't want that affecting my children so since SWMBO and I could afford it we paid a large part of their college costs. So now we have a generation that grew up knowing little hardship compared to the past and they view any effort that they do should be praised and paid handsomely. I'll admit I have not been harsh enough on my children, and it took them a few years to "find" themselves and get their hiny in gear.

I worked with and trained perhaps a thousand or two soldiers during my career in topographic engineering. They all had to have a very high score on the aptitude tests to get in the field. Virtually all of them were between 18 and 25. Very few were "slackers". Most had come from a low income background, couldn't afford college and didn't like flipping burgers or welfare. Most when they got out of the army continued on with schooling and became successful productive members of society. But most of them had "horror stories" about their buddies who didn't join the military or have a good career. These buddies often just saw life as a low paying job and then you die. And they tend to resent the more successful people who worked hard, studied hard and eventually became successful.

I think part of the OP's problem with the young workforce is that the ones that stay around are not the cream of the crop. The cream has floated up and gone to better markets for their job skills.

 

[DFB]

I see all types of young kids come thru the business I work for each season. Some have real future goals they are aiming to achieve. I assume good family or teachers or coaching are guiding them and these few listen to instruction and work out well and we both know they have to move to the better things that are waiting for them.

But now there are others have no direction whatsoever. Obviously they lack real world work experience at their age but it seems no one has ever mentored them in what it takes to succeed in life. Punctuality, getting to the job on time, coming prepared to actually spend all day on the job. Even drivers licensing seems strange in this generation, so many don't have one even into their early twenties. But hey they do know all the local nitespots and other avenues of personal enlightenment quite well already though.

And of course smartphones and Ipods they all got them.

Personal headphones use for music can be an issue too
Like your getting tuned right out.


Most do express a desperation to work, make money but many don't want to be told what to do (it's a job I say to them you don't get a choice in the matter ) or how to do something, because according to them they know it all ready.

When they say to my boss they already know how to do something even though they have never worked at it before he always says "How did you get so smart?"

They think its a complement and don't even realize the sarcasm its intended to be.

One 23 yr old guy told me he had worked more than a dozen different jobs already...geeze I haven't had that many in my whole lifetime


I usually get one or two under my guidance each season. I try to get them interested in different aspects of construction trade work, direct saleswork, aspects of horticulture. They get a chance to use tools, equipment and machinery. Maybe it helps some I don't ever really know. Most I never see again.


Things sure seem to have changed a lot since I started working every summer at age 14

 

[stan33]

When I was in college in the early '70's I figured then we had reached a peak in civilization and it was probably going to be down hill from there.

Yes, I think the platform shoes and bell-bottom pants signaled the beginning of the end for civilization as we know it

 

[bcp]

The young people with a good work ethic already have their jobs and are keeping them. That's why you guys aren't seeing them.



Bruce

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I have two grandsons in college; one working on his CPA the other in his Senior year majoring in Industrial Safety. They both have jobs, for which they were recruited, working all the hours they can muster. Both are intelligent, hard working and dress and act like gentlemen. My point being, that there is education, and there is education. A degree in Poly Sci, or some other liberal arts degree pales when compared to a degree in Civil or Chemical Engineering, accounting or law. Show up stoned, with tattoos between your eyes and on your fingers, pants dragging the ground, with Neanderthal level speaking and writing skills...and your chances have just cratered.

I graduated from college the first time in 1964. I was married, child on the way, painting houses to keep us going. I took any job I could find to make a paycheck; miss one and we would have been out on the street, an absolute certainty. In those days you worked sick, you worked hurt, you worked any holiday that you could get paid for; you thanked your employer and kept your mouth shut. My first job as a college grad was $364 per month, less than I was making painting, but it was inside, with AC and it was in the area of my degree.

Kids today have too many safety nets; either Mom and Dad bail them out, or Uncle Sugar will. An old coal miner told me one time that during the depression he worked in the mines even thought they were dangerous, filled with Methane, and subject to explosion. I'll never forget his remark..."When the kids start chewing the paint off of the table legs, you gotta do something".

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I have two grandsons in college; one working on his CPA the other in his Senior year majoring in Industrial Safety. They both have jobs, for which they were recruited, working all the hours they can muster. Both are intelligent, hard working and dress and act like gentlemen. My point being, that there is education, and there is education. A degree in Poly Sci, or some other liberal arts degree pales when compared to a degree in Civil or Chemical Engineering, accounting or law. Show up stoned, with tattoos between your eyes and on your fingers, pants dragging the ground, with Neanderthal level speaking and writing skills...and your chances have just cratered.

I graduated from college the first time in 1964. I was married, child on the way, painting houses to keep us going. I took any job I could find to make a paycheck; miss one and we would have been out on the street, an absolute certainty. In those days you worked sick, you worked hurt, you worked any holiday that you could get paid for; you thanked your employer and kept your mouth shut. My first job as a college grad was $364 per month, less than I was making painting, but it was inside, with AC and it was in the area of my degree.

Kids today have too many safety nets; either Mom and Dad bail them out, or Uncle Sugar will. An old coal miner told me one time that during the depression he worked in the mines even thought they were dangerous, filled with Methane, and subject to explosion. I'll never forget his remark..."When the kids start chewing the paint off of the table legs, you gotta do something".

 

[downsizingnow48]

I think the country has changed.

I started working around the neighborhood at age 14 and built that into a landscaping business that I gave to my younger brother when I got my first "W2" job at a gas station. From that time until I retired in 2009, I was never out of work except for 2 weeks after I got out of the Army. And then in college on the GI Bill. After that I did a lot of different things always moving ahead.

Bootstrapping used to be how almost everyone did it. But I just don't think that is generally doable anymore. NAFTA and other global trade trends have dismantled the old line companies that provided a lot of decent jobs leading to middle class mobility. As a society we have not paid nearly enough attention to our education system, which now turns out mainly ignorant unskilled folk.

We paid for our two girls to go to college. Otherwise they would probably have been sales clerks in a mall somewhere. Then they put themselves through grad school, hydrology and public health. Now they both have solid jobs.

For kids that don't get an education and don't get a substantial helping hand, I think it is pretty darn hard to get any traction in the economy as it is today.

The politicians of both parties care a lot more about their next campaign donation than about building jobs. And they either want to dismantle the education system entirely or hand it over to unions. Both terrible.

I am positive in outlook by nature but right now I do not see anything going on that will lead to progress on either jobs or education. Which is what we need to turn the country around.

 

[davesl708]

I think the reason is there's just no reason to work hard. If mommy and daddy won't pay their way, the gov't will. It is the same around here with drugs (and most places don't have testing around here). I know of 3 young families off the top of my head, at least one parent has had and kept a decent job, and they have struggled for years, barely able to even keep 1 good vehicle running. At least one of these guys, with a lady and 2 kids, makes almost double what I do, and made a comment to me about my nice vehicles, and the property I just got, saying he would like to be able to afford that. He has no clue what I make though and probably thinks its more than him. He is a good hard worker though, does tree work. People just don't have the desire to go after their dreams.

The sad thing is there are families that have been on welfare for multiple generations in several areas of the US. Unbelievable but they refuse to move where jobs are and know what to say and do to stay on the dole. We ( the voters and taxpayers) enable this behavior. As long as we enable it it will continue and grow.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

It takes two things to get an education; desire and opportunity. I see both fading. Kids today (well, a lot of them any way) don't have the desire, the drive and sticktoitivity that I have seen in my generation. Additionally, the emphasis in our educational system seems to have changed from the goal of educating our youth to making money, providing tenure, complying with government requirements and bogging us down with administrative bs. It now has most kids, especially those not so well healed, priced out of the market. Believe it or not, when I started college in 1960, my tuition was $5.25 per hour. Even 10X that today would be cheap.

 

[Sodo]

The young people with a good work ethic already have their jobs and are keeping them. That's why you guys aren't seeing them.

Some are working for me. I'm very happy for that! Whenever we have an opening, it is a painful operation weeding out the useless. Good luck you guys.

 

[jerrybob]

Don't blame the young people.......blame their parents. They've been rewarded for doing nothing for too long. The lack of accountability is the problem. There are a lot of good hardworking young and old people out there......there are also a lot of young and old slugs who drain society. Maybe we should stop supporting the slugs.........make them contribute......it's amazing how much more motivated a person is when he/she is hungry.

 

[gsganzer]

You used to make peunuts, but could survive, and with hard work and integrity, get ahead. Buy a car and house. I'm not sure that's possible anymore.

But the smart phone addiction drives me nuts, and certainly not just the kids. You will never get anywhere if you don't know how to function and think on your own.

It's still possible to start at the bottom and work your way up. The problem is that it doesn't fit the timeframe that these 20 year olds expect. It's a generation that has had everything at their fingertips, so they don't know how to apply themselves or concentrate and work towards a goal. They expect results immediately.

The new trend is for employers to create incremental positions or advancements, so the younger workers can be promoted every few months in order to keep their attention/involvement. Some companies go so far as to guarantee they'll be promoted within the first 6 months of being hired.

The other issue that I've had to fight with is how they use vacation or PTO. When I started at my current employer, there were 6 existing shop personnel. In my first 6 months, there wasn't a single week where I had a full staff. People were taking off an hour here and an hour there. As soon as they earned an hour of vacation or PTO, they'd call in sick and use it. Then they would want to "borrow" vacation/PTO time for when they really were sick. I had to make a policy that vacation/PTO has to be used in 4 hour increments and discontinued the "borrowing" policy at our company.

Please don't get me started on "paycheck advances". I never saw anyone trying to get advanced money from their employer when I was growing up. Now I see people trying to do it all the time and with no shame. Or asking for a raise, because they just bought a new car and can't afford to pay for it.

 

[rgr33]

My wife and I both worked an average of 48 to 50 hrs per week. Blue collar but decent jobs that never paid quite enough to suit us. That was helped by working overtime if it was available, and it usually was. We both retired early, but I still grow wine grapes because I enjoy it, and the profits are strictly for toys or vacations.
My daughter, who is 37, works minimum wage, and is so far in debt, she will never get out. She refuses to work more than 30 hrs a week, because "the stress level would be unbearable" No husband, no kids, but a boyfriend who works 24 hrs a week. They get angry when we won't help them with their bills. I said I would when they work full time . They say they are too exausted from work already and can't work that many hours. No sympathy from me, No respect either.

 

[dmccarty]

A friend has trouble hiring people for all the reasons above in technical positions. But he has had great success hiring Philipinos (sp?). They show up early, work hard and leave late after cleaning up their work area without being asked to. They listen to instructions and respond with "yes sir", "no sir". Remarkable!

An asian man I know put his daughter through medical school. They got her an apartment and car, and despite husband and wife working full time, went to the daughers place on the weekend and cleaned the place, and prepared meals for the week. They did not want the daughter spending time, not studying!

Is this what it takes to get ahead for young people? It seems a bit sad that there is no time left to enjoy life in the process.

Japan and Korea have very strong respect for education. I suspect China and other Asian countries do as well. Years ago I shared an office with a guy from Korea. In Japan and Korea, high school students who wish to go to college get up early to study, then they go to school and then they go to after school tutoring. My coworkers family did everything they could so he could focus on study. :shocked: This was required to get into the best college possible because this would then impact the rest of your life. If you get to a certain school, doors are opened to you. If you don't get to a particular college, said doors are closed. Frankly, they have a horrible, yet understandable, system. My friend said by the time he got to college it was really easy. He could easily pass the classes with very little or no effort because his studying to get into college basically covered the classes IN college. What he had to do was go to high school AND college while in high school. This meant he had no life and his family had to be completely subservient to his education regime. Not really ideal to say the least.

He is a very smart guy as well. He came to the US and went to Harvard medical school. He changed majors and eventually went to Standford and NCSU. I think he has 5-7 BS/BA degrees and and a couple masters. The freak LOVES to go to school! If he took a few more classed he get get a few more masters. He has degrees in biology, math, chemistry and computer science. :shocked: Did I mentioned he LOVES to go to school? :laughing::laughing::laughing:

We were working late one night. I was at work for WORK while he was at work working on some sort of high level match exam. I got up to take a break and noticed he was doing school work so I gave him some grief. :laughing::laughing::laughing: He was doing this math exam on 1/4 quad ruled paper and the equations he was working through was multiple pages. I have more chance of understanding Mandarin than what he was doing.....

I got back to the office and went to work but needed a break and hour or so later. Bah Boh was still working on his exam. But it was different this time. The first set of paper work I saw was in pencil. Very neat, orderly and tidy. When I looked over later Bah Boh was redoing the exam in INK because pencil was not good enough. :shocked::laughing::laughing::laughing:

Bah Boh means stupid or dumb in Korean. One of the few phrases he taught me. He is certainly not Bah Boh but he called me Bah Boh all of the time. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

People with eduction are very much respected in some/many Asian countries. Here in the US, not so much.

Unfortunately, the US seems to be going down a similar Korean path in regards to consuming kids time. Today, it seems a high school student has to have A+++++ in advanced placement classes, have worked a part time jobs, lettered in several sports, volunteered hours for the community, etc., to get into a good college which leaves not time to be a kid... This is NOT a good thing.

Last year we had a visit to the ER. Unfortunately we have mucho time in ERs and hospitals but our experiences with nurses has been very good. I can' remember a bad experience with a nurse. Until this one trip. The ER was not busy and the nurses, about a half dozen of them were sitting around shooting the bull which is fine... But my family member called for help several times without getting the nurse to show. The doctor came in and said he would send a nurse. Our nurse does not show up... Eventually she does after talking about her weekend.... I had to leave for a time and when I came back I noticed that we now had a Filipino nurse who was sitting AWAY from the other nurses. Hmmmm...

While I was gone my family member told me that they had to HOLD down the call button to get the nurses to help. The man in the next bay had to SHOUT out at the nurses to come help him because he was in pain.

The Filipino nurse on the other hand was a true angel. She gave a scat. :thumbsup: We have been to that ER many times, unfortunately, but we have never had or seen that level of neglect. What was really bad was that a GROUP of nurses ignoring the calls for help...

Later,
Dan

 

[oldpilgrim]

Hey Bah Boh :

I cant' agree that your friend is doing himself or any one else a favor by getting the education he's getting.

Getting an education just for the sake of getting an education is useful to no one, not even he student, unless he does something with it. Learning, learning and more learning without a goal is just taking up someone else's seat in a college.

I know lots of 'professional students' who depend on everyone else to do day to day stuff for them as they know nothing but how to study. None of them can put their knowledge to any practical use. As someone told me, he's so smart he can't even tie his own shoes.

 

[Luke'sScreenName]

Reading some of these posts I can't help but imagine the two old guys from Sesame Street!

https://youtu.be/PpgGwGIqccc

 

[tbrooks26]

Our country is very screwed up. I know a woman ~30 yrs old, on disability and going to school. I dont know what she's in school for, and I don't think she does either. She's just going to get some extra money from the govt. Her plan is to drop out right before she gets her degree, because if she gets a degree, they will stop her disability!

I think rule #1 should be that anyone on any type of government assistance should be drug tested, and have mandatory birth control that they can't screw up, and there should be something to stop people like that ^^^ from taking advantage of the system.

My best friend of over 20 years works as much as he can. He has had terrible debilitating migraines all his life. He actually has a pretty much constant headache, and sometimes it gets worse, even to the point that he passes out. Just a few years ago, the doctors finally figured out that he broke his neck over 30 years ago. There is really nothing they are willing to do for him, other than pump him full of prescriptions. He refuses disability, and only takes meds when he needs it, and still works manual labor 30-40 hours a week, and hes always working at least a few hours a day on his place.

 

[Texas Dawg]

We have changed the norm so much over the last 30-40 years that what used to be extravagance is now expected. The average size of a home in the US was 1400sq/ft in 1970 and by 2009 it was 2700sq/ft. This all while the size of the average American family is decreasing. Everyone wants to enter the company as management. To expect someone to work their way up is now unthinkable. Second job...not a chance. Buy the Civic instead of the 328i...are you kidding, I have earned it. We are now all about instant NEVER delayed gratification.