Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Work ethic is troubling, I have seen it first hand in a business that I have owned for 32 years.
I have replaced no less than 5 (23-26 year olds) in the last 2 years. Partially my fault, I hired 2 right off the couch with no real past job experience. Both reverted back to the couch, no job in sight for either. One had the fantasy of being a firefighter BUT.....he was lazy and not that bright so after 3 interviews he is currently a couch pilot.
The shocker for me: 25 yr old, married showed up on a Monday afternoon crying "I'm not good at this job" despite him making $15,000 more than he had ever made annually. He quit on the spot, no notice and didn't even finish his Monday's work! I checked in with him a month later, he was looking into "home based businesses" despite his very low finances, zero sales ability and generally a slower paced attitude. I couldn't imagine quitting a job on the spot and "surprising" my wife with Hi honey, I'm unemployed with no future job lined up.
I hired a 48 year old and just yesterday had a 57 year old guy inquire he might be interested. I know those guys will work.
A friend and I were checking out at a restaurant where you pay at the counter. While we were paying for our meal, the cashier, who was about 19 years old, tatted up, man bun, facial piercings, etc. started complaining to us about how unfair wealth distribution is - specifically about how people over 50 had more wealth as a group than people under 25. (Yeah, I sure hope that's the case but I digress.) He then started complaining to us about the cost of housing, specifically rent. Well, he was complaining to the wrong people but I can see that if that was his usual mode of communication he'd be lucky to still be working anywhere. Anyway, my friend owns and rents out four duplexes, which she JUST paid off at age 69. Constant turnover, always telling me some story about her tenants because most of them are so incredibly unstable. Many of them don't have checking accounts and want to pay her in cash - of course they want her to drive to pick up this cash at various locations, nearly always late, etc.
I rarely see this friend of mine get angry with someone, but she jumped in this guy's bidness. For starters, he had no business complaining to two customers who were clearly over age 50, about people over age 50 - we weren't doing anything to tick him off other than simply existing - before he started this conversation we were talking about BIRDS for pete's sake. Then he started complaining about rent (she charges about $600 a month for her duplexes which is actually on the low end). That was just too much for her I guess.
Good grief.
I’m curious as to the relevancy of this information or why you felt the need to include it. Also seems like a rather in depth conversation at a cash register waiting to pickup food
I think the work ethic has diminished for many. Waking up at 28 and realizing you haven't launched yet should jolt many into reality, but oft times doesn't. If your OJT ends before lunchtime on your first day chances are you're in trouble.
On a positive note, there are so many unmotivated employees these days it easy to get ahead. Much easier than when people cared about the job they have. I would have told that cashier that "it must suck to be you, have a good day"
LOL in the sixties I WAS "the youth." (Actually I was born in the sixties.) Older people have always thought younger people were "soft." But each generation has gotten progressively "softer." Hey, my grandmother was a young bride in the 1930s. Some of the stories she told about working or trying to find work or whatever were terrible to consider.
I have photos of her with her family (including babies) out in the fields picking cotton. Their parents strapped the babies onto their backs and when their backs got too tired, they would drag the babies around with them on sacks. In the broiling sun. All day. Fingers bleeding. I'm not saying that's right - I'm just saying it was a reality.
I personally believe we needed more workers' rights, more civil rights, more women's rights and we've gotten them. But in my opinion, it's like a pendulum, and right now the pendulum seems to be swinging too far in the other direction just as it swung too far in one direction several generations ago.
I don't really notice that. I graduated high school in 2001. My generation responded to 9/11 by volunteering without conscription to fight terrorism and we did that, for far longer than we ever thought we would. Our KIDS are now turning out the lights in Afghanistan. I was deployed in the 00s while the adults back home were flipping their houses. When I came back I found not only had the war been mismanaged but tbe economy had been allowed to collapse; I came back to economic destruction. Every job interview I'd go to in the period 2008-11 had a roomful of laid off people waiting who had 10-20 years experience over me.
So I finished college, doing so while I worked at least 2 and sometimes 4 PT jobs at the same time. I was not the only one.
Am still not the only one. Just talked to a 21 year old young woman who obsessively takes double shifts at her work to hustle enough money for the ever increasing rent.
The pandemic made people re-assess their lives & consider what's really important. When my home value balooned 50% in one year to 600k, yeah, I thought seriously about quitting my job, selling out and just living on the proceeds, enough to last me potentially 4-5 years. Especially when the job became drudgery because of work from home.
My question is how are those who are following the Van Life living on You Tube video income going to pay for their retirement? Some are doing well with thousands of followers but how about those who are just scraping by? I read on several of my FB groups concerning living on the road about women especially who are either widowed or divorced who buy an older Class C RV and follow their dreams. Will it turn into an old age nightmare?
they're not smart enough to figure it out....plus the government dole is always an attractive spot to stay for the non-productive/non-contributors.
I don't really notice that. I graduated high school in 2001. My generation responded to 9/11 by volunteering without conscription to fight terrorism and we did that, for far longer than we ever thought we would. Our KIDS are now turning out the lights in Afghanistan. I was deployed in the 00s while the adults back home were flipping their houses. When I came back I found not only had the war been mismanaged but tbe economy had been allowed to collapse; I came back to economic destruction. Every job interview I'd go to in the period 2008-11 had a roomful of laid off people waiting who had 10-20 years experience over me.
So I finished college, doing so while I worked at least 2 and sometimes 4 PT jobs at the same time. I was not the only one.
Am still not the only one. Just talked to a 21 year old young woman who obsessively takes double shifts at her work to hustle enough money for the ever increasing rent.
The pandemic made people re-assess their lives & consider what's really important. When my home value balooned 50% in one year to 600k, yeah, I thought seriously about quitting my job, selling out and just living on the proceeds, enough to last me potentially 4-5 years. Especially when the job became drudgery because of work from home.
That last bit...."The pandemic made people re-assess their lives and consider what's really important." That's exactly what I've been personally struggling to coming to terms with over the past year.
To quote one of my former employers and personal friends (I helped to birth his business then lay it to rest with him several years later), mine is "an insane work ethic." Thought nothing of working both smart *and* hard in the interest of my career. I'd just reached my highest ever salary in the fall of 2019 with a solid benefits package, tapping the top of what people who do what I did earn in this area, but at no small cost to my interpersonal relationships and my mental/physical health. (**In the interest of privacy, I'm not saying what I did/do for a living.)
In the immediate aftermath of what became my permanent COVID-related job loss (what was supposed to have been a temporary lay-off became permanent for most of the staff with only the necessary office staff remaining to push the necessary paperwork and maintain accounting, etc.), I went through a personal reckoning of sorts. Added up how much vacation time I never took (essentially working for free since most employers won't let you buy out your unused vacation time), how many events I'd missed, how much of just "life" I'd missed all due to work. Work that I loved and found fulfilling, yet punishing at the same time. Work that I'd allowed to become my identity and a lifestyle. The resulting depression was rough, but it passed in due course.
Now that things are getting back to some semblance of normalcy and that I've come to terms with being just me and not my former career identity, I'm hard pressed to consider going back to the work that I once did, although at the behest of a former coworker, I have stepped back into my former line of work albeit only going in for fewer than twenty hours a week in order to accommodate the new line of work in which I accidentally fell into doing last fall.
There is a strong chance that I might end up returning to that career (I've received several "fishing" phone calls from former employers in the past few weeks and at least one offer was somewhat tempting in terms of the work, but off-putting in terms of the low-ball compensation package), but having a viable alternative option that allows me to have a decent quality of life outside of the workplace gives me the mental space to think long and hard about doing so in the near future. Surely there are others with similar stories to mine. In order to gain and retain quality employees, businesses are going to have to up the ante in terms of pay, benefits, input/appreciation, and work/life balance with the latter two being huge pieces of the employee retention puzzle. It's really as simple as that.
In terms of housing and living relatively simply, the house that I purchased several years ago was carefully chosen with the notion that I could stay afloat should the worst occur. Raised to be frugal and mentally affected by what I experienced during the economic fallout of '08 (a job loss for me/former spouse's family business being largely carried on his shoulders with he and his father opting to take steep salary cuts in order to keep staff on payroll/opting to downsize houses to further economize), I didn't want to put myself in the position of ever experiencing a foreclosure. I watched several former neighbors who seemed as though they had everything go through that during the mortgage crisis and it wasn't a pretty sight. That, sheer luck, and having a renter helped me to weather this life-storm wrought by COVID.
If nothing else was learned during this pandemic, the value of living simply has been driven home for more than a few Americans.
I have stated several times there is zero political will or tolerance among Americans for austerity measures.
Austerity is not a policy, but an inevitable result of its opposite coin = Inflation. Many people seem to think there is a choice between 'growth' and 'austerity'. I believe this is an illusion. In my mind, denying this truth is a form of insanity. There can be NO ECONOMIC GROWTH until the world's debt is destroyed - and the destruction of this debt is the definition of AUSTERITY.
If you choose to inflate then you must accept/expect death or deflation. These are two sides of the same coin.
That last bit...."The pandemic made people re-assess their lives and consider what's really important." That's exactly what I've been personally struggling to coming to terms with over the past year.
To quote one of my former employers and personal friends (I helped to birth his business then lay it to rest with him several years later), mine is "an insane work ethic." Thought nothing of working both smart *and* hard in the interest of my career. I'd just reached my highest ever salary in the fall of 2019 with a solid benefits package, tapping the top of what people who do what I did earn in this area, but at no small cost to my interpersonal relationships and my mental/physical health. (**In the interest of privacy, I'm not saying what I did/do for a living.)
In the immediate aftermath of what became my permanent COVID-related job loss (what was supposed to have been a temporary lay-off became permanent for most of the staff with only the necessary office staff remaining to push the necessary paperwork and maintain accounting, etc.), I went through a personal reckoning of sorts. Added up how much vacation time I never took (essentially working for free since most employers won't let you buy out your unused vacation time), how many events I'd missed, how much of just "life" I'd missed all due to work. Work that I loved and found fulfilling, yet punishing at the same time. Work that I'd allowed to become my identity and a lifestyle. The resulting depression was rough, but it passed in due course.
Now that things are getting back to some semblance of normalcy and that I've come to terms with being just me and not my former career identity, I'm hard pressed to consider going back to the work that I once did, although at the behest of a former coworker, I have stepped back into my former line of work albeit only going in for fewer than twenty hours a week in order to accommodate the new line of work in which I accidentally fell into doing last fall.
There is a strong chance that I might end up returning to that career (I've received several "fishing" phone calls from former employers in the past few weeks and at least one offer was somewhat tempting in terms of the work, but off-putting in terms of the low-ball compensation package), but having a viable alternative option that allows me to have a decent quality of life outside of the workplace gives me the mental space to think long and hard about doing so in the near future. Surely there are others with similar stories to mine. In order to gain and retain quality employees, businesses are going to have to up the ante in terms of pay, benefits, input/appreciation, and work/life balance with the latter two being huge pieces of the employee retention puzzle. It's really as simple as that.
In terms of housing and living relatively simply, the house that I purchased several years ago was carefully chosen with the notion that I could stay afloat should the worst occur. Raised to be frugal and mentally affected by what I experienced during the economic fallout of '08 (a job loss for me/former spouse's family business being largely carried on his shoulders with he and his father opting to take steep salary cuts in order to keep staff on payroll/opting to downsize houses to further economize), I didn't want to put myself in the position of ever experiencing a foreclosure. I watched several former neighbors who seemed as though they had everything go through that during the mortgage crisis and it wasn't a pretty sight. That, sheer luck, and having a renter helped me to weather this life-storm wrought by COVID.
If nothing else was learned during this pandemic, the value of living simply has been driven home for more than a few Americans.
Don’t allow them to brainwash you again. American Dream is TOXIC. Enjoy your life.
Good Luck!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
