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She laments that work takes so much time. "How can I make sure I'm eating well and seeing my friends and taking time for my hobbies? How am I supposed to fit my whole life into a 9-to-5 work schedule?"
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Most of us on the retirement board are boomers who have worked hard most of our lives. With that as a backdrop, I find the first-person account by this Gen Z person to be illuminating. She graduated from college this past spring and just recently entered the permanent workforce. Thus, she is young enough not to have experienced 9/11 and is unlikely to remember The Great Recession.
From my perspective, she is exhibit A of why it is hard to find employees who want to work.
Wasn't there a thread on this very same topic just a few weeks ago? If not, then there was one titled very similar to this... not that there's anything wrong with that. Just wondering.
I talk to a lot of businesses and employers around these parts. Seems no one can find anyone willing to work, and most places are begging for people. $10,000 starting bonus? Seriously? Work at Wal-Mart? OMG my friends wouldn't let me live that down! A few of my younger nieces decided they're going to be "Social Influencers" so they can stay home and "make a lot of money". Uh huh.
I started working at 13. 9-5? Try 6am-6pm or midnight to noon 6 days a week. You go home just long enough to shower, grab a bite and a nap, then back at it.
The movie Idiocracy comes to mind thinking about today.
I started working at 13. 9-5? Try 6am-6pm or midnight to noon 6 days a week. You go home just long enough to shower, grab a bite and a nap, then back at it.
Why? Doesn't sound like a fair trade at all.
I'm older, but am glad when I hear about workplace rebellions like this. About time.
"I'm mad a hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"
(name that movie and the year)
I see a lot of this stuff myself. My girlfriend's kids are Gen-Z.
The son is 23, will probably make $70k this year with overtime, and has nowhere to go but up career-wise. He has his CDL and works for a power company. He went to community college twice, but never tried enough to pass. His dad works for the same power company, and helped him get on.
They do work a lot of hours, usually about fifty a week, but getting him to chip in even $50/week on household expenses is hell. He's also over 400 lbs. and probably eats as much as the three other people there permanently combined, so feeding him is not cheap. The grocery bill alone is close to $1,000/month.
There are a lot of days when he's off where he hardly gets out of bed until late afternoon. I have a lot of interests - if it's nice outside, I want to be hiking, swimming, at parks, cruising the Blue Ridge Parkway, drinking a beer out, fishing - something outdoors. I'm usually up on the weekends by no later than 10. I slow down from November until around the first of March or so, but he's basically in slow motion all the time.
Her daughter is just 19, but still in school, and a bit more active. In saying that, she seems to be struggling to get through community college, doesn't work, barely helps around that house, and I can get more done in a few hours than she could seemingly do all day. Her boyfriend basically lives there too, and he's worthless on anything but working.
None of them help around the house in any meaningful way. Her son has a big Silverado, Mustang, and a side-by-side, but doesn't realize he couldn't afford all of that if he was paying his own way like most people do. That concept simply eludes him.
I can't imagine being like them. I enjoy life way too much. They're letting their best years go by while they're basically on the couch.
I had to move many hours away from home, twice, to skill up enough to make a good living. They don't seem to want to do that. While this house is going on the market in the late spring or early summer, for me to move to Asheville, I'd have no issues with leaving Appalachia again if staying meant being poor.
The flips side of that is that I have three cousins, very young Millennials and Gen-Z, who have done basically everything right. They don't get parental support. They make a decent income. They're self-sufficient.
From the article : "It's not even that I don't like my job, because I do. But it feels like it takes up most of my life."
It's not that she doesn't want to work.
I'm a boomer and felt this same way when I worked. A 40hour work week is archaic, IMO. She has my sympathy.
I've been remote since 2020, but a lot of the week prior to that during work hours was downtime and waiting for meetings that was filled with even more C-D postings.
At least now, I can work on my house or something.
I can't imagine being like them. I enjoy life way too much. They're letting their best years go by while they're basically on the couch.
I had to move many hours away from home, twice, to skill up enough to make a good living. They don't seem to want to do that. While this house is going on the market in the late spring or early summer, for me to move to Asheville, I'd have no issues with leaving Appalachia again if staying meant being poor.
The flips side of that is that I have three cousins, very young Millennials and Gen-Z, who have done basically everything right. They don't get parental support. They make a decent income. They're self-sufficient.
One word of warning, no matter how strongly you feel about her children's lazy lifestyle, DO NOT complain to her about it.
This was the advice given to me by my friend who married a single Mom. Do not come between her & her children. As a step Dad just dish out money and keep your mouth shut!
Besides, she's only your girlfriend.
A few years ago, my gardener had his high school age son come help with yard work. I tried to motivate this young man into study math and later go to college to become an Engineer. I tried to enlighten the young man how he can earn $70K - $80K a year fresh out of college with no experience, sitting in an air conditioning office drinking coffee all day long, while his father do the back breaking yard work all day under the hot sun and makes only HALF his son makes. I tried to tempt him by pointing out that, in a few years he could buy this 3,000 sq.ft., 5 bedroom, 3 bath house for him and his parents to live in.
But while the young man listened politely, his idea of making a living is just like his father, be a gardener or in construction, and perfectly happy making that $20/hr manual labor job. Several years later, I met up with him again and he's doing what his dad does.
You can show a young person a better way to live his/ her life but they don't listen. They're limited by what they see and repeat the same mistakes their parents make.
From the article : "It's not even that I don't like my job, because I do. But it feels like it takes up most of my life."
It's not that she doesn't want to work.
I'm a boomer and felt this same way when I worked. A 40hour work week is archaic, IMO. She has my sympathy.
Agreed. A forty hour work week isn't forty hours, for many of us it easily consumes 50-55+ hours of our time to be rewarded with forty hours worth of pay, once you factor in the time spent for mandatory breaks/lunches, commutes, preparing food for lunches, etc.
And I'm probably an anomaly, but it takes an emotional toll as well that can suck away time and energy. I once worked a full time job for two years that was so soul sucking and chaotic that I eventually needed a couple hours after work to decompress and 'do nothing'. I finally just stopped going after coming home in tears, it was that bad. Raw deal.
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