I am sending you mental energy through an indigo child mind hug.
You will have dignity in others’ eyes, if not in your own. Maybe they’ll throw a little respect your way.
That and five bucks will get me a venti latte.
There is little question that the work ethic changed as Gen Y came in - but then it changed right back, as they became a drug on the job market and older folk reassumed the reins.
What we older folk are not ready to come right out and admit is that now that the millennials are in the workplace to stay, we need them to put aside what we promised them when times were better. There is no money for extra hands or minds, no time to include you in important decisions or make allowance for your on-the-job training or emotional investment in any aspect of your work besides the weekly pay stub, and no reason to tolerate expectations we - now better emplaced than ever as the managerial class - never grew up with.
The fact for everybody is that the work ethic is a lot less kind now: an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay is not enough. You, the employee at any level, are going to need to respect office politics to the letter. You must put up with every kind of intimidation and harassment not specifically enumerated in law, and you’re going to have to give every last bit of energy - emotional, mental, and physical - to your work just to keep that check coming. There are plenty more waiting with lower self-esteem but greater self-respect.
You don’t know what it’s worth until it’s gone. For various reasons, mostly mental-health-related, I have spent the past decade effectively unemployable. And I can tell you that if you don’t work for a living, people know it when they meet you. It’s almost something they can smell - like stale sweat or hard liquor. It taints you. You may have their sympathy, sometimes even their empathy, but you will never have their respect. You are less.
So double or nothing? Like I said. Shitty existence.
I’m happy to say my place isn’t like this, but plenty of places are. You probably remember back when companies started laying people off in droves at the slightest downturn and then turned around and complained that employees these days aren’t loyal. A CIO was bitching and moaning in Computerworld about how hard it was to hire - but he only wanted people who know his applications and didn’t want to train anyone. These people often want colleges to teach the latest apps and ignore that boring theory in order, I suppose, for them to hire the latest grads pre-trained, and then toss them when the software changes for the next lot of grads.
Lots of companies don’t seem to get that competitive salary is not the definition of a great job.
When I worked for AT&T I worked next door to one of the AT&T education centers, which used to be full up and had a dorm which was also very crowded. Now the parking lot is cracked and the place is overgrown with weeds - which is a great metaphor for American business training these days.
Unfortunately, being in a leadership position in today’s business world almost demands that level of self-righteousness. The options may be either to stick your head in the sand or just stop trying.
Those are mighty bold words for someone who has been unemployed for so long.
My workplace is not like this at all. For one thing, there are no Millennials in my office. I’m the youngest person in my office division (64 employees). I’m 34–the tail-end of the Generation X crew. The problem is that after I was hired, the state was put on a hiring freeze. People have quit, been fired, and have retired, while the rest of us are expected to play musical chairs with the remaining work duties. No one is being promoted–duties are getting re-assigned with no concomitant raises or title changes. No Generation Xers are being brought in (there are just a handful of us in my division). Definitely no Gen Y/Millennials. Just a lot of gray-haired, beer-bellied, I-got-four-kids-in-college-to-support people. And they aren’t exactly virtues of work ethic, even with all the extra work duties being heaped on us. I see them dozing at their desks, smoking out on the sidewalks, and cackling in the breakrooms. Partly because right now we are operating with no mid-level managers. And we’ve been told by upper management that they don’t know if those positions will ever be filled. I’d laugh if it wasn’t so freakin’ ridiculous!
The problem isn’t that the Man doesn’t understand young people and wants to keep them down. The problem is that miserliness is keeping the doors closed so that some some fresh air can come in! I don’t blame people for not retiring. It all goes back to the college thing, unfortunately. It’s almost expected now for parents to help their kids go to school. Most people have more than one kid. So if you’re putting two kids through college, paying down a mortgage, making car payments, etc., retirement is a far-off dream. Especially if your 401K just crashed and burned.
This is the reality. That angsty stuff about work ethic? Not so much.
I couldn’t disagree more with that. My parents coming out of college in the early 80s had it a lot better than kids doing that today. Hell, when I came out of college 4 years ago I had it a lot better than these kids. The people coming out of school now are in deep shit. If you don’t get a job out of school, that’s a huge blow to your future earnings. Tremendous. Even if in three years the economy is booming again, they are still in trouble. Who are you going to hire for an entry level position? The kid fresh out of college, or the one who graduated three years ago and has been bouncing around McJobs since?
There’s a decent chance that if I graduated this year, instead of four years ago, I would find myself unemployed. If that had happened, the trajectory of my life would have been a lot different, and not for the better.
No shit. I’m thankful every damn day I graduated when I did and not a year later.
I’m grateful I have the GI Bill, so at least if the job market still blows, I’m not in debt up to ears when I graduate in 2014.
Here’s some numbers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/business/economy/19grads.html
So to be brief, about 34% of recent college grads are getting Fed in the A just because they graduated 3 years too late.
And you ask why. :dubious:
I hear what you say about your place of work, but the tenor of debate about this issue has me convinced that the work ethic nowadays is a grim duty with very little integrity left in it, and that there is a lot of free-floating resentment afoot about that generation that presumed to challenge it - not to mention some degree of backlash that they got what was coming to them when the jobs disappeared.
Unequivocally true.
I was unable to work for family reasons from mid 2001 to early 2006 and I felt this to be true every single day. I am so glad to be back at work, although some days are way too shitty to describe. When colleagues whinge about work and dream of idleness they never believe me when I say that having to go to work is nowhere near as awful as not being able to do so.
I’m a stay at home dad, in addition to taking college classes at night and on the net. You would not believe the number of people who say “that’s the life!”
It ain’t, sir. It ain’t.
It separates you from the daily experience of almost everyone you know, for one thing. Then the jealousy kicks in, and then the revulsion.
No one will tell you, but it makes a lot of people deeply uneasy. Our deep-seated feelings and beliefs don’t change just to cut people a break for their circumstances.
It’s even worse when it’s a choice I made. One that goes against gender norms.
That’s bullshit because if everyone did what they loved, no one would clean up shit for a living. But shit still needs to be cleaned.
I think that “do what you love” attitude is part of the problem. I’ve been hearing people say that for as long as I can remember. Aside from the fact that I don’t want to have to approach my job as if it were my life’s passion. It creates a feeling of resentment when people can’t figure out why they don’t feel happy with their professional lives. For 99% of the people out there, hatred and bitterness is a perfectly rational reaction.
Again, an attitude drilled into us by our parents.