Younger generation anti-work behaviors contributing to employer challenges

| January 13, 2022

 

The Army and the Air Force are not the only ones having a hard time getting individuals to apply for work. For-profit organizations are also having a hard time getting people to apply for employment.

One of the benefits, of unemployment benefits related to the pandemic, is it gave a large percentage of Millennial and Generation Z members a taste of not having to work. No longer did they have to deal with “rude bosses” and “rude customers” to get a paycheck. They could do what they wished and still get paid.

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But wait! There’s more! There is an increasing amount of hostility to the idea of working. The demand for $15 minimum wage is just the surface. The younger generations want the work environment to operate a certain way that accommodates their liking.

They want these requirements so much that many are willing to remain unemployed. There is a subreddit, “r/antiwork”, that helps put this “psychology” into context. If you go through, and read the comments and their reasoning, you would see that the challenges that the military, and for-profit organizations, is larger than what their recruiting departments think.

Category: Society

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IS1(SW)

Well, when these pansies in school are told that the world owes them after being taught by marxist lesbian leftist activists,it’s difficult to get students properly prepared for the ugly real world.

Worried about nonsense like ‘climate change’ and white man bad and math is racist, people aren’t prepared. Jobs exist as a benefit to the business – they don’t exist for workers. Numbskulls that have their entire lives snowplowed for them are now getting a reality check.

Plus, ever since the selection and Biden was placed into office, people are hoping to sit at home forever and get paid. It’s a vicious cycle.

NotBuyingIt

“Numbskulls that have their entire lives snowplowed for them are now getting a reality check”

While I mostly agree with you, I don’t think they are getting a reality check just yet. As far as I can tell, employers are still having to kiss their a**es to get them to work at all and when the numbskulls can’t afford to pay for things they want (like their own apartment,food, clothing and that $12 cup of fancy coffee) they throw tantrums until someone (like Uncle Sugar)gives it to them.

The realty check won’t come until private sector employers throw up their hands and just quit trying, inflation reaches Venezuelan proportions and, ultimately, Comrade Xi replaces Uncle Sugar’s free lunch with forced labor.

Of course, then it will be too late. Frankly, I’m afraid it already is.

Ex-PH2

So, does this mean that at my advanced age (over 30), I could possibly get a job in the Real World and have a paycheck, despite my decision to retire at the appropriate age?

Geezo-Pete, if I could do it by working from home and not have to commute on the confounded train every day, I’d be as happy as the guy who found a box of chocolates on his doorstep and a Secret Admirer note.

Forrest Bondurant

I’d like to read VOV’s comments on this topic (and some others).

I can’t post it right now, but if you get the chance, check out “A Millennial Job Interview” from YouTube.

(The video pretty much sums up the article.)

Anonymous

rgr769

That was classic. Too bad that skit is an accurate portrayal of these “entitled” young people, especially those who have recently graduated from college.

26Limabeans

A paper route used to be a good start in life.
Then one day CNN was born and the tree huggers
shut down the paper mills.
Now they just sit home collecting unemployment
and bitch because there’s no toilet paper.

rgr769

My first job, at 16, was stock clerk/grocery bagger at a Safeway grocery store. Pay was $1.25 per hour. I was thrilled to be hired. Needless to say, we had no input in our terms of employment.

SFC D

I was raised by parents who were depression-era children. What did I learn from them?

1: The world doesn’t owe you shit.
2: You deserve exactly what you earn.

MI Ranger

Well said SFC D!!!

Exactly what I am teaching my children.

KoB

Spot on SFC D. I got a Masters Diploma myself from that same School of Hard Knocks.

HMCS(FMF) ret

Same words that I heard from my parents growing up.

Anonymous

Stuck to that in college. Caught lots of sh*t for not being “authentic” or told “some people don’t belong in college” and should “be realistic” instead.

Graduated in 3 years with honors. Got kicked out of a job interview to “What’s wrong, didn’t you like school?!” when the interviewer read that on my resume.

Jay

I joined the Corps at 17. I had the privilege and pleasure to serve for 20 years. In that time I never got a re-enlistment bonus. My bonus was continued employment and the opportunity to get an education. I punched out in 2017 after 20 years with a Masters in Public Administration and no student loan debt.

I had a bit of a meltdown having to go find a ‘real job’, and pardon the crudity; I told the wife I don’t care if I had to get a job svcking d1cks…I was going to provide for my family. Through good connections and sheer luck, I stumbled into a job with the local county government where ive been at for the past 5 years. I’m not a 1/4 of the way to a 2nd retirement. I got this job 3 days after I had my retirement ceremony and was working while on terminal leave.

I see some of my coworkers complaining about the workload, how burned out they are, how they want to just ‘quit’ (and some HAVE…with NO plan in place).

I dunno…apparently the military just gives you a different mindset. I’m lucky now to where i’ve been gifted the opportunity to telework (im sitting in my home office watching ‘City Confidential’ on A&E handling my caseload). Through this, people are hating on it because i’m ‘lucky’. No fuckers…I bust my ASS.

MustangCryppie

Words of wisdom from, of all places, “Cracked” magazine!

The only problem with the article is that you have to watch Alec Baldwin, though admittedly it is a GREAT scene in the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross”.

https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person

This should be taught as a class to these dumbasses.

I have this pinned in my browser tabs for review whenever I feel like I’m getting too big for my britches! It reminds me of the pep talks on reality I used to get from my tough as nails Irish father.

Anonymous

“Get them to sign on the line which is dotted.”

ninja

As time goes on, we all eventually get “old”…as with ALL Generations, the current Generation will be facing/dealing with folks younger than them. Those unemployment checks will eventually dry up. That Generation has or will have clones of themselves that they will be or currently are financially responsible for. Have seen/know many Millinial and Generation Zs who ARE in the Workforce, working and collecting a paycheck. Have seen/know Baby Boomers and Generation Xs who DO NOT want to work and are enjoying collecting government money. We are basically fed up with supporting ANYONE who takes advantage of Government Handouts using our Tax Dollars. We have seen the system being abused by folks who simply do not want to work or contribute to society in one shape or form. Granted, we all have different circumstances that determine what type of help one receives financially from the Government. It’s just we have seen historically how the Government sometimes ENCOURAGES folks, no matter the Generation, to keep relying on the Government for almost everything…Does this sound familiar? Yes, we have seen that movie too. Am sharing a very interesting article we read a while back. SOME of it makes sense: “The Right Wants to Make Disabled Veterans Into the New “Welfare Queens” https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/12/va-veterans-benefits-disability-wounding-warriors-gade-huang “In Wounding Warriors: How Bad Policy is Making Veterans Sicker and Poorer, Daniel Gade, a retired US Army lieutenant colonel and former Trump administration official, has teamed up with an ex–Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Huang, to demand major “entitlement reform” at the VBA.” “The authors — who are definitely not critics of the military-industrial complex — denounce what they call a “disability-industrial complex.” They argue that monthly checks from the VBA foster a costly and unhealthy culture of dependence among veterans — and should be sharply restricted, not expanded.” “At a Veterans Day event with Gade in November, Wilkie accused his former agency of being overly “focused on getting veterans checks and not getting them well and getting them back into society.” Like Gade, he claimed that veterans service organizations encourage former military personnel “to play disability” — with… Read more »

SFC D

Huh. I’m 60% disabled, I work 40 hours a week. I’m not dependent on any government agency, I earned every damn dime of my VA benefits, just as I earned every damn dime of my retirement pay. The authors can go off to someplace quiet and fuck themselves.

The Stranger

These dipshits should focus on the many cases of outright fraud to include paying out POW benefits to people who weren’t POWs and the many cases of fraud, waste, and abuse perpetrated by VA employees. That and have a nice, big, steaming cup of Shut The Fuck Up. ☕️☕️☕️

rgr769

Whenever people can collect money or benefits they didn’t earn or pay for, there will be many who want to game the system and collect the bennies. As an attorney, I watched this phenomenon for over 40 years. I suppose it inspired that Dire Straits lyric, “money for nothing and chicks for free.”

The question is how much fraud, abuse and waste can the systems tolerate before they collapse?

Green Thumb

For the False Commander “Phony” Phil Monkress (CEO of All-Points Logistics) that would be “your dudes for free”.

JURASSICHM

The stupid virus that has infected a good portion of the U.S. population makes Covid pale in comparison.

A Proud Infidel®™

FORGET worrying about the zombie apocalypse, the Stupid Apocalypse is upon us right now!

Wireman611

These slackers would survive a zombie apocalypse because the zombies are in pursuit of brains.

Quartermaster

A smart kid will not go in these days. The woke trash is enough to disqualify the military as anything like a reasonable employer. I tell kids to stay away.

Ret_25X

Each new generation is a barbarian assault on society and culture.

This is the fault of parents.

No one else. Just parents.

Parents elected the idiots who hired the teachers, police, FD, etc, etc. Parents watched tv and rewarded the entertainment and media industries with billions of dollars of profit allowing them to become indoctrination systems.

Parents elected moron neocons and neolibs who spent the nation poor.

Parents never disciplined their children and parents shirked their obligation to instill moral concepts.

Yep, it’s parent’s fault.

Veritas Omnia Vincit

I think there is more than a single generational reality at play here. I also think an under reported reality, based on my own admittedly anecdotal experiences in my company and those of my competitors is that the people of my generation (those awful baby boomers responsible for all the ills of the modern world despite not finding a majority in both houses of congress until less than a decade and a half ago) have decided in no small number to retire early. The idea that you are in a high risk of death group for a pandemic tends to help one focus on whether or not another five years of work is sufficiently rewarding to delay a retirement that could instead result in five years of personal enjoyment of life’s good moments each and every day. My wife left a 43 year career of laboratory IT programming because she decided it wasn’t worth any more of her life to devote to a career that while it paid her six figures wasn’t as fulfilling as time with grandkids and our adult kids. This is a component of the lowest labor participation rate in decades as well. When it comes to the cost of labor there are so many people who’ve apparently never had to make payroll before who have absolutely no idea that the single largest cost of business for most businesses is labor. Especially in what has largely become a service sector based economy. Once upon a time manufacturing jobs (even light manufacturing like my company) contributed 22% of the nation’s GDP to the overall economy. These jobs require a skill set unique to each industry and those skilled workers made decent money, we are still above $50k/yr for our average salaries at my shop. As I’ve sadly watched “free trade” agreements with third world economies come into play and the subsequent drain on manufacturing jobs in the US I’ve noticed that our manufacturing contribution to GDP is down around 11-12% these days. This results in far more low-skill service sector jobs, which up until the pandemic hit most… Read more »

SteeleyI

US Army Recruiting Command knows this all too well. It’s not just the kids they are trying to recruit, it’s their parents as well.

Try this experiment: You’ve all seen those ‘are you smarter than a 5th grader’ person on the street interviews where they ask people questions about what should be ‘common’ knowledge, like what happened on Independence Day, who did we fight in WWII, etc. These are usually hilarious in a ‘horrific for the future of our country’ kind of way.

Try the same thing but just ask a young person questions about values. The Army Values (Loyalty, Duty Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, Personal Courage) work, or even the values in the Boy Scout Oath: Honor, Duty to country and God, the concept of being morally straight.

Very few young Americans have any general idea of what words really mean, much less a sense of what they mean to them personally.

Many young people don’t believe America is worth fighting for. They have been conditioned over the past few years to see the country as irrevocably flawed.