To be fed up with the lazy graduates I work with....

[H0bnob]

And I say this as an early 20s recent graduate myself! So many young people both in my immediate team and within my department seem to have such a shocking attitude to work I'm finding it really grating. Most of these people have just finished there degree/masters and have never had to work before now and the attitude it just shocking!

To add to this, everyone seems to have anxiety and depression to some degree. I am absolutely NOT dismissing mental health issues and having lived with several i know how debilitating they can be....but to use it as an excuse to get out of everything is just taking the piss....being too lazy to do your job is not the same thing as being depressed, grow up for Christ's sake and take some responsibility.

One of my colleagues (same age as me) has had almost 20 sick days in the last 6 months for mental health...and yet goes out drinking and taking drugs every weekend without failure. When said colleague is in they also do nothing but sit on their phone and complain about being bored and tired. My managers seem reluctant to do anything too with the worry of accidental discrimination and so the rest of us are forced to continuously pick up the slack. Its really doing my head in now, am I being hugely intolerant?? Fully prepared to be told I I as obviously you never know what's going on behind the scenes but christ this is relentless! Apologies this has turned into a proper rant im just so frustrated by society at the minute.

Welcome to real life. It's shit.

Yup - that. Suck it up sister. Do the best you can do and don't fret so about other people.

I don't agree with people not going out with mental health problems. BUT I am sure there are a fair few people who use the mental health card to get out of things. Which makes me angry as people with genuine mental health problems become almost main stream. I have anxiety. I was an anxious child too and this combined with an abusive childhood and sometimes unhappy relationship has meant I have often gone into work after 1 hour sleep and / or after being really distressed for hours in the night. But I still go.

The drugs are a key thing from your post I think. I used to take ecstasy and amphetamines when I was a (daft) 18 year old raver and then smoked weed to come down. This lifestyle is terrible for your mental heath. You feel shocking for at least the first half of the week due to a combination of not eating and sleeping all weekend and your serotonin levels being massively depleted. I think my mental health might be a lot better now had I not done this when my brain was still developing

We have three new graduates. Two of them are really great, enthusiastic and hard working, the third keeps taking sick days, coming in late or taking long lunches. We had a group call out-day and she made herself self-appointed coffee monitor to avoid making any calls.

Not impressed.

I see this a lot too. There have always been lazy moaners but in recent years there seems to be higher percentage of them in the new intakes.
I work in a city law firm which is so competitive to get into, you'd think people would be happy to be there and keen to impress and build their career. Some are, to be fair. But a not inconsiderable number are workshy clockwatchers who take lots of sick leave for stuff like "feeling a bit under the weather" and make excuses for not doing the bits of the job they don't fancy because they are "stressed" and "at capacity" whilst their timesheets tell a different story!

It's a massive pain for management (including me) as so much time is spent addressing this, setting up performance reviews etc. The only good thing is that those that get their heads down and work hard look even better in comparison. Law is very much a "survival" of the fittest profession. If you find put in the effort you will quickly lose out to those who do.

But when the clockwatchers don't get kept on after their training contracts they seem astonished and aggrieved. Baffling.

Oh man, I could've written this thread. I thought it was me just being intolerant!😂

I'm early 30's with a good degree and run a business where I employ a small team of staff. It's not glamorous work and it is minimum wage but I offer my team several perks, look after them, offer flexibility, etc so as jobs go it's not a bad one. I myself put in about 60 hours a week and when all is said and done I earn significantly less than minimum wage due to the long hours and the very little profit I can take from the business to pay my own bills.

Staff wise, the ones I've only ever had trouble with are the youngsters (the 18-25 year olds). The level of entitlement, laziness, poor time management, lateness, and general "the world owes me a living" attitude is astonishing. Coupled with the abundance of mental health issues they all seem to have (many of which it transpires are self-diagnosed when you dig a bit deeper!) means that most of the time they're as much use as a chocolate fire guard. Frankly, I might as well have a dog and bark myself a lot of the time.

I say this as a person who has suffered terribly with their mental health over the years and made one suicide attempt after my divorce so if even I am lacking sympathy for these kids there must be something up!

Totally get you OP! Sadly not just public sector either - have a friend who works in HR for a major multinational and OMG the stories she tells me .

Your management is the one you should be angry at. They’re paid to manage!

Mental health issues don’t mean that people can do whatever they want. It means that due process should be followed w.r.t consulting occupational health, sickness and performance management.

It means that business can’t just fire someone signed off with health issue . But equally they’re not expected to keep people on at full pay if they can’t produce as expected!

If your managers haven’t even SAID anything for fear of discrimination THEY are the ones underperforming. Stop enabling them by picking up the slack

Reminds me of a young adult I managed last year. Someone new came to the team with a medical issue that meant he had to sit near an open window. Had to move young adult to literally over one desk so still near the window but just not actually next to it, she ran off in tears claiming it 'triggered her anxiety' to move over one desk.

She had never told me about her 'anxiety', so I asked her if she wanted to make it formal so she also had a reason to sit near the window. She told me she didn't, (presumably because I'd need medical evidence) so there was nothing I could do.
I did give her a bit of a (kind hearted) lecture about how she is just starting out her working life, she's not always going to get the window desk as they are the most coveted in any office and she might have to think about how she will cope in future roles if this is something that triggers her.

What I have learned in my time in different workplaces is you will always get people who will only do as little as they can possibly get away with.That being said there are also people I work with who work very hard too. I tend to stay out of workplace politics. I keep my head down, get on with my job as best I can and then go home. This approach works for me.

The “some graduates are on another planet” is not a new thing. I sent someone home for dressing like a pirate on “national pirate day” nearly 15 years ago now ( they didn’t last long)
The mental health and being triggered by so many things is definitely new. I did a disciplinary appeal for a graduate for a “hand in till” type situation who seriously wanted us to consider that he’d been triggered by imposter syndrome
You have my sympathy op

I work somewhere where the boss doesn’t ‘believe in mental health’ so isn’t the most understanding if someone is genuinely suffering

Not helped by a lot of my colleagues

One-can’t work on Tuesdays,Wednesdays,Fridays or Sundays due to her mental health (god knows why Mondays,Thursdays and Saturdays are ok)
She’s meant to be full time but it’s impossible for her to do the full hours on those days

Two-rings in sick every single shift-the two shifts I’ve seen her work,she spent all but half hour of a 7 hour shift crying in the corner

Three-if she’s not rang in sick then she follows a pattern
First she shakes
Then she feels sick
Then faint
Then she has a ‘panic attack’-a bit of heavy breathing (I suffer from panic attacks-it’s not 2 minutes of puffing and panting)
Then,if she’s not been sent home,she’ll ring her dad and he’ll come in,kick off and home they go
(Oh and she’s scared of being upstairs-fine in our staff room but not the bit where customers are)

Four-can’t come in due to anxiety
If she does grace us with her presence,we are treated to endless tales of how crap she feels,how many problems she’s got and that she needs to go home
She showed up pissed the other day and wailed how ill she felt-she works in the kitchen and was falling about all over the place

Five-sits in the staff room and you can see her feeling sorry for herself and how Ill she is-she always goes home within the hour

All this drives me insane-I cannot count the amount of days I’m hauled in on my day off to cover these people

All but 1 are under 18-the other is 28

senua Ah th e old "Glass Back" problem .Obv not dissing this very real problem for Sufferers ,however very surprising how many too sick for work could be seen out and about in town!

Interesting - the students I'm seeing in college now sound just the same and being spectactularly enabled by the student affairs people. And woe betide the faculty who impose a bit of tough love on them - I am really over it!

I can’t believe some people get on like this. I’ve recently been promoted into a junior management position and I’ve worked my arse off for months as it’s our busiest point of the year. Literally dripping buckets by the end of a shift, not having time to eat/take a proper break. Lots of ones off with Covid so understaffed and just trying to scramble things together to make it work. It’s not ideal but in the current climate it’s something you have to do. I’m happy to have a job that’s a promotion and flexible around my kids so I’m going to work hard to keep it.

My partner works in the same business although in senior management and the ones who are at the same level as me in his sector are absolutely horrendous. Sleep in constantly, sit and skive all shift (documented on CCTV), absolutely no initiative or drive to work. And they’ve all more “experience” than me on paper as they’ve been doing the job longer.

It’s infuriating. I don’t understand why people even bother pretending they want a job with responsibility when it’s evident they don’t. There’s no shame in packing it in and taking a step back (something I had to do a few years ago), but there is a lot of shame on continuing to take the piss daily.

@H0bnob

And I say this as an early 20s recent graduate myself! So many young people both in my immediate team and within my department seem to have such a shocking attitude to work I'm finding it really grating. Most of these people have just finished there degree/masters and have never had to work before now and the attitude it just shocking!

To add to this, everyone seems to have anxiety and depression to some degree. I am absolutely NOT dismissing mental health issues and having lived with several i know how debilitating they can be....but to use it as an excuse to get out of everything is just taking the piss....being too lazy to do your job is not the same thing as being depressed, grow up for Christ's sake and take some responsibility.

One of my colleagues (same age as me) has had almost 20 sick days in the last 6 months for mental health...and yet goes out drinking and taking drugs every weekend without failure. When said colleague is in they also do nothing but sit on their phone and complain about being bored and tired. My managers seem reluctant to do anything too with the worry of accidental discrimination and so the rest of us are forced to continuously pick up the slack. Its really doing my head in now, am I being hugely intolerant?? Fully prepared to be told I I as obviously you never know what's going on behind the scenes but christ this is relentless! Apologies this has turned into a proper rant im just so frustrated by society at the minute.

…their degree/masters

There seems to be an idea amongst lots of people (not just the young) that "normal" people sail through life without any problems and rarely, if ever, find any tasks stressful or anxiety-inducing. Therefore if they are not like this, and find situations like speaking to new people, talking over the phone, making appointments or driving to new places hard, they must have "anxiety" and shouldn't have to do those things.

Whereas in real life most people have different things they find stressful or worrying the first few times they do them, or even always, but have learnt that the best way to get over it is to just do it. And then do it again. And then again. And by the fifth or 20th time you've built up techniques and resilience to be able to do the difficult task, even if you never feel entirely comfortable.

There's a difference between feeling anxious about something (completely normal) and having anxiety but they seem to be conflated too often. Even if you are diagnosed with anxiety, there are so many coping mechanisms out there the aim should always be to manage it as much as possible rather than just "opting out" - as that then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You’re an early graduate but can’t use the right ‘there’ so…

Yanbu. Something has gone very wrong at universities over the past decade. Did you see the recent thread about the graduate doing work experience in a shop, who put in a formal complaint to head office HR, because her manager didn’t have a policy on preferred pronouns 🤣🤣

Get a life correcting my spelling 😂 it's a post on an Internet forum that I typed up quickly whilst eating my lunch. Who cares if I used the correct form of there.

My degree was/ my job is in science anyway who needs grammar ;)

I don't think you are picking up on anything new. I'm in my 40s and certainly when I was in my 20s, my work ethic and that of my friends/colleagues of the same age was pretty poor! People would call in sick for all sorts of ridiculous reasons (I had an employee who called in once because she needed to get a hair cut). I definitely used to roll into work late and hungover and used to do lots of 'working from home' days because I just couldn't be bothered. I'm now a successful professional with a PhD in a fairly senior position.

The thing is that when you are younger, you don't appreciate how the world works as much, you don't have the financial pressures that you do as you get older (with a mortgage and children and bills). Certainly, my friends and I were still coasting along on student loans and some help from family and living in house shares, etc. But if you keep up that attitude, you will largely not get ahead, so if you can't apply yourself, you fall out the bottom and the ones who get it together progress with their careers. So I don't think this is some new phenomena where young people are lazy and entitled today.

Actually, I work with students and graduates in their 20s and most of them are incredibly motivated and hardworking, much more so that I was! I don't think that people taking time off for mental health issues is new either. People have always done that. Maybe they are more open about it now. I used to have lots of 'asthma' or 'stomach issues' instead of actually saying what the real problem is.

You give people excuses and they will use them. (I've had some wonderful MH and general ill health issues too so this isn't knocking anyone with genuine problems)

If people spend their formative year being mollycoddled then it shouldn't come as any real surprise when reality hits hard.

I've worked with some supposedly clever people who were liabilities on so many levels. Management really need to get a grip.

You literally just described someone with depression. Drinking and drugs are a sign they aren’t in a good place mentally. So is zoning out on their phones. Personally I think you are being unreasonable.

I think new members of staff need to receive proper training and management.

I had a job as a graduate where NOTHING was explained to me. I would ask, ask, ask and every time I was lucky if I received a full sentence in response. It was horrific, I hated it and I knew i was shit. I was embarrassed.

In my other roles I had been popular, liked and known for my work ethic.

Since I experienced that, I'm always hesitant to judge when people complain about junior members of staff.

I'm due back from mat leave in the new year and already dreading this. My personal favourite was doing yet another sickness absence meeting for a new hire and asking the person what support they were getting for their anxiety and just being told "oh I've not seen anyone I just needed a duvet day".