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.

I had a graduate sales person email me about six times recently trying to sell something. She hadn't looked at what my company does, mixed my name up and became increasingly persistent. I may have sent a pass agg reply

The solution is no sick pay until day 3 and then only SSP (that soon ensures people turn up!!) and sack them before the end of the probation period.

What a load of rubbish about people in the public sector working less than private sector.

I’ve worked extensively in both. Incompetent and lazy people exist in both. On balance if sat management is better in public sector because there is more investment in training.

It is true that it’s slightly easier to manage someone out of a private company. Often there are more robust metrics in place to measure performance against ie monetary targets in private sector v woolier targets in public sector.

Hi @H0bnob - I work in mental health. I get a lot of younger people coming in talking about their anxiety and depression which, on investigation, turns out to be an unwillingness to accept that sometimes life is a bit shit and you don't feel great but have to get on with it anyway. It really annoys me as I believe it undermines people who have genuine MH problems and becomes an excuse for not doing what people don't want to do. I do believe that most of this group genuinely think they do have MH problems, but don't feel pandering to them is the way to go.

Agreed it’s a management issue have a similar issue where I work .

@Wheresmywoolyjumpers yes, it’s important to teach (young) people that achieving something should feel challenging and difficult. There is no success without effort and sometimes a challenge will feel insurmountable. But with the right support, training and self belief/ resilience, amazing achievements can be accomplished.

That’s why it’s so important to teach young people about the importance of grit and a good, consistent work ethic. This doesn’t mean working yourself into the ground. In fact, nourishing rest improves your performance at work.

We have really failed to teach young people the importance of these behaviours, that previous generations well understood.

I'm not surprised, sadly.

I've never seen so many sc-called 'mental health' excuses in my life ... seems to be a luxury self-diagnosis in the west in public sector jobs.

I work in the public sector in a role which is (yet) to be provided by the private sector. All jobs are graduate/post graduate because they have to be and when I started universities would not even consider you if you were under 25 and did not have considerable related experience. I am constantly in awe of my younger colleagues due to their maturity, professionalism and just bloody well getting on with a very difficult job.

The issue is now universities who have more than doubled their intake in the subject and put pressure on practice educators never to fail an obviously failing student. Even though there is a shortage of suitably qualified workers, many graduates are just not employable.

I'm a teacher. Anyone behaving like this would be managed out within about three months. It's not a public / private sector phenomenon. It's the commodification of education ... these young people have gone into shitloads of debt and have had it sold to them as leading to great things. The reality is always different. For balance, I have a 20 year old BEd student in my class at the moment and even though she has been let down over the last two years by COVID she is working like a trouper. I also have a 24 year old with schizophrenia who was badly let down by his uni to the point where he had a psychotic episode and had to be sectioned so you can piss off with your 'mental health' in quotes ...

[quote Babybooboodedoo]@Wheresmywoolyjumpers yes, it’s important to teach (young) people that achieving something should feel challenging and difficult. There is no success without effort and sometimes a challenge will feel insurmountable. But with the right support, training and self belief/ resilience, amazing achievements can be accomplished.

That’s why it’s so important to teach young people about the importance of grit and a good, consistent work ethic. This doesn’t mean working yourself into the ground. In fact, nourishing rest improves your performance at work.

We have really failed to teach young people the importance of these behaviours, that previous generations well understood.[/quote]
I agree but think it is also about tolerating boredom, discomfort and fear. And this is up to the parents and starts young - when your little one can't do something you keep encouraging them rather than doing it for them. If they fail something at school, unless it is totally outrageous, you ask them what they are going to do to pass next time. I remember getting my first job as soon as I was legally allowed to work - I went into all the shops in my little town until I found one which was hiring. I was terrified and embarrassed to ask and desperately uncomfortable. And scared on my first day. How proud I was when got a job. And even more when I learned that my (undemonstrative grandpa) had said he was proud of me for doing it. Over protective parents damage their kids so much by preventing them from having these experiences.

You aren't wrong, but I strongly suspect people like this exist in every generation. It is probably just that for many they get better at hiding laziness and they get older. Hard work is a habit and work ethic can certainly improve with proper management.

Speaking of which, people taking the piss regarding self diagnosed "anxiety" and other mental health problems should be properly managed too. That means referrals to occupational health and reasonable adjustments to enable them to work if they actually do turn out to have a MH problem. It certainly doesn't mean just blithely accepting "I have anxiety" as an excuse for underperformance, and other staff absolutely shouldn't have to cover additional work over a significant period of time.

Then there was comma boy. He would try to bollock my team because they wouldn't put comma's every second word (i kid you not) until I lost patience with him.

Oh really? I’m not sure you’re in any position to judge!

Sympathy from me, H0bnob. I once worked in a small team in which one member had a master's degree. She clearly thought that she should be rewarded for this and that we were lucky to have her on the team. In reality, she endlessly caused problems by missing deadlines or simply doing a poor job.

I was in the position of having to make her work useable, which often meant simply doing the whole thing from scratch -- it would have taken longer to check and correct every mistake. She was one of the laziest and least reliable people I've ever had the misfortune to work with, and she didn't give a damn.

She was on her second job, and I've often wondered if her previous employers had given her a glowing reference to get rid of her ....

Speaking as someone who applied for loads of graduate roles and who had a part time job during uni, I cannot imagine these employers are hiring people with zero work experience.

In my experience most graduate roles are very competitive so these employers could easily sack these terrible people during their probabation period and rehire.

I’ve had this. I remember one dude saying “Oh no, I don’t know what’s involved in that” if I asked him to do something (like draft a letter to explain the numbers he’d just calculated). It got to the point where I’d say “You don’t know how to write a letter?!?” and more or less embarrass him into having a go at it. This was about 20 years ago.

I wonder if part of it is that managing people is hard and not everyone is good at it (or taught how to do it in a way that fits in with the organisation). If the OP is endlessly expected to pick up her colleagues’ work then chances are that the person in charge is not managing at all.

A few people have said that she should just refuse to pick up the other work. This is something I might do as a middle aged person but I wouldn’t do it as a newish graduate.

Do you get a performance review? Can you raise it as that you’ve noticed that you’re now picking up XYZ as well as ABC and have done so for X months. It’s become rather unequal and is affecting your own morale (don’t mention the other person).

Millennial generation multiplied by public sector = lazy bastarditis.

Massively agree with this and it's not just public sector - I worked for a private company where the grads are immensely well paid and the massive sense of entitlement from below was one of the reasons I recently left. That and the complete inability to do any work, take any feedback and the faux mental health claims (read: if you have openly been out doing MDMA at the works do til 3am then the reason you are fractious and crying the following day is not because you have 'anxiety'). It was incredible.

In my new firm we actually don't hire new grads, only people with upwards of about 7-10 years experience who have proven themselves. It's because of what we do rather than anything else but I am so fucking glad of it - the last place was like thankless babysitting on top of doing an already demanding job.

@TrishM80

Millennial generation multiplied by public sector = lazy bastarditis.

What do you think the millennial generation is?

@icelolly12

Ime it's mainly male graduates like this... females know they have to work harder to get ahead and have done so at school, college, uni etc.

Nope, where I was it was the young women. One of the worst parts was that I massively over invested in them when they joined because I wanted to support other women in their careers... totally thankless, they only wanted to demand more money and allowances whilst getting wasted on the company credit card.

Very recent graduates have had an awful few years. We have several Kickstarters at work- they’re fantastic.

I have mental health issues myself and do you know what? Some days I go to work when I don’t feel amazing. I’d rather stay in bed and feel sorry for myself but I don’t. As much as mental health issues are real O also believe that some people lack resilience and use them as an excuse.

My workplace has a serial sick day taker. In fact she has run out of sick leave but it hasn’t stopped her. She has a partner that earns a high wage so she doesn’t seem to care if she doesn’t get paid. It’s been happening for years and she’s still here!

@Etinoxaurus

Very recent graduates have had an awful few years. We have several Kickstarters at work- they’re fantastic.

Ours are hit and miss.

Forgot to add that my experience of graduates at my workplace is the opposite to the OP. They have incredible work ethic and to be honest they make me feel lazy in comparison

In my experience most graduate roles are very competitive so these employers could easily sack these terrible people during their probabation period and rehire

They could, yes, but certainly within the public sector (though not only here) that's where inertia comes in

As in by the time you've found someone prepared to take the responsibility of actually making a decision, the two years are up and getting rid of them isn't a simple process any more - and that's if it ever was, considering the number who claim their self diagnosed "anxiety" amounts to a protected characteristic

I work with a lot youngsters that are either on a "gap yar" or who have just graduated and don't know what to do with themselves.

Most of them are useless. I only work 3 days a week and I spend my first day fixing all the stuff they have messed up, and the work they haven't done at the end of the previous week.

What I have realised is that some people have a bad attitude and are lazy whatever their education. Having a degree doesn't mean you have get up and go. In most cases it just means that your A levels were alright and you didn't want to get a job yet, so went to Uni to do a pointless degree.

My 2 DC get unbelievable feedback from their school and I get told they have amazing resilience, attitudes and drive. To me they don't seem any different to most people I knock round with. Apparently it is very rare.