Young people - workshy, or a wee bit canny?

[SwanBuster]

Inspired by a spirited discussion in the Scottish highlands.

A local cafe owner (late forties) was bemoaning his staffing situation to another forty something man, who was buying a coffee with his daughter. I was waiting for mine.

”I’m understaffed - can’t get the workers. I’m paying them 20% above minimum wage but the 18-30 generation don’t want to work - they’d rather sell drugs or be on benefits’.

The chap he was talking to said :

‘oh really - yeah it’s terrible that, they just don’t have the ethic’.

At this point I (another forty something) interjected, and said :

“Well, can we really blame them? Vast swathes of them have been disenfranchised through the cost of housing. They don’t see a path to a stake in society any more”

He said “Utter bollocks - I worked hard and they don’t want to”. The other guy agreed.

Then another guy (again forty something 😂) started agreeing with me, saying he sees it in the corporate world that it’s the sorted 50 somethings who bought cheap houses who are the workshy ones cruising along.

I agreed - imho, no point in working unless you get £100k. Only then can you hope to match the lifestyle of a retail worker from the past”

All the while a young person was waiting for her coffee looked very non pleased and the cafe owner apologised saying “not all young people obviously”

AIBU to think the young are right to “lie flat” and not bother if things don’t change?

No point in working unless you get £100k?

I think the young have been shafted personally & they should be angrier about it

I don't think yabu. But what I will say having lived in a few different places is that there's something very British about wanting everyone to suffer equally. In that, some people seem to think for example work from home should be abolished in its entirety because they had to commute 2 hours a day, leaving the house at 6am.
Young people are completely right to feel disenfranchised, I read today something along the lines of young people paying in some circumstances 30-40% of their salary on housing alone.
I think it's very interesting and some threads on here have really helped me to understand the mindset. By this I mean a thread recently about benefits in which many people thought that claimants should "get a job like I did," or 'work a bit harder', yet complete silence on how it happens that a candidate for the next PM is a billionaire who thought nothing of cutting the £20 uplift - an amount so minimal to him it would barely register yet quite literally the difference between eating or not for some.
Anyway, yes things are shit and the young ones are right to be angry about it.

Doesn’t ever generation say this about younger generations?

Brexit is a big reason behind current staffing issues.

YABU to say young people don’t bother trying.

there's something very British about wanting everyone to suffer equally

yes, I very much agree with this

I didn’t say that 😂 the cafe owner did.

@VladmirsPoutine you're right, I don't understand it tbh

Not really the point but surely selling drugs IS working, given you have to be a self starter, gather up a client base, take risks, process payments, handle goods etc.

Sounds like a pretty good career choice in some respects.

😂😂😂👍👍👍

Absolutely! i really wanted to say that too! But the cafe owner had access to knives and I didn’t 😂

Until all us homeowners are prepared to accept that housing is not a case of perpetual growth then this will always be a case, it isn't the young not wanting Housing estates being built locally or long term infrastructure changes (HS2 for eg), and after living in many areas not in the UK, it isn't just a UK attitude.

It's neolibralism taken hold, and is just as much a problem in most of Europe and any first wold country.

I think you were all generalising like crazy

What do you mean about the 100 grand thing?

Totally agree. Why should the young make more effort when their chances of ever owning a home or achieving real financial security are increasingly small, unless they’re lucky enough to have very rich parents. Even if they do, the future’s not looking particularly bright for western societies or global stability, not to mention climate change. Might as well coast along and enjoy life while they can.

If that happens to hit the retail and hospitality industries particularly hard and the older generations don’t get the service they want, well, karma’s a bitch.

I have genuinely always wondered this. It takes SO MUCH entrepreneurial attitude to make money criminally, why not just do it legally?

Because you make more money, plus morally there isn’t really much of a difference if you compare it to working for some companies.

I mentioned to DSIL that a young colleague's dog had thousands of followers on Instagram. DSIL then said "this is the trouble with young people these days, they all want to be influencers and the like". The youngster in question was a star employee, had reduced her hours to complete a post graduate qualification that was a full time course, did another part time on evenings and weekends, plus the occasional side gig. This girl grafted. DSIL never went back to work after having her first child 18 years ago and DBIL didn't realise it was legal to have two jobs. Talk about our of touch.

I have a couple of younger colleagues now and they're hard workers. I do wonder how the one with no bank of mum and dad is going to get on the property ladder in our city.

I genuinely don’t think it’s worth bothering working unless you’re paid £100k per year in parts of the south east of England anymore.

If you earn that, then you may just be able to comfortably afford to fund

• housing (500k round here for a half decent house, let’s say you have 100k deposit, then a 400k mortgage would cost around £2k p/m)

• kids (always pricey)

• pension /retirement (bung in 20% of salary into a defined contribution and you should have a decent fund)

to a reasonable level. because after saving for retirement, you’ll have around £4K p/m net on £100k. And already half of that is going on housing.

if not, you can only pick at best 2, and probably only one of those three things. Might as well be on benefits and get as much of your time back as possible - it’s the rational choice.

The younger generation have been properly screwed - for most of them, no chance of being able to buy their own house unless their parents give them money. What, honestly, is the point of them working hard in this mad capitalist system if all they're going to do is just about be able to keep a (rubbish and expensive and rented) roof over their heads and just survive. I admire and respect those who realise that they're better off stepping off the hamster wheel.

Because the tax man is not involved.

Our 19!year old son is working 40+ hours per week in his hospitality job during his summer holidays. He cycles to and from (12 mile roundtrip) work at all hours. He’s looking for 2/3 shifts when his term starts. Workshy he is not.

Sweeping statements are bullshit. My son has had a part time job since 16 after GSCEs and works hard as well as doing his A levels. All his friends do the same, as do my nieces and nephews who are a bit older, saving for uni, paying extortionate car insurance and petrol to be able to get to work and trying to find time and cash for a social life. Not selling drugs. 🙄 It’s just offensive. There’s lots of good young people around and things are difficult enough for them without dickheads like this talking bollocks.

Good on him 👍

100% this isn’t a case of don’t bother - that’s a hyperbolic line from me just to wind up people like the cafe owner.

it’s more a case of ‘who can blame them if they choose not to?’

but it’s always better to work and graft 👍👍👍

I think the labour shortage isn’t due to people not wanting to work. I think it’s due to people retiring earlier and leaving due to brexit. I think the young will have a tough time, but don’t think it’s insurmountable.

My grandparents were from developing countries, worked hard, lived in cramped conditions in the hope that things would be better for future generations. I guess try and save, club together to get somewhere? It helps if you have people (eg spouse/relatives) you can trust to share financial risk - BUT when it gets messy, it can get more messy and complicated than if you were in your own. So I guess it is a risk.

I know plenty of young people who are very motivated and focussed, keen to be independent.
I also know some who are pretty lazy - my step brother, and a niece and nephew of mine. They are, quite frankly, a product of their upbringing.
Many young people in the last ten or 15 years are over indulged by their parents, made to feel by parents that they can do know wrong (if you work in schools you see it all the time) and praised to the high heavens for doing the most basic of things in life. It’s still going on now, and then when they reach the age where they enter the real world they don’t cope well with the fact that that the real world won’t indulge them.
There are hard working young people with parents who have raised them to be well rounded, hardworking and independent.
There are also unfortunately many big babies out there who don’t want to grow up.
I can’t really place the blame on them. Middle aged people shouldn’t complain so much about what young people are like. They created the monsters themselves.

Bit of ageism in both directions on this thread - lovely