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?

Generational comparison and ‘who had it harder’ olympics are part of life. ultimately every generation had it hard in their own way. I’m a millennial and I’m glad I didn’t have to live through the winter of discontent or rationing or this ‘ice on the inside of the window’ business everyone keeps talking about. (Wait a few months, right?)

I do think some of my generation are doomers and don’t think critically. ‘I will never own a house.’ End of thought process. Might require some creativity and flexibility but it’s doable. My first house was £75k in my economically depressed northern home town and my neighbours were drug dealers, but still. That’s why it’s a property ladder. And they had a lovely dog.

Do you think that if you've had several young new starters just walk out it might be you who's the problem, not them?

We as a household earn way less than 100k and have three kids, a house we own (mortgage), a car, a pension. We are by no means rich but we are not struggling either.
Also as others said, I'd be very surprised at anyone being able to walk straight into a 100k job, people who earn 100k in the main will have worked their way up to that.

What a load of crap.

Both my sons got jobs within weeks of their GCSEs finishing. They kept them on all through A levels, doing extra work in the school holidays. DS1 left his the day before he went in the army, DS2 left his the week before he went to university.

Once DS2 got to university he got a job in Spoons. He worked there as often as he could as well as doing his ward placements because he was doing a nursing degree. He never took his full holidays from university, he always worked in the pub.

His first job was in A&E. He volunteered for every course that was going. If there was pleas for staff to go in to cover he’d go. He’s a charge nurse now, and is doing his masters alongside his full time job and he’s renovating his house. He, also, does teaching in the hospital. That chap has an amazing work ethic. He always has. He’s never been afraid of hard work.

DS1 works his arse off too. He’s on Summer leave atm, but has been in work this week to do a couple of days cover. He volunteers to go here, there and everywhere in all weathers. He hates sitting around and sees it as his duty to offer rather than wait to be told.

It annoys me so much when people slate young people. In one breath we get told youth unemployment is going down then in the next we’re told they’re lazy bastards who don’t want to work. It can’t be both.

The ‘ladder’ starts at 200k round here. For a piece of absolute shit.

Thats two hundred thousand shitty pounds Sterling.

Good luck with that on minimum wage.

Because - and this might blow your mind - there are services round here that pay that to people. Care, retail etc.

My point is 100k ain’t shit. It’s crap.

It’s only 66k after tax, and that’s before you’ve put some away fro retirement. Then you’ve got to spend £1-2k on housing p/m. 1k for something utterly crap, 2k gets you something half decent.

then you have to pay for transport because there ain’t no way you can afford housing near the actual place of work that pays the £100k gross. No, you want housing there - better earn £300k.

then there’s food, kids, and energy. Forget going out because taking a family out costs about £65 quid at fucking pizza express these days. £65 out of net salary

All you have to look forward to is a cheeky break up to lock lomond in a cheap air Bnb once a year.

well worth the hassle. Not.

@LydiaBennetsUglyBonnet - I totally see where you are coming from- we work in a 'sexy' industry that young people used to kill to get into. It's not hugely well paid when you start out but there are better paid jobs in it after 4 or 5 years solid experience . We are finding that most of the younger staff struggle to get out the student mentality- want to work from home when there is little track record to go on for reliability and struggle with 5 days a week consistency and can't cope with being told what they need to be doing and deadlines. This is in creative fields.

I know myself so many who seem to want to work for 10 months just to save up to go travelling again- it's as if they think 'travelling' is a 'career' - particularly common in those from middle class backgrounds who have been to Uni.

I think there are many reasons for this- overindulgence by some parents. Lack of feeling that they will ever be able to afford a place of their own- rented or bought (particularly acute in south east and south west) mentally not planning for progressing - because again what's the point- you can't save up when paying colossal rents and wages are the same as 20 years ago.

From my 20 months in Copenhagen I learnt a few things that I think would help. I think we need to build and develop a lot more decent quality part buys in areas people want to live , houses as well as flats, or buy up a great deal of private housing of all types and convert it to social housing at council house levels of rent. I think all this living in shared houses for years and years is creating an infantilised work force.

Personally I don't think working from home 5 days a week works well for many young people under 28 - I can see totally why people with young families like it - particularly women or older and proven professionals with a track record- but I think many younger people find it hard to stay motivated and I've noticed rather a lot of 'going missing' in the day time .

There are some really hard working and entrepreneurial young people out there- but they are from my experience not in the majority these days - certainly not in the south, maybe it's different further north where there is at least more chance of renting a flat/house or buying something modest but ok

Anyone who doesn't quite get the sheer stupidity of things in London/Home Counties/Bristol/bath /brighton etc- I suggest you do a Rightmove search on 2 bed flats and 3 bed semis to buy and rent and you will see the issue.

I work with young adults (university aged) and the ones I see definitely aren’t workshy (obviously these are the ones going to uni). But no different to my generation, it’s tough to work and be in full time education.

Dh has several employees in his business ranging from 17 to about 60. It’s the ones over 30 who moan the most and call in sick for banging a toe on something. The ones who are 17-25 are keen and hardworking and take direction and want to learn, etc.

They will be. They just aren’t in charge yet. You think they’re going to be paying our pensions 30 years from now? I don’t.

My children are teens. The young today are no more work shy than previous generations. Maybe the cafe owner hasn’t realised but the nature of work has changed, lockdowns accelerated this and I notice a general preference amongst the young to be ‘your own boss’.

My younger teen during the pandemic, learned to do web design and SEO, which is less physical effort and shorter, more flexible hours than catering work, which he did try but didn’t enjoy. He is working on a website for a new startup at the moment. He doesn’t charge much as he’s still learning and building a reputation but he loves doing it and works from our home, so his costs are low.

One of my oldest’s former classmates makes a very decent living selling photos and videos on Only Fans. She makes much more money doing this than working in the profession she spent five years training to do, and earns as much in an hour as a cafe worker would in a day. I appreciate this is probably exceptional.

Another pair of friends of my son have set up a holiday let cleaning service to milk all the local Airbnb owners. They charge £15 an hour and have more work than they can handle.

My point is that none of these teens would choose to work in a cafe, but none are workshy. They all work really hard but want to do what they love and or get paid better.

I agree young people are screwed at the moment, but they will remould the system more in their favour when they are numerous enough as a group and old enough to outvote older brexiteers. They will likely forge closer ties to Europe once more.

What do you do in the Highlands for over £100k or is that the job you're waiting for?

Hmm - I've come across a couple of things recently that make me wonder

-someone just finished training to work with kids, but is going to put off getting a permanent job for a couple of years as dealing with the kids impacted by covid will be too challenging

• different person saying that they're only going to do the bare minimum in their college course and if they fail they'll just tell people they've passed (in an industry that often doesn't check on qualifications)

Worrying if that's a trend.

50 something here, i had it so easy it seems, mortgage payments doubled in a year when interest hit 18%. I struggled to keep our house and was lucky to walk away from it without losing the shirt off my back. Later i was a divorced single Mum and had to work 3 jobs to keep a roof over my teenagers heads. Not all 50 year olds are cruising and living it up. Many many 50+women find themselves traded in for a younger model and are struggling to pay the rent.

İ do think young people have a more transactional attitude to most things, ie. Anything they agree to do has to have something in it for them, if it doesn't they stop doing it (or refuse to start). They don't tend to do things out of duty or tradition or guilt even in the same way older people did.
For example, my son had a very tough job in a restaurant kitchen this summer, he chucked it in as soon as he'd saved enough for something he wanted to do, no worries about letting the boss down or building his savings up for a rainy day...
Lots of things don't seem worth the effort to them now and if they do make a real effort they are very cross if it doesn't result in something immediately quantifiable.
I've noticed it in my kids and in the young employees in the creative sector.
Maybe it's too much praise, or too many reward charts, or help with hard things. Not enough resilience.
Its obviously not universal but I think it's a general tendency.

My son is 19. All his friends, classmates whatever, have been working since 16 every summer. My son got a part time job at 16 while at college, was made redundant during first lockdown, then got another job a week after shops reopened. Even his dope smoking friends all have jobs. Those about to go back to uni had jobs all summer. Those who took a gap year worked and worked and then self funded a bit of travelling.
It's bull that young people don't want to work. But a lot of casual service staff were from Europe and Brexit made many return home, which may explain some of the shortage.

Unpaid internships I presume? Sorry no one wants to be your slave any more.

@Crikeyalmighty my experience of young people in the creative industries sounds similar to you and interestingly I was talking to a friend who is a chief exec in the NHS, they have a major problem with staff retention as young staff leave to work for agencies as they like to pick and choose shifts.
My oldest DS won't move out as he doesn't want to spend all his money on rent!

Good, why would you want your son to be a foolish jobsworth? No one should worry about letting their boss down when almost all bosses wouldn't spare a single thought for them, especially someone bottom of the pile in the notoriously overworked and undervalued sector of hospitality. You pay minimum wage you should expect minimum effort.

I was on holiday there.

I have a job back home that pays more than that, but the point is I absolutely empathise with people earning much less, and understand absolutely any reluctance or hopelessness they feel.

One of my oldest’s former classmates makes a very decent living selling photos and videos on Only Fans. She makes much more money doing this than working in the profession she spent five years training to do, and earns as much in an hour as a cafe worker would in a day. I appreciate this is probably exceptional

Bloody Only Fans
That’s a whole other level of depressing

This experience us always rolled out on threads like this. And I'm sure it was hard.

But many of those just starting out in UK cities today are living in shared houses with rent so high they will never be able to save enough for a mortgage. Or if they can live with parents, they will be there a lot longer than the 18months you were in order to save the the 10s of thousands of pounds for a deposit required for a ftb flat (not the two up two down you could afford). And because the centralisation that has been going on for decades in UK companies, fewer and fewer people have a large employer in their locale that can provide job stability and career development, so fewer young people are able to get on their feet whilst living with parents and have to go where the work is.

And yes it is objectively harder for young people these days. In the mid 1990s the average house was 4'' average earnings. In 2020, it hit 8x average earnings. First time buyers take an average of 8 years to save for their first home. In London it is 11 years.

Also the second hand furniture virtue signalling also pisses me off. You didn't have ikea. Ikea is this generation's version of second hand (from a cost pov). In a rental market, you need furniture that is cheap, easy to build and turn back in to flat pack, and lightweight to transport when you move between rentals. My gran's 1930s dresser would not be suitable.

And, also, so what if it was hard for you back then? Surely we should be trying to make things better for our children's generation, not shrugging and saying "we had to suffer, so you should too". That is a very sad state of affairs.

And that's just housing. Before you even think about kids, pensions (need to save £300,000 pot for a 30k pension, whilst paying for student loans, kids and a massive mortgage), inflation... No wonder there is no optimism!

There’s nothing wrong with it.

She’s probably milking sub money from dirty old men who were gifted cheap housing. They are the only ones with disposable income.

Think of it as a rightful transfer of generational wealth from the undeserving to the entrepreneurial.

Agree with everything you say but in the recent past with annuity rates crushed, it was more like £1m in the pension pot for a 30k index linked pension with spousal cover.

£300k would buy you about £15k non indexed at best.

It’s them.

I don’t have this problem when we recruit normally, at all.

No, paid temporary internships with a view to getting postgraduates into the workplace. Apprentices tend to go to those aged 16-20 who maybe did sixth form (and IMO were harder workers than those older than them)