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?

I am in the 18-30 to generation and don’t at all recognise description to be honest in anybody I know. We all had Saturday jobs, I worked in a shop and did a daily paper round, worked through uni (and was the first year paying £9k) lambing in the spring and doing milking/waitressing in term time.

Every single one of my friends had a decent grad job well before we graduated. Maybe if the shop owner wants decent employees he should pay more than £10 an hour! When I was pregnant and 26 we had to move across the country, I temped as a PA for £25 an hour where I did the odd bit of admin, organised the ladies online returns and walked the dogs. Now I have children I have a job that lets me work from home, pick my hours and take my children to work for £15 an hour. Why would I be running myself ragged for £10 an hour in a cafe?

It’s true there is a whole load of young people who don’t want to work for lower wages, not while they have bank of mum and dad or can still live at home anyway.
But where are they going to start? Hey aren’t going to walk into a job paying £40k without any work experience whatsoever are they?
I recruit, and I will hire the person with work experience - including summers at McDonalds or waiting tables - over the guy who didn’t have to…

I'm wondering if staff shortages might bring back a return of "the Saturday Job" which disappeared around the Millenium, I think due to concerns about CRB/ DBS checks for employing u18s and the introduction of minimum wage.

When I did work experience in 1996, many of my classmates retained "Saturday jobs" from their placement or at least got a foot hold in. We were 15/16. Those opportunuties are much harder to come by, but are good for developing young people's skills and work ethic and are good for filling less desirable peak time hours that adults don't want.

There is a generational culture where many parents expect little of their children, plus increased educational pressure. But not all students get high grades, and waft into top universities then into high paying occupations, and society sets many young people up for a fall. I don't think that they're lazy, just not well set up to transition into functioning adults.

Apparently "why bother" is a growing attitude in young people around the world, especially where they've been shafted heavily by lockdown/ restrictions for prolonged periods. It's a growing issue in China. Why bother with hot-house schooling when you'll just get locked into your home for months regardless.

My DH reports the opposite. He runs a business and has a wide range of ages. He says the under 25s are the ones he struggles with the most - they are emotional, lack resilience and are very unreliable and struggle with taking instructions.

And he is 33 so not exactly ancient!

Well that’s your experience and I’m a few years older than you it that’s not my experience at all, nor of anyone I know. Obviously it depends on the industry you work in but £34k by your mid-30’s is pretty normal for a career path.

id be earning more had I not had children - I know it’s controversial to say this but that was my choice and I was aware that as a result I missed out on opportunities as when they were tiny. I wanted to work PT and leave on time every day with no worries or stress - the opportunities I missed out on would have made that very hard.

I don’t believe it happened that way either, I think you just wanted to present your opinion in a fancy way.

But in the unlikely event it is true, and what you’ve said about your partner is true, then I’m going to ask you - what is wrong with you both?! You said your OH to film a woman at work without her consent, and, by your admission, ‘wound her up’.

Hope she told your partner to fuck up. It would be insanely condescending to English-plain to a business owner in the Scottish Highlands who clearly has more nouse in her little finger than you do in your whole body, and tell her she should be paying her staff £100k whilst moaning about a perfectly reasonable sandwich.

I call BS. Big time

I think you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere that offered a 10% pay rise this year. It is how it should work but it doesn’t sadly

What about outsourcing your entertainment to MN😂

Hmm, well wages haven’t kept up with the cost of housing that’s for sure.

Wages vs house prices

There seems to be no clear action on drug dealing / taking.
It feels as if eveyone is resigned to doing nothing about it. Wish they'd come up with a policy to try to fix it.
Our local paper (in Scotland) has the usual court cases of drunkenness, fights, threats, drink driving - nothing on drugs, unless they are tried elsewhere.

Owning a house - I worked for the nhs in the early 70s qualified and full time - own a house hahahahahahah. Didn't cross my mind. Couldn't afford a holiday away, just about ran a car. And that was in rural Scotland.
I do accept that house prices are ridiculous now and rents through the roof but the constant complaining .......... we are due a readjustment - perhaps it will happen soon.

OP,
you’ll guide your child towards benefits? How about Only Fans, if you think it’s so marvellous. I mean, why shouldn’t the bright youth of today ignore their brain when they can focus on their tits and ass?
And you don’t find that depressing?

I’m a bloke. The cafe owner was a bloke. The two other people in the initial conversation were blokes.

My partner is female and she did a sterling job of going up there and winding him up.

She played the part of someone who also ‘despairs of the workshy youth’ - it didn’t take much more than a comment of ‘what’s wrong with young people today’ to send him off on another rant about them and again he ended up needing to apologise to another poor teenager waiting for a coffee 😂😂😂

This is the sort of thing I enjoy doing - who gives a shit?! It’s fun!

Exactly, it's just a cliche that is rolled out and a sign that you have officially entered the "cantankerous old bugger" stage of your life.

The link below is a thread twitter where the guy has collected newspaper clippings that bemoan the fact that "nobody wants to work anymore" from present day all they way back to 1894. Apparently nobody has wanted to work, ever.

mobile.twitter.com/paulisci/status/1549527748950892544

Walter White worked hard.

There's also a scene in The Wire where one of the crime lords attends an adult college course on business management.

Of course I find it depressing!

i find it very depressing that we live in an era where meritocracy isn’t a thing, where capitalism has ensured that assets are all but locked out for people starting out today, and we’re gifted to people because of their year of birth. And no politician is honest about that.

so fuck it - yeah - if you can’t get yourself on a path to earn big bucks - and not everyone can - milk the state and enjoy your life 🤷🏻‍♀️

hopefully then society will wake up and start properly valuing people’s time and make sure that people working in service industries and care etc have a path to having a decent slice of the abundance of wealth we see.

Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) 👍

The Wire should be required viewing. The writer of that show gets how fucked up society is.

Every generation thinkgs young people are lazy - but certainly with inflation a lot of wages now don't count for shit basically.

The sort of jobs that would at least pay for you to live in a modest house share under your own steam a generation back are now effectively pocket money that doesn't even touch the sides of independent living, unless you are prepared to spend every waking moment doing 2 or even 3 different jobs to make ends meet, and who wants to do that when you're young and don't have any dependents? Or have to live at your parents' for years on end?

It isn't fair that young people should have to do that when others didn't. And it's not fair that sanctimonius old people (and I include my generation among that) don't recognise this. I'm very privilieged and own a nice home, but I don't claim for a moment it's because of 'hard work' - it's because I'm a member of the home-owning class (honestly, I think home owning/not home owning is the big class distinction now) and so I inherited enough money to put down a good house deposit when young, and then inherited some more to upsize.

No tax burden
More or less captive market

although ….

execution risk
financial risk
higher barriers to entry?

@SwanBuster
we live in an era where meritocracy isn’t a thing

In which era in the UK was meritocracy a 'thing'?

I think the post war era till the 70s - you saw much more social mobility then

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

No, everyone who is able to work needs to work or theyre just a waste of space.

If someone doesn't want to work because it's not the ideal set up for them, they are spoilt and need to get a grip. If you can work, you work.

OMG this is the same challenge every generation has. My mum bought a house for £2k. My first house was £50k, my kids first houses will be £150k. In reality, housing values have gone up much more significantly between my mum and me than me and my kids.

The solution is better mortgage products - why is a mortgage 25 years when retirement is probably 30, 40,50 years away?

Then, as mortgage payments are lower, anyone could buy something on a lower income.

Plenty of investors are now offering to part buy properties with furst, second, third time buyers, many with no additional costs on top of mortgages.

A person who earns £1.5k per month should be able to buy a property esp if they already pay rent and if they don't, then getting them to show thry can save the mortgage payment monthly and still live should be good enough evidence of budget management.

Lenders need to get with it to sort this out.

If people don't work how are you going to earn anything more than min wage when you do look for a job?!

I think this younger generation are behaving like they're privileged because they see orivilieged people on social media all the time! I don't think it's about buying a house, but I do think if they have better options to get onto the housing ladder it might motivate some of them...

I think this younger generation are behaving like they're privileged because they see orivilieged people on social media all the time!

Don't they mostly see their friends?