Youngsters now days are very entitled

[Themagicfarawaytreeismyfav]

Is it just me or are younger people now days very entitled? I work in an industry that often attracts lots of younger people mainly early 20’s ( im in my 50’s btw). Im noticing more and more that they have lots of entitlement and some bad manners/lack of social skills as well as a terrible work ethic. For balance i have 4 dc ranging from 20-30 years old and while all 4 have excellent manners the younger had a really bad attitude towards work for a year or two but is now a very hard worker and the elder 3 always have been. Anyway back to my fellow employees. They seem to know every single one of their rights but not so much about their responsibilities, they lack social skills and manners as well. Will happily talk over people during conversations, pick and choose what work they want to do, have appalling customer service skills and will never agree that something is their fault or they have done something wrong. My work is based heavily on seniority and usually the more senior a member of staff they get first choice in certain aspects of it. However the younger staff seem to completely disregard this and often push themselves to the front for these things and show absolutely no respect to those who have worked there for years ( fwiw im also very junior). Im finding it harder and harder to tolerate and beginning to detest having to work with them, but im wondering if its actually a “ thing” that others have noticed or its me and my perimenopause? 🙄

I work closely with an apprentice, she's great and I don't recognise any of what you say. I think it's just down to individuals. She's got a much better memory than me, is very proactive (won't just sit there if we have a quiet 15 minutes, she looks for something she can be doing), good with customers, will ask for help if she's not sure of something rather than thinking she knows everything. She comes to work when she's sick and just powers through, just like us older ones do (conversely she says she's "dying" when she's got a mild sniffle which is quite amusing, she can be quite dramatic but I find it quite charming in a way).

Her predecessor was much older so I was quite worried at the difference between them, but I needn't have worried. We are very different indeed but she's very likeable with a good work ethic so I've been enjoying getting to know what it's like to work with someone younger than my own kids, it's been refreshing.

The one thing I would say is that when she is with other people of a similar age to her I find the group behaviour a bit annoying occasionally but it's nothing serious, it's just trivial things such as them being a bit squealy and silly or loud or dramatic or something. They probably think us older ones are staid and boring though, it's just the generation gap.

Perhaps I've just been lucky and haven't come across any young people of the type that has been moaned about on this thread.

@FlatWhiteOrLatte- I read it as the sort of job some people see as a stop gap, the young people the OP works with have no intention of working in this company for more than a year, they don’t care about impressing management or making as much money for the company as possible, or giving good customer service, because many don’t plan to still be there by next rounds of appraisals.

If it’s a bit of a low level job, with an old fashioned hierarchy system that expects lower staff members to be deferential to senior, it’s going to be viewed as a bad employer they want to move on from ASAP so they act like they don’t care because they don’t care.

And they’ll leave some great reviews on Glass Door!

Youve summarised perfectly what l think. An outdated company and system.

@Themagicfarawaytreeismyfav
From reading the thread and a bit of analysis :
cabin crew/flight attendants
industry is aviation/airlines
probably British Airways or a similar major UK carrier.

now am i 007 ?

So let’s get it straight.

Your kids are fine. Everyone else is shit.

all I’ll say is as a 20-something in the workplace, the only people I’ve ever received abuse from have been 50+.

It sounds like your employer isn’t doing great with recruitment.

I’m a uni lecturer and work with this age group. This hasn’t been my experience at all. My students in their 20s are hard working, mature, articulate, driven and just generally lovely to be around - I think much more so than my generation when I was their age (I’m 45).

i wonder why its wrong or seen as wrong for the junior staff to get the higher perks ?

from researching, it seems there have been past cases of seniors selling unoffically their routes to junior staff members etc

They should know their place

i thought we got rid of that mentality years ago, it should be based on whos suited for the best routes vs your skill set, not just whos served the longest

Evidently that mentality is still very much alive.

These are no ladies, they're miserable unregulated, bitter and unprofessional people. I know the type exactly, alway keen to be snide and put down younger women in the workplace. I'm their age by the way, all 50+.

To be fair, when I started work, I (and other under 20s) got sneery "Generation Y" comments whenever we suggested using a database/programme rather than a calculator and paper.
Maybe there's just more of a divide since social media and the internet, and the idea some have that different age groups shouldn't mix (I really benefitted from older coworkers' support)? And Gen Z has had an awful time-less likely to have a supportive family, less likely to have job security, "having" to have a degree and pay for it, unlikely to be able to get their own home early, less likely to be able to trust in a happy marriage (should they want it) than previous generations.
At least you are considered the most useful age group, overall, "bridging analogue childhoods with digital adulthood, making them highly adaptable, tech-savvy but not digitally dependent, and balancing work ethic with life satisfaction, positioning them uniquely in culture and business"!

Surely from the points that you have raised, management should be pulling up these issues? For instance spending a lot of time away from their desk in the toilet or wherever, not dealing with customers effectively or appropriately and not being respectful of their colleagues.
Whilst I love that the younger generation have a ballsy sense of self that we didn't have at their age, they really should be given appropriate training where they lack the skills, or warnings where they overstep and take the mick.
Obviously they are most likely only in this customer service role my means of a stepping stone to their desired profession, but they need to be respectful to the other members of staff who are choosing to be there alot longer. Management needs to ensure that they are 'managing' all of their staff so that the overall workplace ethic is benefitting everyone not just the business. If the youngsters aren't fitting in well, then it needs sorting.

OP is being so cagey about the profession but my guess would be some kind of events industry. The perks, which apparently make up for being underpaid, are free tickets or tips (and probably border on illegal and these young upstarts are causing trouble by daring to question this legality)

And then the "seniority rules" thing is about helping with VIPs - older staff assume they get to work with these and younger members are daring to want to do them

Plenty of this is bad management - if they aren't going to question why staff aren't at their posts or why they're giving such bad customer service when it's essential etc then it's on them

I work with plenty of young people in their early 20s, in a customer service industry. Some of them are not great, some of the older staff aren't great either. Some of the 20 somethings have an amazing work ethic and are willing to do extra hours, even "unfavourable" ones, do the dirty jobs no one really wants to do, make sure things are done properly etc

The problem is not the kids, its the adults who bend over backwards to give in to them. Kids - as a group - have ALWAYS tried to take the piss, do less than they should and get more than they deserved.

But adults are frightened to say No now, so the kids are more obviously entitled little shits. You reap what you sow.

Nope you’re right. I’ve friend who has worked in a family restaurant business for 20yrs has said this for the past 3 years now. The young staff are hard work. Some just don’t turn up for their shifts & when disciplined will play up 1 parent even turned up to have a word with her & threatened her. She’s dreading when the new employment laws come in. She’s now replacing the younger staff when they leave with older people. Yet again the people applying for vacancies are in their majority young people.

as this post & many others on mumsnet it’s not hard to see why these kids are workshy & can’t communicate. I’ve seen people condemn any kind of authority parents have tried to impose on their kids. Thinking making a 14yo go on a family holiday as unjust, unreasonable & cruel. I’m all for giving kids freedom of choices but sometimes they’ve just got to go with the majority of family. Being inconvenienced is a part of life. Allowing your teens to opt out of big things like a family party or holiday is teaching them to be self centred & inconsiderate. No one likes to throw a party & people just not turn up because they just didn’t want to come. I always go despite not wanting to as I appreciate the anxiety of the host that people will not show.

She literally said her youngest was to begin with. I’m going to assume they learnt the hard way because mom wasn’t listening to the unjust whining

Nope absolutely nothing to do with the entertainment industry and the perks are much better than that!

Exactly this

i may as well come clean yes it is the airline industry however your other post about the perks being selling routes to junior crew is not true. Many of the gripes are simple things such as when checking into a hotel it is good manners to allow the flight deck and senior managers to get their room keys first, however many younger crew simply ignore this and push in at the front of the queue. They will disappear when we are clearing in a meal service, completely ignore calls bells, generally do as little as humanly possible! Take forever leaving crew rest therefore delaying the next crew going on their break, call in sick over xmas and new year ( while openly admitting to other crew that this is their intention). The entitlement sometimes is astounding.

Spot on

Because they told everyone, highly disgusted that they weren’t just given a day off because their hamster died!

A few viewpoints from me:

-My experience in business is that just because someone has been in a company for years doesn’t mean their opinions should be respected tbh. Some of them are great, others have really outdated ideas, are afraid of change and are really difficult to deal with.

-My experience is also that the quality and investment in training new starters has gone massively downhill in recent years.

-If you are having to do more work to make up for a colleague’s poor work quality, they need to be put on a development plan by management. This is not specific to younger people. Main 2 people i’ve seen it happen to have been in their 40s.

-I would also remember that these young people have been stuck in lockdown during key years that shaped them and many are still impacted by the effects.

I’m probably going to cause controversy here, but in my experience the people who are advanced in age but stuck in junior positions just tend not to be good at their jobs for whatever reason, hence the catty/cliquey/“time served” elitist behaviour as that is their only edge.

Personally, I don’t see people like that as having any particularly valid outlook, as if they were that valuable they’d have been promoted at some point. For me, in a work context, I’d much rather learn from the people who have actually progressed their career into a senior stage as opposed to learning bad traits from the ones bitterly left in the dust.