Worried about our young people's utter lack of initiative

[ThisDandyWriter]

I work for an English letting agent and every year I'm utterly shocked at our young people (ie students) utter lack of initiative/entitlement and lack of self resilience. A few examples of the sort of things that we encounter
My smoke alarm is bleeping, why is that?
The light in our bedroom has gone out, can you send someone out to change the bulb
What does a fuse board look like?
My washing machine is smelly, I think it needs replaced
This house has got a massive damp problem as water (ie condensation) is running down the windows in the mornings

We had to stop offering an 'emergency' line (which is not compulsory) because our staff were getting calls at 2am about seeing mice, light bulbs blowing, smoke alarms beeping, boiler not working (in Aug and has an electric shower).

Today a tenant has emailed to say that she's locked herself out and we need to open the office to get her a spare key.

When I was at Uni, Google wasn't a thing, so if there was an issue, I'd call my dad and try and sort it - I very rarely contacted the agency or landlord.

Today, we have all the information at a drop of a hat, but they can't be arsed to Google or try and sort something themselves and the first stop is to email (or get their mum or dad to email - don't get me started on that). The lack of initiative is genuinely worrying.

So please, if you have kids at uni - spend a bit of time with them explaining the basics!!!!

And encourage them to actually read the information they are sent - the amount of questions we are asked which is covered by information sent out (about important things like handing in your keys, how to claim back your deposit) is ridiculous!

I would seriously hope that if there is a burst pipe someone would be looking at it pretty quickly.

i’ve had that happen and the amount of water that came out and cascaded down through the ceiling was really quite something.

that was in a rented house and damn right I rang the letting agent.

We have no issue with emergency calls if they are for emergencies. Mice, bulbs etc are not emergencies.

And the lack of initiative.....the emails and calls to the agency for things they should know how fix are relentless - and takes us away from the genuine repairs.

Yep, that bit made me laugh !

Yes

Really?

Yerp - condensation is because a house or flat has a damp problem because of inadequate heating and ventilation.

Love how the landlords always blame tenants for this.

Also - mice are not 'everywhere'. Pathetic really.

I'm a lot more inclined to side with the young person getting ripped off with overpriced shitty accomodation.

There we are then,so the point of your post was ?

But you still had to go to someone, you were no more independent then some of those you are talking about. If you want to compare something to google then you should have used going to the library and getting out a book about how to do the task you needed to do. These students are using the helpline like you used your dad.

To be fair, if you google “how to fix boiler” or “what to do if you have no hot water” it suggests a whole load of things to do

quite a few of them involve knowing what a filler loop is, how to use it, how to read off the pressure in your boiler, etc etc. there’s even suggestions about diverter valves.

i’m not sure I’d want a bunch of 18 year olds trying to mess with a filling system or diverter valves.

there’s lots of kinds of boilers so even if their parents taught them how to fix one kind it won’t carry over.

Because I’m fed up of people posting that parents should be ashamed of their children reach adulthood and can’t do (thing that only an able bodied person can do)

it pisses me off

Not only that, it's highly dangerous and shouldn't be attempted unless they're gas safe registered.

I understand that and i certainly didn't want to piss you off🌺

This isn’t young people. Btw, my 13 year old could handle all those situations.

It’s people in general lacking basic life skills. Our local town facebook group has people asking for someone to come over and help them do the most inane things. Dh and I have always just sorted ourselves. Or if our dc need something, they come to us for support.

I think though that there are generations of people who just never got this and have no one to teach them these things. The people I know asking the same questions are 30s-60s and not particularly ‘young’.

I do think it’s sad when younger people don’t have parents they can go to for support. I wouldn’t necessarily expect my uni age child to know all the tricks to cleaning a washing machine. But I’d expect her to come to me as a first point of call so I could help her. There are definitely parents who don’t give a shit. Mine, for example, I’ve learned how to take care of myself because there wasn’t anyone with life skills to advise me. I do think there are increasing numbers of parents who happily wash their hands of their young adult children. But I think that’s a separate issue from people in general lacking life skills.

Yes thought so, you are a landlord and you want an easy life. Why not employ a handy person to resolve these issues for your tenants, although this will eat into your huge profits. No sympathy from me.

Lastly, since when were landlords allowed to age discriminate against their tenants? You have just made a huge sweeping, disparaging statement about a group of people but are quite happy to take their money. I’m sure this whole set up is very financially beneficial to you and your family so perhaps just shut up, stay legally compliant and get on with your job.

I work for a student landlord and am on the rota for out of hours contact. Some of the things I’ve been woken up for in the early hours are:

Sky sports isn’t working and the boxing is about to start - we don’t supply Sky so this a private contract between tenants and Sky.

There’s a spider on the tumble dryer so they can’t get their clothes out and we need to send a maintenance contractor immediately.

Parent of student tenant at 8pm on a Sunday night - has just called his son to find out he’s having takeaway pizza for the third time this week and that’s not healthy so what do I propose to do about it.

Lightbulb has gone in bedroom (one of a three bulb fitting so still 2 working) and it breaks health and safety regs to ask them to change it themselves.

Freezer is not working - asked tenant to check it’s not been accidentally unplugged. Tenant insists it’s definitely plugged in but sends photo of socket with plug in but power switch off. Tenant insists this is landlords fault and socket must be faulty. Miraculously when switched on freezer works again for remainder of tenancy.

On the flip side at least 80% of my student tenants are actually really capable and have been launched effectively by their parents. You can always tell early on which haven’t had adequate ‘real life’ preparation and I see it as part of my job to handhold this 20% for the year. I do however wish they kept more normal office hours and didn’t wake me up at stupid o’clock so often.

And the minority is also like this in their university studies as well. "Oh, did I have to register for that module?"

I am regularly asked in lectures & seminars "Have you got a pen?" They turn up with nothing except their water bottle. Which they leave behind.

Smoke alarms - nope, tenant responsibility @ThisDandyWriter I rent, and I disagree.
I agree about general maintenance, changing batteries, vacuuming to avoid dust accumulation, and so on, but I will not replace them, as they need to be wired into the mains (the battery is a backup). If I mess that up, they will have a fried tenant and also the landlords insurance may well be affected by an unapproved alarm being installed.

If you don't want to deal with tenants, letting may not be the business for you?

Surely if they're in the sort of place where you can easily lock yourself out, a 20£ keysafe would solve this? Or are they banned in student accom?

When I was at uni, 25 years ago, I shared a house with a woman. I went away for the weekend, Friday night to late on Sunday. When I returned home, the house was pitch black. My housemate was really relieved I was home. She said we needed to call an electrician and the letting agency. I was pretty alarmed. About 20 minutes after I left on Friday, the electricity had turned off. Since then she had failed to call anyone (letting agency, her parents, another friend) and instead sat in the dark all weekend.

I walked to the under stairs cupboard, flipped the breaker switch and low and behold, we had electricity again.

I honestly couldn't believe it. I lost all respect for her.

I had a landlord in a shit, non-student flat in the early 90s. Same story, the place got full of mould all up the walls and he said “can you install a Vent-Axia?” The other tenant in the flat across the hall had been there 15 years and done the place out all at his own cost, he was desperate to buy it but the landlord wouldn’t sell, just let him spend his own money doing it up. So expected us who’d been there 2 months to do the same.

It was a conversion, the boiler broke, it was outside our flat in a bathroom over a bath and although the bathroom appeared completely unused no heating engineer would touch it because they would be liable if someone used the bath and died due to fumes. We’d had no heating or hot water for 7 days. I’ll always remember, I called him at home, his wife answered, when I begged for him to come round to sign the waiver so the engineer could fix the boiler she said “But we’re off to Devon!”

Sorry to delay your weekend break at your second home dear, but we are freezing in winter in your substandard accommodation.

When we moved out after 6 months minimum tenancy, he painted it white and let it out again. It was always the tenant’s fault that the place ran with mould. Our clothes all rotted away. He was a solicitor. I hope he got fucking struck off but he’s probably worth millions now.

Oh cut them some slack. Everybody has to learn and we don’t all start working in the cotton mills at the age of three. We forget what it was like.

Go onto Instagram and look for Chip Leighton, @ the leighton show if you want a laugh about US teenagers learning about life.

My point is that the first response nowadays (from a lot of students) is to ask first and not try and work things out.

Like many such 'kids nowadays' posts, you're comparing what you did - as one individual who wasn't a landlord back then so only know your own v limited view - with what all 'our young people' are doing now. Which is a bullshit way to see the world. You've no idea back then how many kids did or didn't 'have initiative', nor how many older people had it either. You're currently in a job that you find frustrating, as jobs dealing with people of all ages often are, and are having a moan about it, which is fine. But that doesn't make this some profound truth. Really it falls it to basic cliche bucket of 'things were much better in my day, especially things I did'.

The number of people on this thread who think all houses should magically extract all moisture without any human intervention is staggering.
If you are undertaking an activity that generates excessive moisture - cooking, showering, drying laundry - you might actually have to engage your brain and I don’t know, open a fucking window or two to generate a through-draught to extract it. The number of people who think they can keep all the windows shut and heretically seal themselves in and them complain about condensation…the mind boggles.
Obviously OPs point extends beyond students..

if you are renting you would need to get landlord approval to put a key safe up and the answer to any landlord request is usually no.

(to be fair they are very insecure. If my dd left her key she rang one of the other people in the flat).

They aren’t being asked to fix things. Just not make “emergencies” out of things that go wrong.
Things going wrong happens literally all the time - life, jobs bodies, houses. Being able to solve them is a good thing. Encouraging problem solving skills is a positive.