He11 I am the first one to raise my hand and proudly proclaim that I am an idler, loafer, malcontent, shirker and slacker....

Working in a Union the guys like to brag about how little they are doing...since merit isn't a measure of success but seniority rules, working extra hard means nothing.

Which is different than working as an individual where the merit of efficiency and competence rules. Now in the Grocery biz they have Incentives for extra pay...and those former idlers and slackers run like scalded dogs after that carrot.guys that did nothing now are out performing. The only problem is that the company controls the standards of performance. Where over time they have slowly tightened the screws...and believe me they have...

A friend told me that you cant make 20 years anymore, your body will give out. That the guys come in a swill down the Red Bull and pills so that they can run hard all day long to make the extra dinero.

Then you have the politics and corporate culture of the organization to contend with. Being successful in that realm is far more important than merit.

As an aside my friend works for Stater Brothers and has about 35 years in, he had just gotten to be number 29 on the seniority list...The number one guy in seniority was 88 years old and been there for over 50 years. He does all the OT that they will give him.

Not so fast vodka breath. I have an answer. It won't happen overnight but it will happen.

First, some parents train their children to be workers instead of takers in order to succeed. This includes breaking the cycle of generations being satisfied with living in slums and getting a gubmint check. Next, being a go-getter will be the new college degree. Or in other words there will be an eventual paradigm shift and employers will look at who you are rather than where you went to school. Eventually, junior will get advice from the guidance counselor on how to get ahead by being smart and yet hard-working instead of shoving everyone into the you need a degree mindset. It may take a while but the pendulum will swing.

Sure there will always be Harvard brats and community organizers with enough money to run for president but in the business world there will be a shift.

Unfortunately, the gap from rich to poor will widen and then the bleeding heart socialist folks will push for the everyone gets a trophy attitude again and we'll go back to taking another lap around the desert for 40 years.

You have forgotten about the social nature of humans...and how well you maneuver yourself in the org that wins the day rather than competence alone.

Then with large bureaucratic orgs, there is no distinguishing one ant from another..they are all expendable.

Geezus for a decade or more now I have been proclaiming that the US was going to return to the mean of a 1910 economic demographic...Few Robber Barron's, smallish MC and large working poor class.

The economic circumstances that made it otherwise no longer exist. American labour no longer has a monopoly on being the only labour market in town. Now foreign workers and technology via for the same jobs.

You will work for less if you are hungry. so far govt largess has picked up the slack. when the govt can't do that anymore...guess what..

I’m going to offer a somewhat different set of observations. I’m going to assert that, in many ways, the Millennials aren’t all that different from their parent’s generation.

First some observations; The members of this Board are not a cross section of society. Almost everyone on this site is at least 1 standard deviation above the mean IQ, and a healthy percentage are 2 sigma above the mean. Many contributors here are Boomers (55 or older), so they were mainly raised by parents who grew up during the Depression. So, those depression era parents taught their children the value of hard work, doing without, etc., as has been articulated by so many already in this thread. However, the Gen Xers on the Board are similarly above the mean, and not a cross section of society. So, one would expect the PPOT crowd to achieve career success well above the mean.

While we all banter about lazy underachievers blah, blah, blah, we are discounting that half of the population is below the mean intellectually. The great Society envisioned by LBJ helped launch an environment where America would support the less fortunate. Well, that’s fine, except that Great Society is like Entropy – ever increasing the percentage of energy in a system that is not available for work. So, our society, in general, has set up circumstances that are favorable for an increasing segment of our society to not produce useful work. The entropy in our society was much lower in the depression and moving forward, until the Great Society programs put a charge into the “Societal entropy”. So, slackers and F-ups found their toehold and were tolerated by society in a way they weren’t previously tolerated.

Now in reality the theory of Entropy is only valid for closed systems, and the US (or any other westernized country) is not a closed system. So bringing new energy into the system (immigrants, advancement in technology, etc.) added energy and efficiency, so this has masked the effects of the rate of growth of our “Societal Entropy”.

When I was growing up in the late 60’s/early 70’s I came across plenty of slackers and F-ups. I didn’t choose to hang out with them, but they were plentiful enough. I went to college, earned a degree, while working part time, and got a full time job after graduation. Much like many Members of the PPOT. Other folks who wanted to earn a solid living took other paths; trades, starting their own business, etc. Meanwhile the slackers & F-ups did what slackers & F-ups do. So my generation self-defined their future and self-separated. A portion of the generation stayed flat (slackers), and another portion grew their careers, and their contribution to society.

My assertion is every generation (at least starting with the Boomers) goes through a bifurcation. A nature sorting out of the producers and non-producers in a generation. The “get off my lawn” crowd here on PPOT is fond of looking down on the current generation that is going through its bifurcation and ragging on them for being lazy & unmotivated. I don’t believe that Millennials are more prone to this than prior generations, at least not in a statistically significant way. Older Millennials dealt with the job market brought on by the Great Recession. Seems understandable to look at the acquisition of material wealth with some skepticism. The corporation I work for hires talented people, and those talented Millennials, in-general, exhibit less “loyalty” than the Boomers, manifested in a desire to job-hop more than their parents. Now, one could assert the corporations led with benefit reductions that show employees the corps aren’t as loyal to the employee’s. More bottom line focus on corp profits (i.e. very low % of Fortune 500 Cos offering defined benefit plans – Pensions).

I do find that Millennials typically are looking for more feedback than us Boomers, they typically want to know “why” they are being assigned tasks, and they typically need more help “connecting the dots” for how their efforts will make a difference, because that matters more to them. They typically are looking for more “work/life” balance than Boomers. Those generational tendencies don’t mean Millennials are lazy and unmotivated. So as the saying goes “you get what you incentivize”.

I’m guessing if drug testing was as common place 40 years ago as today, we’d find lots of Boomers that grew up in the 60s/70s (tie dye clothes, granola, bongs) would have also failed drug tests.

Certain processes are not reversible, i.e. the cliché “you can’t unscramble an egg”. So we need to figure out how to help guide the Millennials toward the career growth fork in their generation’s bifurcation. There well may be more confused Millennials than Boomers perceive from their generation at the same age, so it’s up to us to help them mature in positive ways.

My youngest son graduated from college this spring. He work hard, managed his time well, picked a major than would likely provide employment opportunities in our current economy. He chose between offers and started his first job 10 days after commencement. Six weeks later he closed on a nice starter house in the Denver market. He asked his parents for advice, but no money. He did all this on his own. Now, he is similar to the PPOT crowd, in that his ability is well above the mean of society. Our other children have made their own decisions, and are doing just fine. So, my sample of younger employees, children, nieces, nephews, and their friends shows some scatter, but reasonably positive reflection of the Millennial generation. There is nephew who is firmly in the slacker mold, and a couple others who should be fine, but not lighting the world on fire. So, perhaps not much than their parent’s generation?

I could keep writing, but out of time. My 2 cents to offer a different perspective.

Human nature does not change from generation to generation...there are going to be winners and losers...(I love that little bit of being judgmental)..

I would say that the values of every generation morphs along...as they see the pitfalls and foibles along with successes of the previous gen. Adapting to changing circumstances.

The circumstances have changed in the US, formerly employed people who only have the intellectual capacity to work in factories don't have MC jobs available to them no matter what. As Peterson says ya can't train mentally challenged people. Also it is apparently the displaced Boomers who are hitting the opoids to alleviate their growing despair.

One thing that has been starkly clear from the get go about this Board is that the people who populate it are for the most part rather intelligent and motivated. As time has marched on I have learned that they still lack awareness and are ignorant gits...

As parents they teach their children the same values that they have..for better or worse. Ohh yah one of my favorites is that Hitler was fond of saying, "That today's generation just are not made of the same stuff as the old generation." That is a perinneal complaint of older gens. He11 I had to walk through 5 miles of snow and sleet to go to school...with no shoes....and according to Dad he had to walk 10 miles...why todays kids get to ride in their own Lambo.

https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-opposite-of/intelligent.html

What is the opposite of intelligent?
.
dark
dull
ignorant
normal
old
stupid
typical
unaware
uncreative
uneducated
unimaginative
unintelligent
uninventive
unreasonable
unresourceful
worn
foolish
idiotic
imbecile
.
~~~~~~~~~
Hmmm..........
.
.
git - noun
1. a contemptible person, often a fool
2. a bastard
~~~~~~~~~
Hmmm......

Back in the early 90s, I worked for a retail parts place that was doing well, but over extended themselves trying to grow and were purchased by Advance, I'm pretty sure.

I started at $4.50/hr in 1992. A few months later, the district manager saw me working with a customer to find a hard to find part for an old car and told the manager to give me a raise. I went to $5.50/hr. I worked my way up and after a little over 2 years, I was a manager. I think I had been making $7.something an hour, and when I got promoted, I was paid $21k/yr plus bonuses. The first 3-4 months, I nailed the sales goal and made the sales bonus (and the expenses bonus), so they finally jacked the sales goal up to an artificially high number so I couldn't touch it and left it that way for a few months. Then they'd drop the number down so I could hit it once or twice, then they'd raise it again. It was REALLY obvious that they were changing my goal in order to only pay me a certain amount of bonus. I was able to get the controllable expenses bonus most months. I think the first year, I made about $25k or $26k. I didn't feel too bad about that level of pay at the time. For a young kid, I was doing OK.

What I didn't like, was the fact that as a manager, my set schedule was 55hrs per week. Mon, Tue, Thur, Fri, Sat were 10 hour days and Wed was a 5 hour day. I was also told that most managers couldn't do the job in that amount of time, and I should expect to work 60-65hrs/week. I did. I actually enjoyed a lot of aspects of the job and had a bunch of great folks working for me. I usually put in anywhere from 60-75hrs/week depending upon what was going on. When we were given extra work, like rearranging the store, we were told that we couldn't increase the hours that the hourly employees were working and if more hours were needed, we needed to put those hours in ourselves.

When my dad retired, he went to work part time at a Scotty's hardware. The manager was 40-ish with a couple of daughters. Dad said the guy was making something like $25-30k per year. Before long, they cut his pay to $21k per year, and eventually Scotty's closed. My dad said that guy busted his butt. He told me one time that I was visiting him that he thought when I told him the retail auto parts job was crap and no way to live, that I was just being a pussy. But then after working at Scotty's, he was actually really glad that I'd left that behind.

Really, 1-2%? That seems extra low. I have no idea what the margins were when I was in the auto parts business, but I do know that when I was in college and working in a grocery store that they usually made 4%, and they had once hit 10% and that was such a big deal that they had shirts made for all of the employees.

It's too late at that point for me. "Hey, if you're going to leave, I'll give you another 30%" (I had that experience once). Not only was it too little, but it was also too late. You've already shown me that you're willing to screw me as long as I let you, so screw you.

THIS ^

The OP claims In addition to Patrick's point, many business can raise wages ONLY if they raise prices. Which will decrease the number of customers, which will decrease the number of employees needed.

It all balances out. Many small businesses will go under. New ones will pop up.

But this meme of Businesses are just being cheap is ridiculously simplistic. Sure, some are. Most work on thin margins.

Yep fools is about right. You may have lots of hp under the hood but putting it to the ground is another thing. Have you listened to yourselves?

I just wanna put my fingers in my ears and start chanting nah nah hah nah to drown out the idiocy. How you come up with some of this rhetoric is beyond me.

Dude - you make way too much sense to be hanging out here!

D has lots of good observations but needs to pull them together to be more concise. It was a bit hard trying to pull out central points.

I would have to disagree a bit. When I entered the job market in the 70's, it was much worse in my area than the recent recession. That did not give me the luxury of staying home in Mommy's basement playing video games and watching TV for a decade...waiting for better times. I had to get out and get a job and support myself (and eventually my own family). My parents never gave me a penny after my mid teens. By the time I entered my 30's, I had worked 15 years, provided for a wife and kids for a decade and had over 10 years of service in the military. I had bought several homes (to live in as i followed my work to different areas) and still owned a couple (rental). I had gone to school at night and weekends and worked multiple jobs to pay for it (or worked nights and weekends while I went to school in the daytime). ..and earned a couple of degrees.

Whether it is the fault of parents or the fault if millennials...or both, is hard to say...but we have had depressions and recessions before...and everyone just rolled up their sleeves and worked harder. The current mentality seems something new. the fact that a guy who walked to worked in a post above received national attention, thousands of dollars and a new car tells me that the change is huge. That would have not even been noticed (or rare) when I was a young man. I used to walk/hitchhike 20-30 miles late at night just to get home after attending extracurriculars at school at 14 and older) and walked almost 6 miles each way to my first real job at 14. Of course I walked even farther (alone) to work in the fields when I was younger than that...but it was not every day...only when they needed extra help early and late in the growing season. The entire premise that we have jobs that Americans will not do (so we need illegals) while so many are unemployed and/or on social welfare tells me something is bad wrong.

I am dubious that there is a link between intelligence and work ethic. If you have ever had any interaction with mentally challenged people, you would not think so either, almost like they are trying to make up for not being as sharp as the other guy. I have known a lot of brilliant wastrels in my life, and am sure all of you have too.

Never in my life have I read/heard that word. Had to look it up.
.
wastrel
.
1.literary
a wasteful or good-for-nothing person.

2.archaic
a waif; a neglected child.

I thought it was a typo

For Tabs benefit here are the key themes summarized:

The PPOT contributors are not a cross section of society. PPOT is biased high in terms of intelligence, life accomplishments, and expectations for themselves and others. Most are very hard working and have applied themselves well. I make no assertion that intelligence and work ethic are linked. Only that above average intelligence provides a foundation for capability above the societal mean. What one does with their intelligence is up to the individual. So, PPOT members view the world through their personal lens of experience and intellectual analysis.

Those individual lenses inject a bias on how we perceive others. Furthermore, many people exhibit selective memory of past events or their role in past successes or failures. That’s how we get stories of grandparents that walked 5 miles to school in the snow, and it was uphill both ways. So this leads many to look at the youth of today and lament our society is filled with lazy unmotivated, drug induced stupor, slacker Millennials.

I like the notion that Millennials challenge the status quo and rebel against behaviors and values that don’t align with their current perceptions of personal values. I know I challenged lots of things in the world around me as I matured. I now realize I was exhibiting critical thinking but didn’t know how to express my perspective to others. Personal responsibility develops in individuals at different rates; some early, some later, some not ever (in the case of my sister, she is brilliant and sadly an unmotivated loser that blames everyone but herself for her woes).

Our current society has a problem with what I am calling “Societal Entropy”. The Millennials need to sort through the bombardment of political correctness and “nanny state” socialistic politics circulating around them. Is anyone right if everyone is wrong? Will that cause this generation to take longer to sort through their personal ethos – perhaps.

Some will opine the loss of manufacturing jobs as an irreversible death spiral for the US economy. Keep in mind that around 2/3 of jobs in the US are still created by small business. It’s not my place to tell a small business owner who to hire, but perhaps there is merit to helping coach Millennial job candidates towards the “make yourself indispensable” and your pay will follow approach to job satisfaction. Small business is still a big lever in our economy.

So my message is, let’s be open minded, and help mentor & coach the Millennials we interact with, and help them on their life’s journey. For, they may be not very different from you or I.

I attribute whatever financial success I had in my 34 yr. business as a fear of what might happen to me otherwise.
As Nathaniel Brandon said in his book, The Six Pillars of Self Esteem, "No one is coming."
I felt "fathered" by his book.

I got my first job wile I was in high school, as a 11th grade Junior. I went to work for a family business. That taught me a lot of the photography business, but I left when he could not pay me 12K per year in 1977. That is the equal of 51 grand per year now. I moved to Oklahoma and started and 12K per year. He was a great boss, but I was never getting rich working for a family. I went to work for other family businesses, and only one was truly generous with raises and bonuses. I have never worked in "corporate world" and dealt with layers of management. If I ever had a question or problem, I went right to the owner of the company.

Now I own a company of my own. I have a real jerk for a boss, he makes me work late, on weekends, no overtime, and he make me mow the yard at his house. I have to wash his car and his wife's car. I have to do my real job and also all the household chores. I get even with him by sleeping with his wife, and drinking his beer. My commute is just 12 steps down the hall and I can listen to my music at work all day.

Our company is growing and I see the future looks bright. Like every company I want more business. I am a greedy capitalist that sunk money into starting a company to keep working.