It is not really a new syndrome, but it likely has gotten worse in recent decades.

My very first job started as part time when I turned 16. The very day after I graduated high school, I went full time. After 6 years of working 6 days per week I went to the boss and asked for a raise. I knew I needed more money to live. The boss refused a raise, so I gave him my two week notice on the spot.

The next Monday he had a kid there and said he was my replacement, and to teach him what my job was. The boss figured it was easy to find another guy like me. After one week, the other guy quit, he said it was too much work. So he found another kid the second week. On my last day, the other kid quit, saying it was too much work.

One of the regular customers had become a friend and he called me a month after I had moved to Oklahoma and said the boss ended up hiring the two kids to do my job. So it surly cost him more to have two employees than just me. And at my new job I started at the salary I had asked for from the old boss.

Those two employees simply did not want to work as hard as I had been, and for the first time I had Saturdays off. That first Saturday I got up and said I wonder what I will do today to fill the time. I have never asked that question since.

Weak manager, and doesn't have a grip on his store. Anyhow, set an example and fire the lil $hit.

rjp

It's a rough world hiring unskilled/low-skill positions. You walk a fine line between maintaining appropriate motivation, maintaining proper discipline, and not creating a toxic work environment.

As someone in financial services, finding the right employee to manage administrative duties has been difficult and our experience is that most people get burnt out or move on after 2-4 years in the role. Simply "firing" someone at every moment of mild insubordination creates a treadmill of reemployment, training, and higher unemployment premiums. Allowing it to continue for too long leads to errors, liability, and inconsistency.

That said, the lower you go on the pay scale, the flakier and less caring the employees become and I imagine the manager in question is stuck in a rock/hard place situation where firing the person means either not replacing them or finding someone with a similar lack of initiative and propensity towards insubordination. I also think many of us (I'm 41 - I imagine many of you are my age or older) started our careers with a promise, whether explicitly stated or not, of hard work leading to advancement even in the most mundane of positions. Even in the positions where we weren't headed towards a promotion, we knew they were building blocks to a better career and we didn't want to alienate employers or develop any reputation of poor work ethic, knowing this could affect recommendations or resumes for a future endeavor. I tend to believe that many low skilled employees (we all were this at some point, right?) don't see the same carrot anymore.

We had a young girl working here who was ridiculously slow.... I showed her how to do the job faster/easier, and her reply was "It doesn't matter how much I get done as long as I'm doing something" She was the first to get laid off when the market tanked.

We hired a new guy 3 months ago, and he's 1/2 her speed. Very overpaid for what he can do. He's already asked for a raise.

Truth.

But it’s only half the story.

On the other end, it creates a toxic work environment for a princess to behave like that and get away with it when there are others willing to work that see it.

Definitely. I hate to say it's a bit like having a toddler. You have to set boundaries and pick and choose your battles.

"It is far better to be undermanned and over motivated than vice versa."

- Me

Great story!

One of the most WTF? moments I ever had on the job was when I was performing a site inspection. I was in the warehouse checking on stock quarantine procedures. As I was crawling and climbing around the stacks I happened upon what might best be described as a "nest". Someone had cleared a space in a corner behind the empty drum stacks and lined it with flat cardboard stock. I reported it to a supervisor whose face turned a most remarkable shade of purple. Apparently someone was napping there during their shift.

I was an employer for 38 of the 40 years I was in business. The best two years were the last two, as I was semi-retired( ie working a 5 day week instead of a 7 day week) with no employees.

As a small business owner who provides a service to other small business owners, the most common item my clients tell me they hate about owning their own business is or was the employees.

Ugh. Employees. Customers. Regulations. Landlords. Everything conspiring against whatever you want/need.

I'm a man that knows his limits and I cherish my W-2. Props to all of you that do it on your own but, frankly, I'd starve!

I administer labor law. If those ten hours are in excess of 40 for the week, the required rate of pay is regular time * 1.5. If they are paid hourly, then the chances that some ex exception applies is small.

This would absolutely be unlawful. I suppose an argument could be made that 1/2 hours of pay should be deducted, but you'd have an excellent chance of losing in front of a judge and it would be silly to invest time in that dispute.

Bus I sure agree with the probably unanimous perspective here. I certainly learned some proper values. Sir. Mr and Mrs. Yes. Please. You show up early and stay late. You listen carefully and do the job assigned. Offer suggestions only occasionally and respectfully. Come up with your own assignments, based on what you see that needs to be done, and clear them with the boss before proceeding. Practice these phrases: "Yes, Sir." "Right away, Sir." "Thank you." "What would you like me to do?"

These are just my basic values, which are no longer taught. I get that. But I just wonder what the young people imagine will happen to the workers on either end of this scale. The worker who behaves as I have described above....would be what we call a "superstar" or "rock star." In my organization, everybody knows who these people are. They also know each other, because they have formed a network of people who actually get the stuff done. By collaboration and communication.

If I am the store manager and I have one of these people at the bottom of the hierarchy, I know I have someone good who I can place into the next promotional position. Meanwhile, I give them a raise. So they might stay. Every manager wants one of these people.

It should have turned purple. I have a simple expectation. Workers work. Supervisors supervise. Managers manage." Something fell apart if a worker could just go take naps.

I'm sure this is probably quite common in large warehouse-type operations. Several lifetimes ago, I worked for a short time in such a place. On my second or third day, one of my fellow 'workers' showed me a similar 'rest area' in a seldom-used store room. He said that most all the lackeys in the department used it from time to time.

Saw it at a strip-mall department store (giant pallet of bedding) and, I kid you not, in this nation's (umm, paraphrasing here) center of excellence in making very dangerous things out of manmade elements. The kind of place surrounded by angry people with guns and where you wear yellow jumpsuits and funny paper boots - or I guess until you get to the love nest through that hatch above the hallway.

Isn't it easier just to go to work, do your job and go home? (shakes cane at the clouds)

It's all a trade-off. I live a pretty nice lifestyle, but being your own boss often means having a lot of little bosses (clients). The last 14 months have been great for revenues but mental health, not so much. Hoping to rectify that with some changes soon.

Rather than read through more of this brown stuff I am gona go look at some spoon auctions to see what I can buy...while sipping my Cafe Latte made by my Salvatore...

One of my business friends had to fire someone last year.

The employees were all sent home to work, since the COVID mess. Her business is running background checks for other companies in the hiring process. Since most of the work is on the computer, it was fine to send the people to their houses. She paid for people to upgrade internet access, sent PCs home and paid for cellphone service.

One of the employee stopped returning calls and e-mails to her. She would respond to other employees, but not the boss. She finally had someone connect her and said she needed an in person meeting. At the in person meeting, the employee basically stated that since she was working out of the house, the phone and computer were now hers and that she didn't want to do work calls on the phone.

It was a WTF are you talking about moment. My friend explained that since she was paying for everything, it was company equipment. And that if she tried to contact her, that she should respond immediately during working hours unless on a company phone call. The response was something like: "I don't want to work like that.". OK, thanks for "quitting", since you just said you do not want to work in the approved manor.

I think this one was trying to get fired so that she could collect unemployment, which included the $600/wk Federal bonus at the time.

I went from 25 employees in 2006 to only me in 2011. The housing crash kicked my companies butt.

In 2007ish, I turned to my wife and said I miss the early days of my business when it was just 2-3 people. It was much easier with a lot less drama. 25 people? It was non stop drama.

In 2011 my wife reminded me of that day in 2007 and told me I got my wish.

Now business is jumping and has been for about 5 years now, I swore to never get big again.

I have 3 employees and use a ton of tech instead to make work faster and easier.

I toyed with hiring on a 4th person and I am not in the mood to even try.

I just turn work away now and keep it small.

The funny thing, in 2020 I had the most profitable year I have ever had in the last 22 years being in business. Not the most revenue, just most profitable.

The best part is we are turning more revenue now than when I had 12 people working here.

That's wonderful!

Must be the culture at Lowes to accept minimum effort from their employees.
I've never had acceptable customer service at Lowes.
Most the time no store employees are available.
Last time at Lowes I asked where to find something the answer was Lowes doesn't stock it.
Then I find it one aisle away.
never went back.

This guy's a comedian who actually worked at Ikea. Funny stuff, dealing with the public ain't easy....

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eFoWB6LLYJ4" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I have a client ( actually the whole family now ) who is in the restaurant business . I see them constantly advertising for help. They are almost begging, offering good pay, flex hours, and ways to climb the ladder .
The daughter posted this today
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1619270883.jpg

I see that type of employee too much... this is why I choose Amazon over supporting local. This video just made me mad...

What do we do with this dude and Lowe’s girl? What type of job could they actually do?

Funny thing is they all want to make 6 or 7 figures after a year or two of employment and can’t figure out why opportunities don’t fall into their laps... attitude. That’s why.

You are one of the good guys who gets it Fred. There are a lot of employers out there who don't consider their employees to be human beings. To them they are just unreliable production units to be put on line or laid off as needed for efficient production.
It's not hard to understand how some employers get this way. Some employees walk in the door with an attitude that the employer and employee are adversaries. If they come in with that attitude about all you can do is respond in kind. Likewise, if the employer comes in acting like an adversary, he'll get the same attitude back.

Dayum...

On the OP I will note that every relationship is an on-going negotiation. ...and at least the worker is putting in the hours.(adding value.)

Whereas Entitlement is more centered about getting things for who the person is, rather than value that that person provides. - I saw a story about a teacher who got fired for giving Zeros to kids who didn't turn in their assignments.

For the most part we have a meritocracy - people provide value (some provide more than others) and trade on that value. Yet today's younger generation all got participation trophies. They all seem to believe that they have merit, even w/o providing actual value. - Yesterday I watched a couple young (arrogant) Industrial Design consultants squirm in discomfort as approved the work of another on the heals of dismissing their 'contribution.' I have no doubt that they are blaming the customer for their missing the mark. Did I mention their arrogance?

Here it is..

https://www.newsweek.com/teacher-claims-she-was-fired-violating-no-zero-policy-not-giving-students-who-1137573

And now let us wonder why we have a bunch of useless entitled failures.

To be clear, as a manager my mantra is ‘If The company takes care of its employees and their families, the employees will look after the company and its customers.’ This works.

I am probably the most flexible boss you could imagine, my employees respect me and have followed me from company to company. I won’t tolerate people not getting their jobs done (without reason), continued missed milestones, or crappy attitudes.

All of my employees are salaried and I expect them to pitch in more when needed and am totally flexible with letting them take an unaccounted flex day to go skiing or do family stuff provided the work gets done - I don’t care.

When I was 16 in 1987, our town had negative unemployment. I got working papers at 15, though there were only about two places that would hire 15 yr olds then. But when I got to flipping burgers at Wendy's the next summer, I earned double the min. wage. We also had a crew of women on work release from the nearby women's prison. The grocery store had cases of stuff in aisles with signs asking people to apply for a job if they wanted those boxes unpacked.

^^^this! It's nothing new.

what are you trying to say?

Copy and pasted from another site...........

So I am at Walmart scanning and bagging my almost $300 worth of groceries while the employee that wants $15 an hour "monitors" and then this happened.
Her - why are you double bagging all of your groceries?
Me - excuse me?
Her - you are wasting our bags!
Me - if you don't like the way I'm bagging the groceries, feel free to come on over here and bag them yourself.
Her - that's not my job!
Me - okay, then I will bag my groceries how I please if that's all right with you.
Her - why are you using two bags?!
Me - because the bags are weak and I don't want the handles to break or the bottoms to rip out.
Her - well that's because you are putting too much stuff in the bag. If you took half of that stuff out and put it in a different bag then you wouldn't need to double bag.
*10 seconds of me just staring at her.
Me - so you want me to split these items in half and put half of them in a different bag so that I don't have to double bag.
Her - exactly.
Me - so I would still be using two bags to hold the same number of items.
Her - no because you wouldn't be double bagging.
*me pressing two fingers to my left eye in an attempt to make it stop twitching.
Me - okay so here I have a jug of milk and a bottle of juice double bagged. If I take the milk out and remove the double bagging and just put the milk in the single bag and the juice in that single bag I'm still using two bags for these two items.
Her- no because you are not double bagging them so it's not the same number of bags.
*me looking around at about 10 other customers who at this point are enjoying the show.
Me- is this like that Common Core math stuff I keep hearing about?
Her- never mind you just don't get it.
And with that, she went back to her little Podium so she could continue texting or playing games on her phone or whatever it was she was doing before she decided to come over and critique my bagging skills.
Author Unknown

Perhaps that they did not like to do their job?
Or perhaps that they tended to sabotage anyone who was more competent?

I had a gay manager at a fast food restaurant who was whip smart, but was passed over for promotion way too many times.
(and I do mean extremely competent)
Low key, but could fix broken piston rings with bubble gum and tweezers id he was a mechanic instead.
Every serving had to have the exact right portion even during rush and times when he was high as hell.
Food was always cooked right every singe time.
Did menu totals in his head faster than the cash machine. Knew the entire system.
Every employee shift imbalance or dispute was handled. Never any chaos or BS allowed there.
We were always busy as hell because that's how the restaurant was.

I'm trying to say that rwebb doesn't shy away from having multiple user log-ons.

But really, you said that better.

Damn, that is the perfect guy to outsource, for home assembly of the IKEA product line. You could sit with a beer and just take in the show. I assume they have a replacement policy, just in case something is damaged!

So true, we are seeing a lot of these signs in Florida.
Pretty much every bar and restaurant have these on the doors
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1623071722.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1623071722.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1623072062.jpg

I was told to take time off, and it backfired. I got fired on my day off.

Total BS. I had accrued 460 hours of comp time, I was working long hours, 16-17 hours some days, state agency.

I stayed in the same department, lateral move. The manager told me to take some time off, but call him and let him know if I was coming in that day, or that week. I did. One day I decided to go to work, and got walking papers.

Funny thing is, the boss (my mgr's boss) behind it all, said to can me. The head honcho hired me when he retired from the state and went into private business.

I then worked for him for 5 1/2 years, then one day he comes to the office with a conundrum. He was contemplating shutting down, working from home possibly, but wanted my input. He most likely didn't want to feel like he put me out, like the last time. I told him he didn't need me anymore, lets shut it down. We moved out, and that was it.

That was 15 years ago, since, we have both moved, years apart, to the same small town. Pure coincidence, I haven't seen he or his wife in 10 years, but still keep in touch.

I've worked in retail (auto parts). I was the guy that went out of his way to try to help the customer, tried to find the hard to find part, tried to ensure that they had what they needed to get back on the road. And no matter how nice and helpful you are, there's always a slew of jackasses *****ing about you, the store, the parts, trying to con you, trying to scam the store, etc.... Yes, there are some normal people that come through and appreciate what you do. There are also plenty of folks that feel entitled for you to go above and beyond, or feel that no matter how cheap something is or how helpful you've been or how much money they've saved over alternatives that they're getting screwed and they are going to gripe about it.

And that's from the customers, then as an employee, the company is trying to save money which means fewer folks working, a ****ty work environment, low pay, etc....

I was managing my own store after 2 years. My mandatory, minimum weekly schedule was 55 hours. 10 hours Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri and Sat and 5 hours on Wed. And the district manager told everyone that there was probably only one guy in the district that could realistically manage their job in 55 hours, the rest should be working at least 60. I think my usual weeks were 65-ish hours, but there were 80 hour weeks, and once or twice even more. I think I once had a week that was >100 hours. That was in 1994 for $21k/year. If they sent a new store layout that required rearranging all of the aisles/merchandise, 99% of the time managers were told "you can't increase your payroll to get this done. You have to either get your employees to work harder when they are here or you'll have to do it yourself."

We had one of those redesigns come down once. The company had paid some consultant who said "every store should be laid out identically" (which would be impressive since there were probably 100 or 150 different size and shape stores. We were given a "planogram" that showed us how to lay everything out. The planogram was designed for 48" tall shelves. We had 44" tall shelves. I was reprimanded for not getting the planogram done correctly. I was also told "in the old days, the manager would do whatever they had to do to get the merchandise in the store" which would have been in direct conflict with the "every store should look the same" goal of things.

When I was promoted, the previous manager got canned. I think I big part of it was that he did a half assed job of the weekly ordering and only had something like 85-90% of the store's total skus in stock. We had monthly sales goals. If we made the sales goals, I got a small monthly bonus. I went through the first order and had us up to the standard of something like 98-99% in stock. I got the first monthly bonus. The next month, they bumped up my goal 10%. I made that goal too. THe next month, they bumped my monthly goal up 15%, and I made that goal. After 4 months in a row of hitting the goal (full stock of items and happy employees), they bumped my goal up something like 25%. Of course, I didn't meet that goal. They left the goal there for several months. Then after a while, they dropped my goal down to just under what I'd been managing. I got the bonus, then they jacked it back up. I saw that they'd randomly increase and decrease goals to give you the occasional bonus, but make sure that you didn't get too many bonuses. It was too obviously how they'd do it, and wasn't based on a formula or history, it was arbitrary.

Retail is horrible. My dad when he retired got a job at a hardware store. It was a small old Scotty's. After he'd worked there for a while, I was visiting my parents and he had a chat with me.

When you complained about the autoparts store and quit, I thought you were being a pussy.
Now that I'm in retail and see what my store manager is doing, I realize that you were smart and I'm glad that you left. It's a crap job for crap pay.