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.