The age of entitlement
 

I stopped at Lowe’s on the way home from work yesterday to get some paint for my son’s school project.

I watched an interesting discussion between a manager and a young female employee.

She walks up, ‘hey I’m heading out’

He says, ‘you still have an hour left in your shift.’

She says, ‘I never took lunch.’

He says, ‘I told you to take lunch earlier.’

She says, ‘yah I know but I’m taking it now.’ And walked off.

If I was him, that would have been her last shift. I could see that he was pissed off. I was for him. I’m pretty sure he went to see his boss about the situation after because a minute or two later, he left the shelving he was working on (unfinished).

How would you handle this situation?

IT happens all the time here......our supervisors are numb to this anymore. The problem is, you fire her but you just replace her with another problem.
Work ethic and self discipline are gone in this country.

People are desperate for workers right now. A local restaurant posted on instagram, "Got a pulse? You're hired", and their only half joking.

As vaccination rates increase, me thinks we need to slow down the aid to get people motivated to go back to work.

I am old school. Start the process if she is off probation, 90 day program (or whatever it is). If on probation, boom, gone. I would rather open up a spot for the POSSIBILITY of finding someone with the right fit than to have a caustic employee infect the whole damn place. You will work just as hard with her there as without.

Call her back and have a very frank discussion with her and start with;

"I told you to take your break and you didn't, correct?"

"Correct"

"What was the reason?"

"I wanted to leave early"

"You need to tell me this before you start your shift. Tomorrow don't come in, I'll find someone else to work your shift."

Many years ago, in the good ol days of an Oklahoma oil boom, money was flowing freely and unemployment was only those that did not want to work. We ran an add in the newspaper (I said it was the old days) for some dark room employees. Thee only calls we received were from prisoners that were still incarcerated, but getting out in a few days. REALLY! Not one other person was interested.

We ended up having to go to 10 hour days for the current employees that wanted time and half for the 10 hours per week extra work.

When I was a Manager I had an unofficial policy of working through lunch in order to leave early, occasionally and for good reason with advanced notice. Of course my staff were all white collar, salaried and exempt. In this situation that guy is hog tied by whatever the policy is. If I were free to act I'd bring her in, tell her she's being docked an hours pay and present her with a written and signed memo describing the policy moving forward.

In today's environment, I think they just need to be happy someone showed up and worked at all . Everything we have all taken for granted is probably going to change in the upcoming years.
People are sick of being a slave to the man for 10 bucks an hour . I get it .
Most of us old guys came from the working generation with a strong work ethic, and even with that, it was hard to stay at ****ty jobs . Ever asked for a day off, and told no ? God, I hated that . Company says, mandatory 6 x 10 hour days. Your reward for that was ??? laid off when it got slow, a raise ?? .25 cents after busting ass all year, and going the extra mile .
Pay a living wage , with benefits, and make it so employees want to stay , perform, and climb the ladder . Otherwise, corporations are just whoring out people to make their stocks go up .

I had a young guy beg and beg me to hire him. He came in twice a week telling me he would be the best worker I ever hired. It went on for almost a month and I finally said OK you start on Monday. Be here at 8 am sharp.

Monday morning (his first day) he calls and says "his next door neighbor has to appear in court and she doesn't have a car so I'm going to take her and wait to bring her home so I might not make it to work".
I told him not to bother.... you're fired.

Great priorities.

I wonder where she was going for the late lunch?

Entitlement covers the whole spectrum of the population. Ever notice how many adds marketed to old people tell them to get "what you're entitled to" or "what you deserve"? It's old Broadway Joes fault!!

entitlement spans all generations.

I get the age of entitlement thing.
There might be 3 sides to this story.
Maybe they laid off staff and there was no way she was going to get done (or with a customer) what she had to if she took a lunch. Now she is pissed and know they won't pay her for the extra hour.
Or she is a beatch.

It's the parents' fault........

and the public school's. They teach this entitlement crap and enable them. I can't stand it.

It’s the clock watching entitlement mentality - I need to show up for 8 hours to get paid. I don’t actually need to ‘show up or do anything’ but my body needs to be in the building to meet the requirements of the job.

I hate dealing with these ‘no minds’ which I why despite my best intentions to support local, I prefer to buy online.

I was talking to someone the other day about how our shopping and retail world has changed.

Walmart put local mom and pop's out of business and brought it all under one roof.
QVC/HSN allowed shopping from your TV and phone at home.
Amazon has allowed shopping to be on your cell phone and delivered within days

What is next?

I can't make an informed decision without pictures.

But in real life my decision would come down to company policy. Being a retail store I am pretty sure they aren't on flex time, and she (maybe) violated provincial law by working X hours without Y minutes off.

She would get one good warning about a) attitude and respect, and b) follow my directions or move on. Next violation, she's gone.

Maybe it was his daughter???

You think this is a new phenomenon?
35 years ago I was training a driver to take over a delivery route. At the end of the day, he asked how typical the hours were. I advised him we were a bit slow this day as I was taking time to train him. He responded that he couldn't take the job as he had a house to work on. I didn't ask him how he planned to pay for the materials.

ya still gotta go out and get hookers and blows you lazy ass:D