We found out you are stressed at work....so you won't be stressed you're fired.

#3
if you are not valued at work....and you stay....it's your fault. years past, with a tight job market, i understand. but right now, the employee has the upper hand. being loyal to a company that mistreats you is something older people have become familiar with and just accept it. you shouldn't.
the kids these days will show up to work, and a week later quit and bounce to another employer who offers more. i hear people bitch about it. but there is a lesson there. if a kid with no experience can find a better paying job, then so can people with the experience.
people get comfortable and don't like change. but complain about things. take action. it's better now than it's ever been. if you accept it, it is 100% your fault.
 
#6
As an employer, it's worse than it's ever been, and not for the reason you've described. Everyone under about 40 is absolutely useless. Zero work ethic, zero motivation, ambition, desire to learn or be better, and everything is about them. They think the world revolves around their desires. We did a shit job raising this generation, (I participated with 4 between 26-31). We made completely ineffective humans. There are obviously exceptions, and I don't want to hear your opinion of your own kid, we get it, he's great. Oh, and if they are over 40, they are about 10% better. The American workforce has never been more pathetic.
 
#7
The reason people were better motivated in the past is war. The farther in time from war, the less motivation. Post WW2 people were excited and motivated to succeed. They had pride in their work. They were looking forward to retirement and a pension. They could afford cars and houses. Different times. Today, democrats have debased the work force to the point of no return. Thats what communism did in Eastern Europe. Thats why communism doesn’t work. That’s where we are today. Communism in a new wrapper.
 
#10
I'm not an employer, but a technical manager, and for the past few months I've been interviewing candidates for a Jr and Sr position on my team. On the whole, I am not at all impressed with the quality and technical abilities of people I have interviewed. The resumes all read great, they are all passionate and motivated employees with a great technical skills passionate about developing and designing systems with strong problem solving skills...

Until the technical assessment phase of the interview. And this is just the phone screen portion, I only ask (IMO) basic to maybe intermediate questions that require hands-on fundamental knowledge. I've interviewed Sr level (by years in service) candidates who couldn't successfully answer all the basic questions. Nearly all of them give the same answer to a particular question, which while it works, shows they never moved beyond a surface level understanding, and never read the documentation for a better way of doing it.

I had one guy take the phone (video call) interview for the Sr position ( $100k+++, bonus, free daily lunch, all insurance costs paid) while driving, possibly for rideshare service. Had another guy accept the Jr position, then emailed the day before he was supposed to start, that he took another offer.

It's pretty difficult to find smart, capable hard-working employees. Maybe it's always been like this, but this is the experience I have with it.
 
#11
You actually hit on another point that l left out, and you approached it gently, but I'll hit it with a hammer: they are liars. All of them. They lie extensively about their capabilities. I don't even expect people to know that much when I hire them, but I want to pay them for their capabilities, so I ask them about particular skills and experience, and they've all done everything, know everything, and can do anything. I'll hand them all a couple of pieces of paper and a pen and ask them to start drawing how they would build something, and to a man, at a ratio of 19 of 20 interviews or so, they will take that pen and piece of paper and confidently draw something that proves without a doubt that they not only have no idea what they are talking about, but that they are perfectly comfortable lying directly to your face with a confident smile. It's enough to make you sick..
 
#12
This is what I call a 'Are you with me, or are you just not sure yet' moment.

I had a friend who was a 'clean up man' (axe man). The first thing he would do is come in and fire the site manager. Then he would hold individual meetings with every employee and explain his vision of where he was taking the company. At the end he would ask a simple question, 'are you with me, or are you just not sure yet?'. If you answered I'm with you, he shook their hand and welcomed them aboard. If you just weren't sure yet, he opened the top desk drawer and handed you your final paycheck.

Harsh??? Absolutely, however it got rid of those who weren't committed. His thought was it was better to struggle for a few weeks being understaffed than it was to keep the deadwood onboard until you fired them anyway.

Be sure and tell this to you employees. When one of them starts whining or complaining, just use the magic words, 'Are you with me, or are you just not sure yet'.
 
#13
Another problem that kills motivation: You work for a company. They pay you well. They develop some high tech bullshit. A huge tech company buys them for a billion dollars and you get laid off.
 
#14

Maybe if it's 19 out of 20 failing your little test, you're the problem?

Maybe your question is shit?

You should likely be doing exit interviews and getting honest feedback from your applicants. Because either way, you need to understand why rather than be frustrated at them.

Confidence and cockiness is a trademark of any person fresh out of school. They think they just finished learning everything.

You can choose to stick your head in the sand but it's been going on for a few generations now. "Go to college and you'll know everything to get a great high paying job!"
 
#15

People always gloss over this part.

My pops lived like a king on 4$ an hour back in the 70s. Another guy I talked to was making 5$ an hour in the military as a sergeant or something and he and his wife owned two homes in Southern California. Today you'd probably have to make 50-60$ an hour to get anywhere close to that standard of living.

The American Dream is becoming the American Nightmare.
 
#17
Maybe if it's 19 out of 20 failing your little test, you're the problem?

Maybe your question is shit?

You should likely be doing exit interviews and getting honest feedback from your applicants. Because either way, you need to understand why rather than be frustrated at them.

Confidence and cockiness is a trademark of any person fresh out of school. They think they just finished learning everything.

You can choose to stick your head in the sand but it's been going on for a few generations now. "Go to college and you'll know everything to get a great high paying job!"

I can understand why you might think that, but you have no context, so you're making superman leaps there. I own a construction company, we build commercial, residential and industrial, remodels and renovations. I will have people apply for my positions, and they will tell me that they've built houses from the ground up, done years of renovation work, bla bla bla. My drawing test is that I draw them a simple 8' tall wall outline, 24ft long, I then draw a door and two windows, then I ask them to draw the Framing. I tell them not to worry about scale or making it pretty, just show me where the wood goes.

18 out of 20 of them don't know what a header is. I could have done this before I was 12 years old. I don't give a shit about their opinion on exiting my interview.
 
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#18

I remember my boss telling me he bought his first house for $13k. This was in the late 70’s. I thought for the next ten years I would never be able to buy a house. Luckily my employment offers multiple avenues for motivation.
 
#19
I could probably do that test except for diagonal bracing stuff. When I was young my family and I would go on walks through houses being built in the neighborhood and critique the choices especially what seemed like wasted space.
 
#22

Yeah OK that's pretty bad

Honestly I feel your pain

Was helping my parents build their house here in AZ and the amount of dumbfuckery I had to deal with was nuts

There have been several times I had to draw pictures of say a gable vent or explain what a plumbing trap is to people who have supposedly been doing this stuff for 20 years
 
#23
I saw the same bla, bla in the welding industry......You came in for (3) weld tests, maybe one should brag after your done, not before....Other employees would start clucking like a chicken when they saw the first test plates....Tester didnt know what they were making fun of..(Hey!..anybody see a big white bird run thru here?!?)
 
#25
Craftsmanship as a whole issue disappearing in all trades. There aren't people alive on earth today who could rebuild the cathedral at Notre Dame, and while that's an extreme example, there are almost 0 people alive today who can duplicate the trim work in a 100year old home. Things that were done with hand tools can't be done with $50k in woodworking machinery. People largely refuse to focus on anything. They lack any desire to become great. There is no sense of pride. When I build something, I want everyone who sees it, even a century later to know that I was great at my craft, and spent the time on the details to get as close to perfection as possible. I pay 20%+ more than any of my competitors, and I treat my employees like men. I respect them and am interested in their development not only in the building trade, but also in life. I help them way beyond a paycheck. I mentor them and I care about them.

And I could do 10x as much work as I'm currently doing, (my phone rings all day long with zero advertising), and stay booked for months and turn down work almost daily. It's really sad.
 
#26
This company is simply trying to get out from under from what they see as probable lawsuits. Not sure of the demographics but appears to be a female company. These disgruntled females are filing more and more suits and getting ridiculous awards

They probably also realized that these pms-ing cat-fighters had poisoned the company cultural well.

The remedy: a public mass head lopping. Those left behind will hopefully work harder to keep their heads and play nice.

Bravo in my opinion……Bravo!

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#27

I was raised by my grandparents, my grandfather whipped my ass with a switch a couple of times and once with a garden hose, I was pretty damn motivated after that.
 
#28
As a very experienced and objectively effective hourly worker at my level, I find I am constantly expected to conduct myself as management in terms of representing the company, while trying to BS enough billable hours from clients to cover the cost of my wage. Most of what I do is babysitting workers that do silly risky shit through inattention or poor planning, or workers that expect me to carry their bags because they are “doing me a favor” (direct quote) by coming in on Saturday for $100/hr to sit in a machine.
 
#29
I used to do custom millwork. My mom still lives in an old farmhouse built in the late 1800s. I spent a fair amount of time looking at the woodwork and figuring how to duplicate it.
I think I could do it, but it would cost a fortune.

My parents altered a window, and asked if I could make the casing to match. At that point I wasn’t yet trained to grind custom molder knives, and they didn’t want to spend the money that would cost for one window.

50k in machinery doesn’t go very far when talking about this kind of work.
 
#30
I was trying not to sound crazy. The truth is that, for those who know, $200k is easy to spend on equipment and tooling to create elaborate custom woodwork. I figured if I said that, people would think I was exaggerating.
 
#31

Late 80s I had some shafts and pins I needed repaired and a set of dozer tracks I need pinned and bushed. On my way to the repair shop for the tracks I noticed a welding/fabrication sign hanging on a nice pipe pole. I decided to stop to get a quote for the shaft and pin repairs and was told to find the shop foreman. I was wearing grease stained jeans and boots and soon found the foreman. He screamed at me I was late, thru me a helmet and gloves and told me to lay down a stitch, seam and vertical welds and then cut a 2" chunk off the 1" plate.

When I finished he told me I was a little rough, but he'd give me a chance. I looked him and said I didn't need a job but was needing to get some work done. He thought I was f'n with him.

While unloading the shafts and pins, he said he couldn't find anyone who was capable or willing to work.

I can attest to the younger generation's work ethic, I have neither the time nor patience to put up with it. I can't fire them, but I can make their lives miserable when they find their assignment to me. I have a 2 day warm up period, after that, it usually results in them requesting a transfer to a different department or for someone to rein me in, rarely results in their job getting easier.
 
#33

My daughter is a Architect and 40 years old. She's a upstanding person and was raised to have moral values. She's one of those people that was grown up by the time she was 15 and was almost 4.0 through high school and never got into any type of trouble. She had a free ride scholarship through college but still worked part time through it.

Thrust into the corporate world she was astounded how bizarre people acted during her various employments through the years.
By this I mean her first boss kept telling her he'd give her a raise until finally she found another job 2 years later. He resisted giving her time off and would not give her leeway to use her updated skills from recent education vs the old ways, and the old ways took longer. She also had to threaten legal action to get money she was owed which required hiring a lawyer. No win situation.

The next job required moving a cross the country. It was a large firm, she made friends there, made much more money, but her direct female boss was a lying manipulator of psychotic proportions. Her friends at work would rat on the boss's backhanded shenanigans so my daughter started keeping records of the wrongs. This boss had great influence because she was a relative of one of the Co heads so going through HR was a joke and this crazy bitch built alliances with other employees to such a degree that my daughter was forced out. However since my daughter had kept records and threatened legal action she got a severance.

She seriously thought about abandoning her career and took a few years off doing side work.

The next job in her field, which she had been at for almost two years, but recently also was laid off from, wasn't much better but the problems were quite different. She had a decent boss this time though this boss didn't have much influence with the Co. The Co was super overextended on work and time lines to the point my daughter was working 60 - 80 hours a week on salary. They also promised raises and bonuses which never came.

I'll just keep it short. Most of her younger fellow employees had so many mental and emotional problems that the main jist was that nearly all of them were clawing their way to the top so hard that it seems they would resort to any manipulation they could think of to shirk responsibility or to throw each other under the buss if at all possible. She said it was like herding cats and rather than help each other they avoided working as a team as much as possible. Everything took longer, everyone was unhappy, the higher up's didn't reprimand, so, no help and no hope.
The icing on the cake was my daughter was tasked with responsibilities she wasn't even trained for herself but expected to do anyway. Yeah sure, learn new programs, while herding cats, work all weekend long, without promise of financial progression.
No I've actually never seen her so stressed before.

Me, I'd rather live in the woods alone than go through that BS for money.
 
#34
There are a lot factors in this scenario, heres another one. In 1946 the US population was less than half of what it is today. There are a lot of useless people in the country now.
 
#36

It hasn't worked with the majority of the general population in the past 30yrs.

The problems are like someone previously mentioned, it's a failure of the generation raising these worthless asshats. There are no consequences and no one is forced to accept responsibility.

Parents and government alike start whipping that ass and quit coddling these useless fuckers and force them to be responsible for themselves and shit will change, until then, it will be a no harm no foul mentality with them.

I am old, grumpy and damn sure don't have the patience for any of it, I have a scorched earth mentality when it comes to useless individuals. It will ultimately be my downfall in the world in which we live.
 
#37
Accountability. The actual dark force that drives people to be democrats, if you actually think about it, is a lack of consequences for your actions.

Got pregnant, don't want it? no consequences, we will kill it for you

Don't have the drive and discipline to support yourself? don't worry, we will take care of you.

Don't feel like obeying the law?
No problem, we will fight to keep you from answering for your crimes.

You can go line by line down the issues, and that's actually what they are selling, a world without accountability.
 
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#38
Goodness gracious. I am an electrician and I know what a header is. Then, again, I was swinging hammer and putting a bunch of wires under one wire nut (JK), so I was around stuff. Makes me think your applicants never actually worked in construction.

Even annoying to me were new green horns on the job thinking they were ready for management. Seriously, this was their first job as an apprentice or electrician's helper. After 30 days working on a new school, they were ready to have a "crew of their own." The answer to that would be "no."

Part of paying your dues is making mistakes and learning from then and so you can help others avoid them.

Or guys who think that reading a book is everything. I knew a guy who went to trade school and while in that school, you could take the journeyman test (before 2002.) He passed it first time. He just wasn't good at construction work.

He was bragging about his test results as well as his prior 60 hours in college. The job boss said, "okay, mister journeyman, anchor the tugger to the floor."

So, he grabbed a hammer drill and a bit and drilled a hole. Then took another bit and made the hole larger. And then his wedge-it anchor would not grab. This happened a few times and I could not stand it any longer. (By this time, I was a journeyman. But I got a master license in 2002.)

"Do you mind?" I asked.

I took an anchor and matched it in size to one bit. Drilled one time straight down. Dropped an anchor and hammered with the striking pin. Smack, smack, smack ...ping." It was set. I did 3 of them. We were pulling power in the kitchen panels. But he thought he was ready to be in charge of a building.
 
#39
My youthful arrogance delayed my progress at times in my youth. I wasn't vocal like that, but many times I was sure I knew more than the people who were telling me what to do. I hope I'm better now, but I still step on my dick sometimes. You just don't know what you don't know.
 
#40
Same here. And I can still get things wrong, too, because of misunderstanding or not having the same viewpoint as others. I liken it to this story.

A wino is sitting in a doorway and watching a guy across the street in another doorway of a building. Once in a while, a young lady will walk by and he will say something. They exchange a few words and she walks on. Other times, the retreat into the building only to emerge later, straightening clothing and looking a bit flushed.

The wino figures out what is happening. He goes to the other guy and says, "Hey, I know what is going over here. What I would like to know is how you do that?"

The man replied, "Well, when a lady walks by, I quietly say, tickle your ass with a feather?"

If she seems to act offended or says,"Excuse me!," then I will reply, as if it was misheard and say, "look at the nasty weather." But you need to go your own space. This one is mine."

The wino goes back to his doorway and has a few more sips of Mad Dog 20/20. A young lady walks by and he blurts out, "Stick a feather up your ass?"

She is shocked and says "What did you say?"

He blurts out, "Look at the damn rain."

I am trying to not be the wino.
 
#41
I’d say the problem is actually the result of many problem. The greatest generation raised a lot of hippies that just wanted to get high and “make love, not war.” So those same hippies raised my generation-gen x (I was born in 80). Generation x has done a bang up job with the millennials, and the piper keeps on playing while each following generation produces a less desirable product. Doctor Spock did a great job convincing people they didn’t need to spank their kids and that worked out really well-NOT! When I was 20 I got on a bridge job where my dad was one of the foremen. I wanted so bad to be on my dad’s crew, but I hated my job after a few months. He rode me relentlessly. He knew what I was capable of and he demanded hustle. I didn’t get to not pay attention. “Dummy up and listen!” was one of the common phrases he used. Fast forward a few years and every major company I worked for in heavy construction wanted me to travel with them. I now work as the manager for my brother’s concrete plant and finding help is very hard. The good drivers have good jobs already. The new guys want to tell me how to schedule, dispatch, or drive a mixer. Somewhere along the way we are going to face truly hard times and this generation as a whole isn’t ready for it and they are going to suffer bad
 
#43
You just summed up my career. Yes now I am in academia. But I don't have to put up with management. So I'd rather hang out with a bunch of hippe liberals than the BS that is corporate america. (Its ok, they are usually fucking hippies themselves).

Not quite in the woods yet. But got a LOT closer.
 
#45

So it's the boomers to blame.

People just don't want to admit that things have changed. A guy who drives a bread truck won't be able to afford a house and three kids with a stay at home wife in california like my uncle did.

Somewhere over the last 40 years the wheels fell off, we either put them back on or keep sliding downhill.


Tell that to the guys who got killed in iraq/afghanistan. Plus 2-3trillion of our tax dollars. We've had nothing but bullshit wars since the 90s.
 
#47

Go to social media and look around, who's responsible for that shit? Who's responsible for all the ignorant shit we make fun of everyday? Fun fact, I have a stepdaughter that is one of these asshats, I tried, but her whore mother undermined my efforts, haven't spoken to her in 8yrs, ever since I thru her lying ass out of the house and I damn sure don't bail her out. Other than the one time I convinced an abusive boyfriend his best course of action to extend his life was to leave and never be seen again, I have done nothing to help her.

It damn sure wasn't my grandparents, aunt's, uncle's or my father or people like them. My father was a single parent at 27 in 1972 after my mother died of a disease that the medical community had little to no information about and cost him $100ks of dollars that insurance didn't cover. He was left with a 7yo and a 3yo, working a second shift job and he paid every nickel back. None of those helicopter parented, let their kids run wild and they damn sure made sure we went to church, accepted responsibility for our fuck ups and beat our ever loving ass every time we did. We did some ignorant shit, but we never disrespected an elder or any one for that matter. We were expected to work and chip in when necessary, we were taught to fish, hunt and take care of ourselves outdoors. That grew into a love of everything in nature, respect of the resources and what it meant to be self sustainable.

There are a handful of people I work with that could survive if the world went dark, the majority of them are veterans.

You are 100% correct about the slide, but that slide has a built in self righting feature, when people have truly had enough, this shit will end.

Problem is, people just haven't had a belly full yet.
 
#48
This is the best way to describe the state of jobs these days. My job is 100% staffed when places nearby are running at 70%. Money doesn't play the part it used too. How employees are treated where I work is what draws people in.
 
#49
My timing in life was lucky enough to enter a real apprenticeship program right out of high school. Apprenticeships were pretty much extinct for the generations after me. Companies would rather rely on sniping talent from a competitor than to invest in an apprenticeship program to develop their own people. These days, the last of my generation and generations before have either retired or used their experience to go sole proprietorship.

The knowledge pool in the trades is now a lot smaller than it was years ago. The plandemic lockdowns that put a lot of people out of work just caused the knowledgeable motivated people to go into business for themselves. Good luck on getting them to go back to work for someone else now.

The corporate suckasses that carried the water for the globalists pushing the covid fears with the maksing crap was the last straw for me working for a big company. I was also getting tired of the trend of industrial tradesman wages not keeping up with inflation while the bloated management always got their money. I went semi-retired sole proprietorship with my side gig and have not regretted it since.
 
#50
Boomer checking in laughing. I thank young people for teaching me a valuable life lesson. Companies don’t care about you. They will use you up and say next.

If you want a raise, better benefits, improved life balance….you will not find it here. Interview for your next job and watch them roll out the red carpet for your experience, work ethic and professional attitude.
 
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