7 hours ago, mspencer said:

Work ethic is no better or worse than it was 40 years ago 

My experience is exactly that, there were lazy backsliding people then and there are now.
On the other side, those with a conscience and who will give a day's work for a day's pay
are still there, as well as those who are prepared to go the extra mile.
The "moden" description is, as you say, applied only by those who are out of touch with 
the current circumstances.
I would add: have led very sheltered lives, or whose rose-tinted glasses are
distorting their memories.

On 6/15/2024 at 4:17 AM, Luke said:

They said the same about you when you were young.

Cheers

Moi  !?

Every generation complains about the work ethic of the new generation.

I do think there are unique circumstances though that the current generation takes advantage of, e.g., remote work, increased entitlement (which becomes more of an issue each successive generation), etc.

I mean there are members here who grew up as teenagers or early 20s in the late 60s, and rest assured, the prior generation thought they were a bunch of hippies, lazy and outright crazy.

So just more of the same nowadays.

I'm not going to say it's any better or any worse.

A few years ago, I was on a campus recruiting exercise with my former company...the glaring observation is/was how much better younger people communicate with their peers regarding career expectations and benefits...likely through the expanded use of social media. (I don't think it helped our position that every candidate was told by someone on the committee that they, the candidate, could be the next CEO of the company...that was just BS.)

Back in my day...we were all apparently young and dumb about what opportunities were available.

No regrets though...I feel that I worked long and hard...and made a positive difference in every assignment I took on...not just the bottom line, but, also with the people I was fortunate enough to work with...and fortunately I still have my health to enjoy the next chapter...and the many friends I made throughout that time.

on a regular basis nowdays, it takes me 3 or 4 attempts to get a young crew member to accept a duty off standby/reserve when they get called out, I regularly get "im too tired" , "my ears hurt" , "i cant afford to be away for 4 days" or "childcare issues"  

Its never been as hard as to get a youngster to actually accept a duty from call out.  It was never like this 10 years ago, and ive been in aviation 24.

Ive even had recently mothers,fathers and boyfriends call in recently to declare their daughter or girlfriend "unfit for work" because they are too mollycoddled to do it themselves.

We, or at least I, am not like my parents.  My parents never had a television set, a cell phone they carried around with them like a part of their anatomy 24/7,  computers or the internet and social media.  My family had no healthcare insurance.  I don't know if it was even available then.  But when my Mom was aid up with pneumonia and we had to have an oxygen tent in the house for her and a doctor came to the house twice a day to checkup on her and when my brother had to go to the hospital to have his appendix removed the bill was paid out of the family budget.

My Mom was a stay-at-home mom and had a glass of milk and cookies waiting for my brother and I when we came home from school.  Then we changed our clothes and went outside to play with the neighborhood kids.  Perhaps baseball in an empty lot or shooting baskets at the corner playground or touch football in the park.  We had no computer to run into the bedroom to play games on.  And no adult supervision.  We got into fights sometimes and came home with bruised eye or bloody nose and a scolding from Mom.  We supervised ourselves and learned by ourselves how our world and society worked.

My dad worked an 8 hours a day on one job with weekends off and made enough to support us.  And the family could afford a house to live in that didn't cost 5 or more times his annual salary to buy.  He paid cash for an affordable used cart.  And we took a two-week vacation every year.

My brother and I roamed the city of San Francisco without fear of, or being warned of dangerous pedophiles and we never saw homeless people living in parks or pan handlers on Market Street.

Shoplifting mobs never invaded our department stores.

That's not to say today is better than yesterday or yesterday was better than today.  It's almost like trying to compare apples and oranges.  If counting mouse click were possible in the good old days they might have been counted.  Who can say?

Heh-heh...the first television set I ever saw was in the window of an appliance store.  It was turned on and the grainy picture on a round 4 inch screen mesmerized me.  I must have been 15 or 16 years old then and was on my way to my cousin's house to baby-sit their baby son.

I can say this about my personal feelings though.  Given the choice of growing up or working today or in the decades when I was growing up and working in I'd choose the latter.

Noel

 

Edited July 11, 20241 yr by birdguy

Nice to read your life stories again, @birdguy! Sometimes I think I would have liked to live during those days. Too bad there wasn't flight sim back then😂

Over the years I have had a lot of work done on my home from additions to flooring to countless repairs. I’ve noticed a marked difference between a lot of the domestic good ole boys outfits compared to some immigrants, legal or not I can’t say. Example: last October I needed my shingles replaced. My son in law is a building contractor sent one of his crews to do the job. Three men and two ladies who spoke little English. They were here at dawn and those fellas worked nonstop until lunch break then back to work until almost dark. By the next afternoon the job was finished and clean up was perfect, not a nail left on the ground. 
Compare that to experiences I’ve had over the years with some local home town contractors. Unusual for them to arrive before mid morning. First thing they want to tell you what they won’t do. During process of the job they find some reason to hit you up for more money. Two to three hour lunch breaks and often an excuse why they won’t be back that day. If it’s Friday lunch break will last until Monday or when ever they decide to get back to you. So glad when the jobs done so you won’t see anymore of them. 
Not so the Mexican crews. They’re fun to watch their industrious team work and I kind of missed them when they’re gone. Even the ladies pulled their weight hauling shingles. 
A couple of disclaimers, I’m a South Carolina guy. Im very much in favor of the rule of law and hate the open border policy of the present administration. Nevertheless this difference in work ethic is undeniable between the home boys and the new arrivals.

Edited July 12, 20241 yr by Patco Lch

11 hours ago, Patco Lch said:

Not so the Mexican crews. They’re fun to watch their industrious team work and I kind of missed them when they’re gone.

Exactly the same experience we had with our house being painted. We had the exterior of our house painted with a contractor who had a Mexican crew. My wife is fluent in several languages including Spanish, so we got a clearer picture from them on how this contractor operated. Several months later this contractor was painting a house a few blocks away & one of the painters came by to say hi. I had just started to paint the interior of our house and he asked if I wanted some help with it. My wife & I agreed. So these guys came every day after completing their shift at the other house & worked 3-4 hours in the evening & then full days on the weekends. On the weekdays we let them park their car in our garage because they didn’t want their boss to see their car outside in case he drove by. It was a perfect arrangement, as I would do the prep work during the day (cleaning, patching walls, moving furniture etc) and they would paint. I paid them daily after they finished which they appreciated, as their boss was in arrears in paying them. They did perfect work, very clean & exactly how we wanted it.  Years later when we needed to have the exterior painted again, my wife called the head painter & they did the job. They updated us on their former contractor. He fled to South Korea because of insurance fraud involving workers compensation. 

 

17 hours ago, Patco Lch said:

Over the years I have had a lot of work done on my home from additions to flooring to countless repairs. I’ve noticed a marked difference between a lot of the domestic good ole boys outfits compared to some immigrants, legal or not I can’t say. Example: last October I needed my shingles replaced. My son in law is a building contractor sent one of his crews to do the job. Three men and two ladies who spoke little English. They were here at dawn and those fellas worked nonstop until lunch break then back to work until almost dark. By the next afternoon the job was finished and clean up was perfect, not a nail left on the ground. 
Compare that to experiences I’ve had over the years with some local home town contractors. Unusual for them to arrive before mid morning. First thing they want to tell you what they won’t do. During process of the job they find some reason to hit you up for more money. Two to three hour lunch breaks and often an excuse why they won’t be back that day. If it’s Friday lunch break will last until Monday or when ever they decide to get back to you. So glad when the jobs done so you won’t see anymore of them. 
Not so the Mexican crews. They’re fun to watch their industrious team work and I kind of missed them when they’re gone. Even the ladies pulled their weight hauling shingles. 
A couple of disclaimers, I’m a South Carolina guy. Im very much in favor of the rule of law and hate the open border policy of the present administration. Nevertheless this difference in work ethic is undeniable between the home boys and the new arrivals.

We've had nothing but problems getting contractors to even show up where I live.  It is no particular industry either.  I don't know if my job is just too small to come to or what.  

Make an appointment with 3 different companies, none of them show.  Make an appointment with 5 other companies, one of them call to cancel, the others no-show.  

I've had some minor storm damage going back to a year and a half (we had a blizzard that tried to kill us), and I am still trying to get someone to come out.  Granted it is a minor thing, probably an hour's work.  Again, not sure if it just isn't worth the gas to drive the truck out or what.  The first few months after the storm everyone had the same thing and was backed up, but we're well past that now.  

I guess this should go under a customer service thread, as there's no work to gauge work ethic.