<p>My family and I have had this discussion very often…</p>
<p>many younger workers think…</p>
<p>1) They should have flex hours from the get go.</p>
<p>2) Get raises/promotions very quickly.</p>
<p>3) They don’t have to show much respect for the veteran workers because they think they know the “latest/greatest.”</p>
<p>My H was on a 6 week long business trip with a green one and the kid told him that he has no respect for the ‘old guys’ cuz they’re over-paid and don’t know what he knows.</p>
<p>I have a story like this:</p>
<p>Five long time, hard working employees in my department were given well deserved promotions. Two “20 something” employees (neither of whom worked very hard) went into the department head’s office and demanded to be given “their” promotions. </p>
<p>That happened 20 years ago.</p>
<p>I think you are kidding yourselves if you think 20 year olds have any different work ethic than 20 year olds from 20 years ago and from 20 years before that. Some are great workers and some are poor workers- most are average. Same as it has always been.</p>
<p>So pray tell, Fallgirl, where those two employees promoted out of their jobs? That is what I would have been most tempted to do.</p>
<p>It’s very sad. H & many of his co-workers with 40+ years of experience have no one to train or mentor. When they retire, they take all their decades of experience with them to be lost forever. H has been trying to train others but they keep being moved away and he’s finally giving up the effort. </p>
<p>He has a difficult time with the poor work ethic of some employees of varying ages who leave before the job gets done rather than when everyone’s done and the job is fully completed.</p>
<p>We’re proud of our kids that they understand and accept that in the beginning they have to take the odd shifts and assignments that others may not want to do and do so gracefully and well. Both work hard and have enjoyed their jobs as far as we know.</p>
<p>Thanks for the additional information Mom22039. Did anyone ask the young women what they were thinking? If someone was making a decent salary to begin with, where would she get the idea that a raise of more than 30% was even likely? Why did the father of the young woman in PR/lobbying object to the evening event?</p>
<p>With very little experience in DC, I probably would not take the Metro alone after dark. Taxis generally are fairly plentiful in Washington, DC, but I am not sure about the Northwest.</p>
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<p>Me, too. But no, it seems as if it is awfully hard to fire people. But neither one of them ever moved up in that company and one of them later got a negative reference from one of the people who was originally promoted.</p>
<p>Quant, I’ve always been the shortest person in the room…so I’ve also been aware of my surroundings.</p>
<p>My reference to NW was the NW quadrant of DC – home to the White House, GWU, Georgetown, and most of the better hotels, restaurants, and convention meeting places. </p>
<p>My original post stemmed from a sidelines conversation, so I don’t have any more worthwhile facts to add. But I just had a lively recap with an HR manager!</p>
<p>I figured that you did mean the NW of Washington, DC, but I wouldn’t have been sure whether that included Georgetown–my mental map of the DC area is improving, but it has some detailed subsections with uncertain geographical relations to each other! I would generally think that Georgetown was ok for a woman alone at night, if not too late at night. Weird to think that it wouldn’t be!</p>
<p>wow op, those kids sound like whiners with bad/enabeling parents. In my field (nursing)raises are hard to come by and non existant in certain geographical areas for the last few years.Most people know that comming in. Wages are pretty good but you will cap out after about 5-10 years. If anything managment will let older workers no they are not prefered and rarley valued for their years of service. also working holidays/weekends is mandatory and people get used to it. Vacation is by seniority so good luck getting summer time off for years. If anything those who are in it longer or the mommy bunch are the ones most likely to whine about holidays, nights, weekends etc. i see plenty of 20-30 year olds working full time and more, comming into work on time everytime, anything else will have co workers in a revolt as they want to leave on time and if you are late you will be playing catch up for 12+ hours. . It is a physically demanding job, most 20-30 year olds will be better able to stand it than most 40-50 year olds. Everyone seems to have a good enough work ethic. The residents are pretty young too and work TONS of hours for little pay. The medical/nursing field has little tolerance for any of the entilement or helicopter parenting type. Connections sure do help, but no one brings mom or dad to see a cliet cough: patient :cough</p>
<p>Roman, ema - just my two cents - if your boss isn’t “giving you” enough work to do, find work to do. it might be suggestions on how to improve processes, trending, improve filing systems, etc. I’m sure you guys have noticed things that could use some tweaking. You want to be productive at all times. (IMO) That being said, don’t start taking over other peoples projects or stepping on toes.</p>
<p>I have a ton of stuff going on at my job and very rarely have any down time but every time I have a ‘free minute’ here or there I’ve been working on revamping these old reports that my team is in charge of. I’ve finished two so far over the past 6 months. Have gotten glowing feedback from my boss, his boss, his bosses boss, and the boss one higher. That’s our CIO. What used to take us a few hours to compile together in the old report can now be done in about 15 minutes with the new one… and there is less room for human error. All because I spent those free minutes working towards that process improvement. I cleared up about 3 hours a week that used to be spend on these reports that we can now spend on other tasks.</p>
<p>I guess my tip is, MAKE them notice you.</p>
<p>I made plenty of mistakes when I first started out, but I was also a lot more willing to take risk and think outside of the box (some of those mistakes were because I was too eager and was not as politically savvy). I like to mentor younger people and harness their energy/intelligence/eagerness to something productive.</p>
<p>I can also make some disparaging comments about the older work force too. They tend to be status quo, unwilling to learn new technology (or anything new), feel entitled due to their seniority…</p>
<p>I think at work, if we want to feel superior to the younger people because their lack of experience (or their style maybe different us), then we will have that gap between us and them. I personally think we could learn quite a bit from younger people.</p>
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<p>You must have missed when I said I’m not ALLOWED to do things that aren’t given to me. I literally have to wait for projects to be given to me. I CAN get fired for not doing that. That’s the nature of my position as a student assistant. The government has very, very strict rules regarding what we can and can’t do.</p>
<p>Also, I am the ONLY student assistant in a small office so they definitely know I’m there and know what I’m capable of. They have absolutely zero problem giving me new projects when they come up. But truth be told, a lot of times even the full time workers don’t have enough to keep them occupied.</p>
<p>And it’s not like I’m lazy. At my other two jobs I am in training positions. Out of the 60-some people that work for one of the companies I work for, I’m one of two people that my boss trusts to work in the office. At both of them, I run training sessions despite being almost the youngest worker at both.</p>
<p>Oh and btw, I’ve already reorganized the filling structure. That’s about the only thing I have control over. I’ve gone through and removed all the old files and condensed the drawers. I went through well over 10 years worth of back files. I finished that job in December and I was hired in October.</p>