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Maybe the problem is that the workers are worse, including management and CEO's. The quality of the American workforce is declining. This also puts a burden o

Maybe the problem is that the workers are worse, including management and CEO's. The quality of the American workforce is declining. This also puts a burden on unions because qualified and motivated people do not want to unionize with lazy and unproductive people.

tragictrash 4y ago
I would love to take all your money, put you back to living paycheck to paycheck and see how 'lazy' you get after the daily struggle to house and feed yourself with no way to get ahead and no light at the end of the tunnel. It's insensitive, out of touch people like you that make it hell to be a front line worker.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  >I would love to take all your money, put you back to living paycheck to paycheck and see how 'lazy' you get after the daily struggle to house and feed yourself with no way to get ahead and no light at the end of the tunnel. Been. There. Done. That. And now I have an office job. He's onto something. I can't quite put my finger on it but it seems like a pervasive societal problem at all levels, or at least all levels I've experienced. It's like society has developed some weird way of denying people their agency when it could benefit them but hold them responsible when it is bad for them. >It's insensitive, out of touch people like you that make it hell to be a front line worker. It's out of touch. People like you are why it's getting worse and not better. You tell me how to flip my burgers. You tell me doing it this way is for my own good or it's the efficient way, or it delivers the optimum burger, or whatever. But I can't meet my stupid KPIs doing it the approved way. So I have to do it "wrong". If I fail to meet my KPIs doing it "wrong" I get fired. When I do meet them I don't get anything for it. The best I can hope for is get lucky and not get unlucky long enough to use my "experience" to get some better job. In our effort to make everything consistent, risk free and all those other buzzwords that the MBAs and the clipboard warriors jack each-other off to we've done the opposite, we've made everything reliant on luck instead of skill. In your quest to quantify everything, minimize the bad and maximize the good you've denied everyone any possible upside that could come from putting in any extra effort, owning their work, taking pride in their craft, whatever you want to call it. And this Kafkaesque situation seems to have permeated every industry and every profession. (I dare one of the people who will inevitably take issue with this paragraph to rebut it.) The parallel to some freight train engineer barreling across some flat state with a train that's too big and too fast who's just hoping it all works out should be obvious.
  - yifanl 4y ago
    Okay, let's buy into the idea that across the board, workers are worse than workers of the past, for whatever definition of worse you like. In what way is this a tractable problem? Like, what solution is there that wouldn't involve massively importing workers from other societies where workers aren't worse?
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > what solution is there that wouldn't involve massively importing workers from other societies where workers aren't worse? Yes. (Not agreeing workforce degradation is the biggest problem. But opening spigots on skilled immigration would help.)
    - tragictrash 4y ago
      Getting a bit off topic here, but I agree it's fully fixable with policy changes. I'm not disagreeing that it feels like the workers are getting fed up, leaving and putting in less effort. It's why, and you can't blame them for feeling exasperated. I mean I fully support increasing immigration. More tax revenue, more growth, everybody wins.
    - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
      The workers are the same. The situations they find themselves in are different. People phone it in because that's what we incentivize.
  - gitfan86 4y ago
    You are actually both right. There are a significant number of workers who are not even trying to better themselves. Some are just lazy, but part of the reason some people are that way is because they see that the game is rigged. A huge percentage of executives spend their time ensuring that they don't get blamed for fired when something goes wrong and ensure the low level employees get the blame.
    - tragictrash 4y ago
      Thank you! Great point!
foxyv 4y ago
The workers ARE worse. But not because this generation or that generation doesn't have the correct moral philosophy or some such nonsense. It's because in general, employers are not training or maintaining a competent work force. Instead they spend all their energy on exploiting existing talent to the fullest before they burn out. No training is creating new work force and terrible working conditions are destroying the existing hard core of competent workers.

tragictrash 4y ago

I would love to take all your money, put you back to living paycheck to paycheck and see how 'lazy' you get after the daily struggle to house and feed yourself with no way to get ahead and no light at the end of the tunnel. It's insensitive, out of touch people like you that make it hell to be a front line worker.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
>I would love to take all your money, put you back to living paycheck to paycheck and see how 'lazy' you get after the daily struggle to house and feed yourself with no way to get ahead and no light at the end of the tunnel. Been. There. Done. That. And now I have an office job. He's onto something. I can't quite put my finger on it but it seems like a pervasive societal problem at all levels, or at least all levels I've experienced. It's like society has developed some weird way of denying people their agency when it could benefit them but hold them responsible when it is bad for them. >It's insensitive, out of touch people like you that make it hell to be a front line worker. It's out of touch. People like you are why it's getting worse and not better. You tell me how to flip my burgers. You tell me doing it this way is for my own good or it's the efficient way, or it delivers the optimum burger, or whatever. But I can't meet my stupid KPIs doing it the approved way. So I have to do it "wrong". If I fail to meet my KPIs doing it "wrong" I get fired. When I do meet them I don't get anything for it. The best I can hope for is get lucky and not get unlucky long enough to use my "experience" to get some better job. In our effort to make everything consistent, risk free and all those other buzzwords that the MBAs and the clipboard warriors jack each-other off to we've done the opposite, we've made everything reliant on luck instead of skill. In your quest to quantify everything, minimize the bad and maximize the good you've denied everyone any possible upside that could come from putting in any extra effort, owning their work, taking pride in their craft, whatever you want to call it. And this Kafkaesque situation seems to have permeated every industry and every profession. (I dare one of the people who will inevitably take issue with this paragraph to rebut it.) The parallel to some freight train engineer barreling across some flat state with a train that's too big and too fast who's just hoping it all works out should be obvious.
- yifanl 4y ago
  Okay, let's buy into the idea that across the board, workers are worse than workers of the past, for whatever definition of worse you like. In what way is this a tractable problem? Like, what solution is there that wouldn't involve massively importing workers from other societies where workers aren't worse?
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > what solution is there that wouldn't involve massively importing workers from other societies where workers aren't worse? Yes. (Not agreeing workforce degradation is the biggest problem. But opening spigots on skilled immigration would help.)
  - tragictrash 4y ago
    Getting a bit off topic here, but I agree it's fully fixable with policy changes. I'm not disagreeing that it feels like the workers are getting fed up, leaving and putting in less effort. It's why, and you can't blame them for feeling exasperated. I mean I fully support increasing immigration. More tax revenue, more growth, everybody wins.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    The workers are the same. The situations they find themselves in are different. People phone it in because that's what we incentivize.
- gitfan86 4y ago
  You are actually both right. There are a significant number of workers who are not even trying to better themselves. Some are just lazy, but part of the reason some people are that way is because they see that the game is rigged. A huge percentage of executives spend their time ensuring that they don't get blamed for fired when something goes wrong and ensure the low level employees get the blame.
  - tragictrash 4y ago
    Thank you! Great point!

foxyv 4y ago

The workers ARE worse. But not because this generation or that generation doesn't have the correct moral philosophy or some such nonsense. It's because in general, employers are not training or maintaining a competent work force. Instead they spend all their energy on exploiting existing talent to the fullest before they burn out. No training is creating new work force and terrible working conditions are destroying the existing hard core of competent workers.