By now most of us have heard about “Quiet Quitting.” It’s doing just enough at work to avoid getting fired. Have you heard about “Bare Minimum Monday?” If you’ve ever spent Sunday dreading Monday you probably have some idea where it comes from. The idea is to kinda sorta ease your way into the workweek. Monday is not a day for big ambitious undertakings.
On the flip side there are numerous businesses looking to put an end to people working from home. Now some are looking for ways to punish those who insist on working from home but the company is not quite ready to fire them.
A lot of my fellow Boomers say the younger generation just doesn’t know the value of work. I’m not too sure about that. Maybe they know the value of work and the Boomer generation doesn’t get it. Maybe it’s not so much the value of work but the value of life. When it gets right down to it all we have in life is time. When we sell our services to someone else we are selling bits of our life away.
Boomers forget how many of them benefited from strong unions. There was also a culture where businesses often tried to at least give the appearance of caring for employees. Those days are over. It’s a whole different economy now. Back in my father’s time he had a house, a car, a truck, a cottage on the lake and partnership in a hunting came. My family also took a couple weeks vacation every summer and my dad took off a few weeks for hunting season. That was all on a blue collar job.
So the younger generations have discovered their labor is being exploited and are fighting back. It’s about time.
-Sixbears
I'm all for the value of precious time and the life spent in living it. As long as we, "Boomers" and the many others, have enough to live a fulfilling experience and enjoy our families and the rest of the world around us, why not. My youngest works for the state. They have the type of schedule that enables him to take three days off in a row every week, plus all the state and federal holidays they can fit into the schedule. At certain levels some employers are figuring out that treating your employees with a certain amount of respect and give a little back goes a long way.
ReplyDeleteIn a time of labor shortages those who don't treat their employees well will pay for it.
DeleteAnd we wonder why business are closing for lack of reliable employees. How big business is replacing employees with self checkout and robotic restocking.
ReplyDeleteYa know I think part of the thing today is sort of a trickle up thing. The heads of business are no longer we Boomer types they are the youth that have the same work ethic that the kids we watch are. That spooks me abit, on a grander level the higher levels of stuff in our fair nation are deteriorating due to that process, ???
DeleteAny business that can only survive paying slave wages doesn't deserve to exist. Frankly, wasn't automation supposed to free us from drudgery?
DeleteGiven grocery stores run on a 2% margin (Per Barrons and Google), please remember your words when (not if) the price for everything in the store climbs to European pricing. American normally pay around 15% of their wages on food. Europeans closer to 35%.
DeleteIf your wealthy enough or have disposable income that's not too bad. That's why only well off folks shop at Whole Foods Vs Hannaford-Walmart.
But for those just starting out with NO WORK SKILLS the starter jobs are just that. Starter.
But then again, I personally know over a dozen older parents with starter job kids still living at home.
The common theme at our coffee meet ups is they don't want to have a "real Job" and do just enough to earn welfare and stop working again.
But Hey! They are not doing that slave labor thing :-).
Until their parents die off or welfare falls apart like the COVID "Emergency Money" did this year.
When the rapidly aging out EMS, Nursing and Linemen retire, then what? You cannot get more than a meager handful interested in such "Hard Work" anymore.
Old truth is people do what the boss checks.
ReplyDeleteI worry that the average age of nurses is 62 years and linemen who go out in scary weather to restore our power is 47 years old.
Who is going to do the hard work of them.