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Deleted member 174758
Ha! So you think that your one anecdote is proof that all older people should be pensioned off? That's pretty ageist, especially when you consider that in my own life I've experienced the same sort of issues with people of other age groups e.g. the receptionist who is too busy doing her nails and yakking to a friend on her phone to actually do her job, the idiots behind the counter at Screwstation who are too wrapped up in their own personal lives to do their job ar all, and so on and so forth. It has bugger all to do with age - unless, of course, you are a bigot
It didn't sort anything out. There have always been lazy b'stards, and there always will be. As to lazy and entitled, I counter that by saying that you sound like an ageist bigot. At approaching 70 I am still working, or rather I've tried retirement a couple of times, got bored and gone back.
I'm currently snagging out a building where the quality of joinery work is, in the main, acceptable, but where there are some absolute howlers - avoidable mistakes made by joiners who were mainly in their 20s and 30s, and who frankly should have known better, because none of the cock-ups involved "rocket science" IMHO. There are two joiners doing the snagging - myself and a "young duffer" (at all of 58). Why do you think that is, then?
I don't often complain about apprentices being lazy. The fact is they need to be encouraged to develop a work ethic which they certainly don't seem to develop at school. My biggest complaint is about the quality of apprentices we get; they are often innumerate, being incapable of fairly basic arithmetic let alone basic geometry; they are often illiterate, being incapable of comprehending written instructions; and they lack self-discipline, being incapable of understanding, for example, that a mobile phone at work is for work-related tasks, nothing more unless permission has been granted by your i/c (like it is supposed to be at school).
Over a number of decades I have witnessed a gradual decline. This means that when you get one who shows an interest and asks pertinent questions it is a pleasure to help them. In the past 6 or 7 years there have been just two apprentices who were worth the extra effort on my part - the slightly more mature, very quiet lad who came to us at nearly 19 years of age and was a sort of blotting paper for knowledge consuming some of my older C&G textbooks at an eye-opening rate in his lunch breaks, and also asking some very pertinent questions, and a second lad who I always called "Fast Eddie" because he seemed so slow on the uptake - but once he did understand stuff, his rate and quality of work were both excellent. Against those the number of the witless, lazy or downright stupid I have seen come through my various employers has been many.
One of the issues seems to be that lads coming in (and there are very, very few girls) expect to do 2 years at college then be on the "big money" - because they are "fully trained", aren't they? At age 19, after 2 years maybe with a couple of competent guys who have put in the extra effort needed to show them the ropes, they are probably OK to do simpler stuff (indeed, they should be) but anything with a level of complexity or finesse completely flummoxes nany of them. Yet they think they should be on the same money the more experienced guys are on without having put in any time as an improver and maybe a bit more time as a journeyman... The worst thing is agencies and a lot of firms also think that they are "finished men", meaning that agency staff get a bad rep (some of it justifiable) and that a lot of people really do poor or variable work which they think is acceptable. Or is it just that I'm an old fart looking at the world through rose-tinted varifocals who should accept second best as the only thing I'll get?
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