Work ethic

I overheard a conversation between two HR professionals, one about my age and a supervisor nearing retirement age.  They were lamenting about a particular hire who only lasted a year because he didn’t like the grunt work that was assigned to him.  Then the conversation morphed into an attack on twenty-somethings in general who don’t know how to work, who expect everything to be handed to them, and who want to jump to the primo assignments without putting in the time.

 

Hearing this conversation left me with mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I hated the blanket categorization of a lazy, privileged generation.    Further, I thought it was wildly inappropriate for them to continue the conversation within earshot.

 

On the other, I thought these two HR professionals probably do have enough experience in the industry not only to make the claim, but to provide evidence, that there has been this shift in attitude about work.  We’ve all heard the characterizations of the generations, and my own company spends a fair amount of time studying generational differences to encourage better collaboration and workplace satisfaction.

  

Either way, I am responsible for raising the next generation of workers.  Dodge will presumably enter the workforce (you know, as a professional baseball player) in ten years or so.  Today we are shaping the people who will sell us products, shape policy, heal us, run the infrastructure, and so on.  Just like if you don’t vote you can’t complain about your elected officials, if you don’t play your part to foster independence and responsibility in the next generation, you can’t complain about the quality of young people entering the workforce.