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.
>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.
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.
Why must there be an expectation for every worker to strive to better themselves? Why is it not acceptable for a person to show up to work every day, complete their work, then go home?
In context of the above discussion there is a general idea that fewer people are trying to get better at their job or career, leading to lower quality work as fewer people are trying as hard as before.
I'm not saying those people are wrong for not trying harder or should be trying to meet my expectations, it is their lives to do with what they want.
> 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.
For every task in corporate America there's a Process that defines how the work should be done. The goals are twofold: increase corporate profit, and reduce corporate risk. Both of these are harmful to the individual. Autonomy and innovation are at best limited, at worst punished. When something goes wrong blame is directed at the individual, who can then easily be fired (the cheapest 'solution'). Process benefits the individual worker only to the extent to which it can clearly be shown to increase profits and reduce risk.
And, to your point, it's nearly impossible to meet the expected KPIs unless you find a creative alternative to the approved Process, or simply work your fingers and mind to the bone in order to keep up.
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?
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.
It's insensitive, out of touch people like you that make it hell to be a front line worker.