People tend to forget that we all start from somewhere. I see it time and time again, especially in the trades, this sentiment that falls along the lines of “this generation is lost! These guys don’t know anything!” Like they were shot out of the womb and knew what a crow’s foot was and how to install drive belts.
These guys were just as dumb. I, someone who has done this for 14 years now, was very, very dumb at 18 years old.
Your attitude is pushing away young people that HAVE to replace you, or we are sorely, sorely lost.
Giving people shit and a good ribbing is all well and good, but people take it way, way too far.
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This is how I think. Even though I will give shit to the next newcomer for their negligence in hopes they learn from it.
Lol jokes on you, I still suck at my job.
In relation to doing the job this is totally true but I don’t think a lot of us required a bunch of mental health days per year because everything was too hard – which is a generic complaint about the upcoming gen
I just said this in my work’s slack channel; “We need to teach the youngs, not just make fun of them.”
We got made fun of a lot, but we were also taught.
Good point but not unpopular
Ehhh some people suck more than others. Some of the new guys are better than their counterparts and some of the guys that aren’t new still suck. That’s not even counting the ones who didn’t make it.
No one forgets we all start somewhere.
We started somewhere obviously.
The problem is the difference in capabilities in starting out. The number of people who can’t even Google to find simple answers…. would boggle your mind.
I think this can also extend to other things where people often get called “noobs” as an insult, such as games. Everyone was new to a game at some point and likely sucked badly at it. I was like that with EU4 and I’m barely good at it now! It’s stupid to bully people for it when they’re just starting. I get it can be frustrating if someone is one the same team as you in a game, but it’s not hard to also just cut them to slack.
Hard disagree. I have anxiety issues and so whenever I’ve been in a new job, I try to memorize as much as possible as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the number of times I’ve seen new hires who have zero interest in learning anything, far exceeds the number of new people I’ve trained that are capable.
Yes, all new people make mistakes and need to learn. But that’s doesn’t make all new people equal. You have to want to learn and do a good job, and in my experience, the majority of new people don’t listen, don’t want to learn and see the job as a place to hangout. As a result, Ive seen people who after weeks in the job still don’t know or understand basic, day 1, shit.
Nah the guys from over seas that are taking my contract for pennies on the dollar for this fortune 500 company are terrible lol. Good riddance.
But this just ain’t true in the slightest. Everyone at my job gets the same basic training, and half the people are proactive, motivated, relatively competent from the get-go, some are completely out of their depth, ability or motivation and drop out fast.
Probably not at all a generational thing, as far as I’ve noticed
Nah, problem solving skills are absolutely in the toilet.
Read the literature and first hand accounts from educators.
What you are saying is generally correct but there is a difference in the ability to pickup and learn skills from previous generations.
Even motor skills are going down because of iPads and that is extremely important for trades.
I love new hires, I can teach them the way I want so they can be in line with my thinking. New hires are great, period.
“You were an excellent student, too bad I was a lousy teacher!”
humans aren’t humans if not for their arbitrary sense of superority and hierarchy
I like to rib on people playfully but I’m always sure to let them know they’re doing a good job/ what they could improve. I’ve found complimenting someone’s ability and adding some soft criticism works. You don’t want workers to feel as if they are garbage and never going to get better, but you also don’t want them to not develop any skills.
wrong I sucked even more
This is not entirely true. In my last job, within the span of three weeks, I became the third top-performing employee. Others never learned the job properly.
Some people are just super lazy. If you are trying your best im never going to judge you and i will approciate your work but i know for a fact i was never as terrible as a lot of the people i have worked with who just dont care at all. Its one thing to be learning its another to actually just suck as a coworker because you dont give af. There are a lot of inconsiderate people who are happy to be idle while someone does their work for them.
I judge people by how they hold/use a screwdriver, if you know you know.
Upvoted cause this is unpopular. Common sense isn’t so common 😵💫
I pride myself in telling new trainers not to worry about making mistakes. I’ve made them all and I’m still here. I can also show them how to fix them all.
Nope, some people are much better at jobs than others. This is just incorrect. I’ve trained plenty of people and not all people are equal..
Eh not always. I tried pretty hard at the beginning of my jobs, but I’ve trained some people who just retain 0 information and still act like new hires even months later. I tend to try not to make fun of new hires, but there are just some people who don’t even try to understand anything
I am training one and a summer intern. Payback for the billion questions I asked to get here…
Everyone deserves due process, and many people are not fit to train someone.
No i didn’t
Especially in medical! The amount of eye rolls I got jeez I make it a point to never ever do that shit.
I don’t consider this as an unpopular opinion…
But now I do after reading some of these comments.
I’m with you OP on this one.
I’m actually going to disagree here. Does everyone remember themselves as more competent than they actually were? Absolutely. It’s actually a mental fallacy of the human mind. Once you know something, it’s difficult to remember not knowing it. However…young people at 18 are actually less prepared for the workplace than previous generations were. I had real chores from age 7. Starting with the dishes. I was paid $5 a week to do the dishes 7 days per week. It was my chore to do. My parents added chores and increased my allowance until age 12 where I was preparing several meals per week, mowing the lawn and doing laundry as well. At 14 I had a job outside the house. At 16 I had a “real job” outside the house. By the time I was 18…I knew how to be in the workplace and was competent at numerous tasks.
Parents live by the mantra “let kids be kids” now. They are coming into the workplace at 18 with zero experience. They think the workplace works like school or like their boss is their mom and expect to be treated with kid gloves. My nieces and nephews have no chores and have never had a job. I have no idea how that’s preparing them for being an adult…
This is a good perspective but also wrong.
There are people who are just (at a particular point in their life) unsalvageable. I’ve worked with people who just were destined to crash out, and did. (Hopefully they eventually work it out.)
If you mean we’re all more mediocre than we remember, I’d say yes though.
My approach at basically every job that I’ve ever had is that the person training me is probably an idiot…but an idiot that currently knows more than I do about the systems / software / etc that the company uses. I need to at least have logins / links to portals / learn who vaguely does what so I can ask the right person / etc. That takes me about a week to learn. After that, the employee who trained me is typically useless. Getting good at anything just takes repetition and practice.
On the other hand, I HATE training people. There is noting less satisfying than trying to teach someone who clearly isn’t interested in learning. You’re just killing my sales numbers and will quit in a month…why am I wasting my time?
I would typically agree with this – until working with one of my office’s new hires.
I remember when I first started, yeah, I sucked, but I worked hard to learn everything that I could, making myself indispensable. I have always had the mindset of learning everything I could so I wasn’t easily replaced or laid off when times get tough. Sure, you can pay someone less, but they’ll also be capable of a lot less.
My new coworker does as little as possible, going so far as shirking duties. It’s amazing. I don’t think he’ll ever get promoted.
You are supposed to suck at your job when you start
Matter of fact: this is preferable; don’t come in as a super worker cause they will always expect a lot from you. Be a bad worker so everything you do actually accomplished is noted
I like this. I had a student teacher this year. I think he did great, but of course he made a ton of mistakes. Isn’t that just how it works?
I worked as a wok chef for about 4 years, trained new guys the last 2 I was there. This is 100% not always the case.
For instance, his first day, I show a guy how to build drunken noodles. Point to the noodles to grab, he grabs pad Thai noodles.
Nah man, the wide ones.
He grabs the skinny angel hair type rice noodles.
THE WIDEST ONES WE HAVE BUDDY
He reaches into the lowboy, grabs the lo mein. I hadn’t even showed him where those were?! HOW DID HE KNOW WHERE TO GET THOSE OR THINK THOSE WERE RIGHT?
Turns out dude was absolutely bananas and the GM and owner ended up walking him out the back door because he was saying some legitimately insane stuff.
In my early 20s I did excavating work with this guy who was in his 60s. He typically operated the machine while I helped with getting stuff, digging, etc. Just your average laborer job.
This machinery was really loud. He’d prompt me to do something, but say it really quiet. I could never hear what he was asking me to do, then he’d full force just yell at me as if I was doing something wrong. When the machine wasn’t going and I could actually hear him, he’d use language that I wasn’t familiar with, and then get impatient when I didn’t know or understand something. Not exactly a good way to teach someone just learning. Especially someone who needs direction on things multiple times.
It was good experience in learning, and he was a nice guy when you weren’t working for him, but man most of the time that job was a motherfucker.
New 18 year old working at my store. Sent him out back with the instructions “there is a whole lot of cardboard by the dumpsters, please break it all down and put it in dumpster.”
I had to circle back three times and be like “no, I mean all the cardboard.”…also had to blow his mind by opening the lid to the dumpster to show him it was easier with the lid opened.
I understand your point and I appreciate you taking up for the well-intentioned rookies. But I’m afraid some people are built for walking helmets, and some people are just new.
It’s not always one to one, some people are genuinely awful at whatever it is you’re trying to get them to do. Others will pick it up quickly.
Agreed, I work at a place with basically no real onboarding, no on the job training, and no documented processes. I see coworkers complain about a new employee not catching on and like they’re stupid or something- nah, the fact someone is not catching on quickly when they have no idea what they’re supposed to be doing and aren’t getting any help is not their personal problem….
Entirely dependent on the case, and especially on the job. This may be true for something harder to grasp like engineering jobs, etc., but for simpler stuff like retail then some trainees are actually just braindead. Before I quit my grocery job I was generally regarded as one of the best part-timers they had, and I got a hang of the majority of the stuff they taught me quite quickly. When I was tasked to help certain people out however, they were actually incompetent and couldn’t seem to fathom what an organised aisle looked like. There’s a reason they were sad when I left but fired those other people without mercy.
In terms of competence? Yes, absolutely. In terms of attitude? Not always.
I for sure sucked way more than I probably realize, but I had a good attitude and wanted to learn. So many new people also have a great attitude, so I don’t generalize about “young people these days” or anything like that. But attitude is the key distinguisher here, I feel.
But what happens when you get better than who trained you and you have to retrain them cuz they actually sucked the entire time? (Such is my lot in life currently) Haha
This isn’t really an opinion because it all depends on the person. Ive trained a lot of people who just could not grasp these simple things, or didn’t have virtually any common sense and I had to and still do have to watch almost everything thing they do because they continually do things wrong after being told the right way. And I’m very patient with them.
Honestly reminds me of a guy I know in school. I was helping my friends with an engine swap and one of the other guys a semester ahead came around. Well he didn’t do anything besides disturbing and distracting us from maneuvering the crane, as well as being a general nuisance.
Eventually I had enough after I politely asked for a tool and all I got in response was “I’M going to be a service advisor one day so you’ll LISTEN TO ME NOW!”. I just responded by saying “Alright cool, can you grab the tool already or leave only choices here, after all if you’re with us you’re in the team.”
I honestly don’t know what people’s issues are, like in the past 3 months I’ve had multiple new people prove me wrong and it sucks but I’m learning.
Even worse in some cases. I’m always easy on them during training.
I became a Team Lead at 18. I watched a 16 year old try to mop the floor with a broom hahaha
I mean yea .. but sometimes people really are just dumb… how you can’t grasp the concept to ring the food in after you take the order is beyond me 😂😭
Tbh, not really. I’ve taught people in a few different jobs and some people are just not made for the work force. You can tell the difference between someone who isn’t very good but it’s trying to do better vs. someone who will never get it.
See I agree for the most part. New people deserve kindness and grace.
However not all are the same. There are some slackers and lazy mf. But there are others that work hard but just don’t have the tools and experience yet.
Biggest difference is when they come to a problem do they leave it or find a solution/seek help.
Part of my job is training new hires and then doing QA to see if they are doing it right, so I get to disagree with you specifically!! New hires over the last few years have had little to no experience with computers and seem incapable of learning even basic functions of outlook, they get MORE training than people used to get and still don’t succeed, and I think it’s because they don’t give a shit. We all started at the same level of company-specific knowledge, but I put in a little extra effort to try to do it right. And this spans from young people all the way through people coming back to the workforce out of retirement. We have some great new hires still, but the majority do not succeed.
Bro I’ve worked menial jobs where the managers both repeatedly said shit like “I wish I had ten more guys like you” and gave me two raises in the first month. Where it wasn’t uncommon for other new hires to be on extended probation because literally nothing clicked that you told them.
This isn’t bragging. These jobs were menial and I’m not proud that I readily broke my back to work for some shitty corporation. In hindsight I’d rather go the useless employee route.
But that is to say that a lot of new hires can be absolutely worthless, and are not at all comparable to every good employee.
Maybe in some fields. But I think you’re really undervaluing just how big of a factor smartphones are in lack of productivity. I don’t think new kids in the trades were dicking around on their iPhones constantly when left unsupervised. There’s just so much more fucking around you can do when left alone when you’re supposed to be doing shit. I just don’t agree.
It’s been this way since the dawn of the trades… And will continue until the human race dies off.
Those same dudes, the old timers, usually live in the past too. ‘I’ve done this or that, or we used to do this or that – you guys have no idea how easy you’ve got it’.
I always follow with something like – well, wtf you doing right now other than running your gums while I’m doing the work – just stfu… No one here gives a fuck… Matter o’ fact, go sit in the truck and turn the AC on, pops. You’ll be doing all of us a favor.”
Can’t tell you how many time I’ve had to say that to the same 4 guys over the years.
Depends. There is a difference between experience and aptitude. Not everyone is suitable for every job. I work in the finance sector and some people are just not cut out for that and that is fine.
They likely can do stuff I would find hard or impossible. We are not all the same but we are all fine that way.
No I didn’t.
I am training 2 people at the moment. One junior who arrogantly thinks he is smart by putting everything into ChatGPT and then arguing with me when I tell him what the bot regurgitated is not correct, and that he should learn the basics before using AI assistance.
The other guy is a working student that actually listens, takes notes and applies what I said while also challenging my opinions in a constructive manner.
Not everyone is like the second guy, but I definitely wasn’t like the first.
Nobody should be scrutinised for a lack of knowledge/experience , but people should definitely be scrutinised for ignorance.
Some people need more love. Thats okay
Some folk lack the sauce
Not unpopular or an opinion
I judge people by what happens if I tell them to “go get me a screwdriver”.
I will reluctantly accept it if they bring me a common hand tool, but if they bring me
A drink now we’re talkin!
No, I didn’t.
I out loud tell most of the new people I mentor that I used to suck more than them, which is true.
No I didn’t. Skill issue.
In my experience it’s not that they suck at the job or can’t do the job, it’s that they just don’t want to, don’t want to try, don’t want to learn and don’t want to put in any effort. Yet some how think they are always right.
Everyone starts inexperienced, yes. But ability and intelligence vary dramatically from person to person.
Some people are REALLY stupid, lazy, uncaring, etc…. And therefore make absolutely shitty employees and trainees.
So I disagree with this blanket statement that everyone sucks just as much as anyone else when first starting out. Some people suck WAAAAAY more than others. I’ve trained and worked with both kinds.
It takes patience and grace to train a good person. No amount of patience, grace or anything else can effectively train a terrible person.
Being an effective leader and trainer is knowing which kind of person you’re training and knowing when to cut your losses and move on. That doesn’t mean cut them loose, it means finding something else they’re capable of doing.
I do think some people are more and some are less prepared for a professional work environment.
By the time I started my first office job, I had done in person internships, worked part time in college, etc.
What I have seen more since covid, is kids who are out of college, never did an internship or had a job, so don’t really know professional norms.
So in the sense, yes, we all had to start somewhere. But I think there is a big difference being a dumb 16 year old fumbling through their first job, and a dumb 22 year old doing it.
Idk man although I agree with the message. I’ve had several apprentices think an impact gun is Bluetooth, and all you have to do is point at it the screw. Once you teach them, the square goes in the square hole, and they then proceed to try it at angles you couldn’t think possible. Then, after then. You teach them that you actually need to put pressure on it to not rotate out because of angle or over torque. Then you’re explaining those terms. Which is valid but after seeing this spectacle, it thins the patience, and strengthen woes of the future.
Naw babe I was the shit.
If you’re working in a kitchen and can’t wash your hands with warm water because it’s too hot or wash your hands with gloves on that you don’t remove, you need to get the fuck out of the kitchen
Eh, it just comes with age and time. You forget how you were at the beginning. I’ve been at my job 10 years and even I sometimes have to remind myself how I acted and what mistakes I made in the first 3 years of my career. But you can tell a difference between people that suck but are willing to learn and improve vs those that just suck and don’t give a shit. The second type of person is usually the one I talk shit about the most.
Na you can tell like the first day if they are teachable some guys are tough enough to make it 20 years in the field without learning shit though 🤣
Im currently training 2 people. One is great and tries to be self-sufficient and the other just doesn’t give a shit, takes forever to do even small tasks and doesnt ask questions when doesn’t know something.
I was fucking pain in the ass and was asking questions constantly so I could work on my own as soon as possible because I hate people.
I’m a trainer and it often amazes me how short most people’s memory is for the learning process and they rarely appreciate the patience of those teaching them. Those same people rarely reserve patience for learners that need to learn those same skills after them.
That’s just plain wrong.
Lol, no. I’m also past middle-aged. Kids today can barely read let alone comprehend directions that aren’t given daily.
Naw. Just not the case. I started with computers at 12, in 1981… When I started my first helpdesk job in 1996 I was easy to train… When I started training folks in the mid 2000s I had to fucking explain how to console into routers, basic telnet/ssh… I mean, windows 95 was brand new, I had zero experience with it, and was up and running helping people in a fucking week. Same with the VAX/VMS. I had some experience with that from hacking in the 80s. I had no clue what the systems were that used IBM3270s… but figured out how to change passwords and unlock scan guns pretty easily… Kids today? They try to get tech jobs while not knowing basic shit. They also fail at fucking google.
Some of our devices dump you at enable when you login, some dont. Fucking kids can see the difference between > and # and cant google why the commands they want to issue (fear) dont work.
And other jobs… Look, the Reader’s Digest book of house hold appliance repair was pretty much in every home in the 70s and 80s… and kids used to destroy their toys to see how they worked. You had a good idea how electricity worked by 8 years old if you hard a race track, or battery operated toys. You could take a motor from one thing, and use it for another… Your record player broke? You took it apart and fixed it. Playing with the telephone taught one a lot… and then bikes… So many of us had franken bikes…
The reality of today is that kids dont make new toys from their old toys in the numbers we used to. The mechanical and electric devices of yesterday dont get repaired as often, and that coffee table book telling you how to isnt there. Lots of social issues with genX, but kids literally fixed clothes driers using that book. I did.
I didnt have any biological children… but I did a lot to teach the children in my life, nibblings, friends kids, my GFs kids, random shit. All the girls who part of my life learned how to make one match fires, and became the person to make the camp fires in their circle of friends when they became teens. We made electric motors with broken harddrive parts. Built things… But I noticed a lot of GenX parents didnt do that with their kids. Then I noticed millennials doing even less. When I was a kid we all worked on our bikes with our friends… I cant recall seeing a kid working on a bike in 20 fucking years now.
Watching young people do anything on a computer is painful. It’s like watching boomers in the early 00s trying to figure out the internet after using AOL in the 90s… or worse. I mean dont ask them where their files are…
Ah… and another thing many of us did was fricken play with mod trackers. These were tools to make music from samples. Kids with computer would spend hours making garbage… but it was educational…
But I dont blame GenZ. If they are screwed up and lacking its because we failed them. Idiots who thought there was a such thing as digital natives, killing LABs in elementary school, arts, crafts… We built and wrote programs for the HERO2000 robot in HS… Schools dont get anything like a heathkit anymore… We grew mold, looked at it in a microscope, and made drawings of what we say, in 2nd grade, public school… do kids ever look in a microscope in HS anymore? Play with chemicals? Shop class?
We failed kids.
Then how do you explain two new people, one competent and one incompetent?
I’ve been doing what I do long enough to see incompetent people stay that way, competent people get better and better, and yes – rarely – the incompetent person work very hard and become competent.
our new hire has no arms or legs
Theres a difference between genuine incompetence and someone actually trying to learn the job, and i promise you no one is frustrated with the latter
I mean, this eliminates the very real reality that some people just do not get better no matter how many tools or chances they’re given
You guys are getting trained?
At least I didn’t need to be shown life skills like cleaning….. this new generation needs to be told everything. Outside of high-school. The fuck
Aye. But as I had to deal with when in training, there is a certain level of getting the piss taken out of you for your head to switch from school mode where there’s no time limit, you should double check everything, and basically have no autonomy, to functional, reasonably self functioning employee.
The lad I’m training is 19, been with us for nearly 2 years I think, and he’s come a long way. But there was a lot of unnecessary hand holding with things he could do very easily to start off with, so I gave him a ribbing over it but also showed I trusted him to do these simpler tasks alone.