Random stuff

Dec 28, 2016 4:39:33 GMT LowKey said:

I was with him for the first 10 minutes (in which I think he was spot on) but he lost me with, "it's the corporations responsibility to teach them social skills..." etcetera. It may be pragmatic for the corporation to teach them those things, but the responsibility belonged to the parents who failed miserably...now the responsibility belongs to those "kids" to bootstrap themselves difficult as that may be.

On the bright side, seeing as so many in my age group will have to work until much later in life, perhaps the millennials not being as adaptted to the workplace may work in our favor.......as an employer would you rather have a 50 year old with good work ethics and who shows up on time every time, or a 20 something who wants free food, beanbags, is rarely on time, and whines?

My experience with millennials in the fire station is mixed, but generally positive. They are by and large really good, sharp kids. Polite. Earnest. Willing to work hard.  All that. They are actually pretty good at following orders, providing you sketch out the reasoning behind it. It doesn't really work just to bark out an order with these kids, but to be fair, I was always more responsive when I was told WHY I needed to do something, or how it fit into the big picture as well.

I have noticed that they don't seem to be quite as physically tough as my peers, even accounting for the fact that we get our share of kids with blue-collar backgrounds and coming out of the military. Long hours working in shitty conditions seems to wear on them more, as do missed meals, etc. 

I have also noticed that what a person might consider as rude or lazy behavior is not necessarily the case.  Example:  We always do an evening clean-up at the station after supper, a basic sweep and mop the main rooms, clean up the kitchen, wash and fuel the trucks if needed, etc.  It isn't an announced thing, guys just start turning to these activities after we eat.  In the past, the new guy would ALWAYS be the first person to jump in on dishes, grab a mop, or otherwise say "Hey cap, what needs done?" 

Well, I started noticing that newer hires (the dreaded 'millenials') were most definitely NOT the first people to start helping.  If anything, they would finish supper, put their dishes in the sink, and sit in a recliner fiddling with their phones or whatever, and seemed completely oblivious to the fact that anything remotely related to evening cleanup would involve them.  As soon as somebody pointed out (with extreme amounts of snark) that they might want to take a goddamn clue that EVERYBODY IN THE STATION WAS BUSY AND THEY WERE PLOPPED DOWN ON THEIR DEAD ASSES they would invariably jump to their feet and race around looking for something to do.  It finally dawned on me that they weren't being rude or lazy, it genuinely didn't occur to them that they might be required to do dishes, cleanup the station, etc., even if everybody else seemed to be doing that.  It also occurred to me that some of them probably had NEVER had to do their own dishes, sweep a floor, or some similar task.  I have literally had to teach younger guys how to use a mop, which continues to blow my mind.

Now I make it a point to discuss such things at the beginning of each shift with my new guys, and it seems to make a big difference. Also, our instructors in our fire academy are making it more of a point to educate them on firehouse life, so they aren't completely sideswiped by the fact that they might have to peel a potato or pick up a broom. 

Also, none of them know how to cook.  Not a single goddamn one of them I've had can as much as boil water.  It's absurd.  I don't know how these little bastards are not all starving to death!