9:15 I’m helping the guy and walk up to see 3 teenagers standing next to the open sign. They ask me “how do we turn this off?”
BY TURNING THE BIG SWITCH THAT SAYS ON/OFF TO FUCKING OFF!!!
Like are they actually this incompetent or are they playing so I don’t expect anything of them? I’m leaning towards the former since this act of incompetence was actually potentially creating MORE work for them.
Like are they actually this incompetent or are they playing so I don’t expect anything of them?
You’ll find that teenage workers have never been taught what initiative is, or that they can and should take initiative to do things. If they don’t know how to do something they won’t try to work it out on the offchance that the boss will be mad at them if something goes wrong, instead they will wait for precise instruction, they will do nothing without precise instruction.
They have to be taught what initiative is and how/where to use it. They aren’t playing with you, they’re just kinda like that until they develop the skill that we pretend is natural, it isn’t natural, we all develop it and then forget we developed it.
the skill that we pretend is natural, it isn’t natural
I’d actually argue we naturally develop this skill fairly early on in life, but school and often other aspects of life actively drill it out of people because it’s very hard work when one kid in your class of 30 is using their initiative, even if competently so. Kids are actively (and I guess explicitly) taught to sit and wait if it isn’t 101% obvious what they’re expected to do next.
I think that’s true to an extent but also I have a very vivid memory of my teenage sibling who was in the first year of a medical degree so by no means stupid, calling me at 4am because they had lost their wallet and phone and the whole situation had plunged them an emotional crisis and paralysis where they did not know what to do about it. They could have solved it pretty easily by themselves but the lack of experience meant they needed someone else to walk them through some fairly obvious steps that ultimately resulted in getting both back perfectly fine. This was an initiative problem and it wasn’t a situation where there was any hierarchy to scare them out of acting, they just paralysed themselves entirely by the fact they had not experienced the situation before.
I think even without schools doing this, and even without authority situations, we would still run into initiative problems until they’ve had enough experience with weird situations to realise they can work their way through them independently.
Good hypothesis, initiative is heavily punished at school and often discouraged at home, why wouldn’t they imagine it’s the same at work? Sometimes it really isn’t
when I just started working I was deathly afraid of fucking up to the point of paralysis for even basic things, and I would ask a lot of seemingly asinine questions, so it could be that. Another possibility is that they were covering up for goofing off.
Yeah that’s def a thing with our new hires.
Like I’ll answer a question they have but they seem paranoid that I gave them the secret fake answer as a test so they ask me it five or six other times. Then I finally go “you passed the test! Here is the actual answer to your question!” And totally don’t get frustrated with them.
Giving new staff members a fake task similar enough to be taken seriously is a common form of workplace hazing and young coworkers who bounce between part-time jobs might have been humiliated before. Example: polka dot paint, left handed screwdrivers
Asking a new EDM operator to gather the used wire from the back of the machine and wind it onto an empty spool because we’re running low.
Lol yeah but as far as I know nobody does that where I work.
Also like, if I write on a special order form to give this customer 20% off cuz their last delivery was late, idk why you’d think that is a secret trick that you need to verify with me six times.
I worked with a lot of teenagers and thats just teenager brain, no biggie. It probably is legitimately the first time they’ve ever had to do that and it hadn’t occurred to them to look for that.
Don’t these kids having fucking Sesame Street?
Like I thought fucking Elmo was supposed to explain to you how you can use words to understand the context of things. “Well Cookie Monster the cookies are in the jar that says ‘cookies’ on it!”
Idk I guess they’re all raised on Spiderman Elsa Pregnancy videos.
The kids today are all stupid, its [current newer thing than my childhood]'s fault.
*latest fad
So I’m watching Facebook reels with my wife tonight and it’s one of those where they ask random people on the street questions. These were things like “how many countries are in the United States”, shit like that. It made me weep for humanity. Sometimes I think the kids are alright, and sometimes I very much think the kids definitely are not alright.
One of the things I adore about Americans is their ability to answer things off the cuff on subjects they know nothing about. We should all aspire to a fraction of that self confidence and optimism lol
“What countries fought in the American civil war?”
“Uh, France, Germany, and, like, Singapore? I think?”
Yeah, you nailed it. There’s a country-wide fear of the phrase “I don’t know”.
Working retail I’ve met utterly helpless people of every age, race, class and background. I think this culture just breeds a kind of laziness where people wouldn’t dump a bucket of water on themselves if their own pants were on fire. AI sure as shit ain’t helping.
Like, it’s either as you said, that they’re just dense, or they’re doing it for the luls.
There’s Wine Country, Bat Country, Amish Country… and probably more
They’re acting useless so they are given less work in the future. Realistically these are teenagers working close to minimum wage that probably don’t plan on rising through the ranks so who cares if their performance review is ass.
What are you gonna do, fire them? (This is a rhetorical question, because the answer is so often “no” which, combined with their wages, results in this feigned helplessness)
That I get, but leaving the open sign on after close was potentially letting more customers in and making us all have to stay longer. I assume these teens wanna get home so they can vape and watch videos where heads come out of toilets or chat with older men on Roblox or whatever.
Just seems a weird context to do malicious incompetence, usually maliciously incompetent people suddenly become more competent when competency benefits them.
If they’re at the door to change the sign, they can just tell people that the shop is closed and in the meantime they get to keep stalling so you don’t ask anything else of them.
If the sign says OPEN customers will demand to come in, teenagers saying we’re actually closed but they can’t figure out how to turn off the sign won’t dissuade them.
Heck, the sign being off and the door locked often doesn’t dissuade them, they’ll just yank on the door in the hopes that if they manage to break the lock off we’ll be obligated to assist them.
