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.

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    43·
    6 months ago

    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.

    • Soot [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      26·
      6 months ago

      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.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        12·
        6 months ago

        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.