The Lack of Work Ethic and the Need for Laborers
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VP with a Car Phone? A car phone hasn't been "cool" since 1989. Car phones were generally the big bulky units before mobile phones could be made small enough to be, well, mobile. I had a mobile phone (post-car phone era) by 1992 as a teenager in high school, just to put a date on things. Even by that point the idea of a "car phone" where the phone was attached to the car was dated enough that having one would have seemed weird or very special case (like a limo that was shared by people who shared a phone account.)
Either this thing is ancient or whoever said it is desperately out of touch. A very odd thing to have said. What high schooler today would even understand the reference?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I'll have a go.
Rule 4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
When I was 7 my teacher smacked me in the front of the class for talking. I was devastated. I wish I'd been told then that a boss will never physically hit me or humiliate me. That day was really as bad as life at school or work ever got. Fortunately, teachers aren't allow to physically abuse my own kids, but the average, low level bullying that kids have to put up with is far worse than most people have to deal with at work and a lot of teachers are meaner than bosses. If a colleague hits me he'd get sacked, if my kids' classmate hits them the worst they'll get is probably detention. So my kids have to put up with far worse treatment that I do.
I actually was thinking the same thing. School is much harder, emotionally, than work. School work is all about busy work and making sure things are hard, even when you can excel. The "real world" after school cares about results. If you do the work well, no one cares how you did it or that you did work at home while no one was looking. Bosses want you to make them money.
School is very tough, in really bad ways. When I was a kid my father always said he would never going back to being a kid, the work world was so much better. It lets you grow, learn and is happy when you succeed. You get to be productive and creative and no one wants to screw you over just to do so, because they lose too, even more than you normally, when they do that.
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@handsofqwerty said:
I agree that physical abuse isn't really generally an issue in the workplace, but the bullying factor is WAY worse. How many people have jobs they are stuck at where they are treated horribly by peers, or worse, a supervisor, but can't do anything about it? I've seen this more times than I can count.
There is no comparison. Adults can change jobs, change careers, are emotionally and mentally better equipped to handle bullying and have far, far more laws and employment structures to protect them. Children are often not just bullied by other kids, but are bullied by the school administration itself and in many cases the schools assist bullies in bullying the weak kids (like by equally punishing both the bully and the bullied - making the victims of bullying victims of the school too!)
It is not worse in the workplace. That that are outlying cases where someone is bullied in the work place and not in school doesn't imply that it isn't worse for kids. The "Lord of the Flies" or "prison life" effect of schools full of immature, no success ranking or goals of kids creates a bully-rich environment with few consequences.
The work world, while imperfect, has checks and balances built into the system. Those that bully create work environments where good people don't want to work and profits are lost. Not in every case, but in general. In schools, there is no such natural adjustments. Children and captives of their schools, not in a free market able to move location, job description, etc.
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Rule 3: Dispute.
While lots of people won't and shouldn't make $60K right out of high school. Many will. Even in the early 1990s I knew people hitting $70K the year they were out of high school (hitting that rate within a year, not accumulating $70K within the first calendar year.) Common, no. Doable? Yes.
And that wasn't in IT. I remember by 2000 talk of kids graduating with $75K deals offered to them in their junior years in high school (upon graduation, not to drop out) for work in IT. I didn't know any of those kids, though.
If someone is really passionate in high school and a hard worker, $60K is pretty hard to do, but it isn't some magic, unobtainable number only for kids of the ultra rick or wonder kids.
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I do agree with Rule 5 a lot. Flipping burgers (or similar, bagging groceries and making pizzas) were major growth things for me personally. Hated doing it, very glad that I did it.
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I don't care who said/wrote any bit of that article. I agree with 95% of it whole-heartedly. That is all. And, to be clear, I am speaking of the heart of what's said, not the silly details like the exact "$60,000" value, or the "car phone" remark. Those are only making a point, not the crux of the matter.
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@art_of_shred said:
I don't care who said/wrote any bit of that article. I agree with 95% of it whole-heartedly. That is all. And, to be clear, I am speaking of the heart of what's said, not the silly details like the exact "$60,000" value, or the "car phone" remark. Those are only making a point, not the crux of the matter.
I very much dislike people that copy/paste crap on FB. Most of the time these people have no idea what they are even reposting. Seeing something blatantly wrong on ML is just insulting to the intelligent people that I thought were participating in this community.
The OP's posted information was two different things that were wrote by two different people and neither of the original authors were credited.
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@JaredBusch said:
@art_of_shred said:
I don't care who said/wrote any bit of that article. I agree with 95% of it whole-heartedly. That is all. And, to be clear, I am speaking of the heart of what's said, not the silly details like the exact "$60,000" value, or the "car phone" remark. Those are only making a point, not the crux of the matter.
I very much dislike people that copy/paste crap on FB. Most of the time these people have no idea what they are even reposting. Seeing something blatantly wrong on ML is just insulting to the intelligent people that I thought were participating in this community.
The OP's posted information was two different things that were wrote by two different people and neither of the original authors were credited.
I agree, FB (and other places) are becoming dumping grounds for a lot of things. There are some patterns, this one is one of those "motivational" postings where someone with an agenda finds some sound bites that they like, attribute them to someone they think will really carry some weight and then post it for people to blindly repeat. Maybe the underlying values or ideas are good, maybe not. But the way that they are presented is to lend them credence by associating them with someone, in theory, far more of an authority or more highly respected that the people who actually said the things (which may, in many cases, just be the person creating the image in the first place.)
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Apropos:
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@JaredBusch said:
@art_of_shred said:
I don't care who said/wrote any bit of that article. I agree with 95% of it whole-heartedly. That is all. And, to be clear, I am speaking of the heart of what's said, not the silly details like the exact "$60,000" value, or the "car phone" remark. Those are only making a point, not the crux of the matter.
I very much dislike people that copy/paste crap on FB. Most of the time these people have no idea what they are even reposting. Seeing something blatantly wrong on ML is just insulting to the intelligent people that I thought were participating in this community.
The OP's posted information was two different things that were wrote by two different people and neither of the original authors were credited.
I am aware it was two separate things. The Mike Rowe thing was from Facebook. The other was something I heard years ago.
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@scottalanmiller said:
VP with a Car Phone? ...Either this thing is ancient or whoever said it is desperately out of touch. A very odd thing to have said. What high schooler today would even understand the reference?
The book came out in 1996, so yeah, it's 20 years old. The full title is "Dumbing down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good about Themselves but Can't Read, Write, or Add"
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I can't comment on the US education system, although the US economy still leads the world so you must be doing something right. But I can compare my own kids' current education with the one I had in the 70s and I know that schools now are far more competitive than they were in my day. My kids have tons of homework (I had none until I was 11) and have to take exams. Schools compete with each other (we have league tables of school performance) and that competitiveness is passed on to the kids who are pressured into performing and getting good exams results.
Sometimes that's a good thing, my daughter struggled to learn to read and the school threw loads of extra resources at her to prevent a black mark against the school for missing a "reading milestone", but sometimes a bad thing - my son is often stressed and I'd like him to simply enjoy school more. What it is not is "dumbed down".
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@scottalanmiller said:
I do agree with Rule 5 a lot. Flipping burgers (or similar, bagging groceries and making pizzas) were major growth things for me personally. Hated doing it, very glad that I did it.
What I disagree with is the suggestion that the younger generation think it is beneath their dignity. That's simply not been my experience. Of the resumes I've received recently from young people, pretty much all have worked in McDonalds or similar. It's normal now. I read the other day some stat that was something like half of all baristas in London have University degrees (I can't remember the exact stat). This would have been shocking in the sixties, but it's normal now. I think only the 1% super-rich who get an allowance from their parents are likely to turn their noses up at these kinds of jobs.
If anything, I'd say "your grandparents", who left school in the fifties and sixties during an economic boom and full employment, are more likely to think flipping burgers is beneath their dignity rather than the young generation who are leaving school in era of massive house prices, no job security and huge education fees and who simply need the cash to survive.
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The US Education system sucks. Everything is brought down to the lowest level of student in the class room. A middle level student that doesn't care is ok in this system. But if you are smart you are punished for it. We also have something called common core (it's horrible). My son was reading before he started school they refused to allow him to get a chapter book out cause that would make other kids that don't read feel bad. He didn't stay in public school we pulled him out and homeschooled.
Kids only know how to do 2 things here: Take tests that don't actually prepare them for anything. And rely on someone else to hand them something later on.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
What I disagree with is the suggestion that the younger generation think it is beneath their dignity. That's simply not been my experience.
I agree here. Flipping burgers was not beneath our dignity and it should be below anyone elses. But I have no reason to feel that the current generation (hey, why are WE not current? We are still alive you know!!) isn't willing to do that. The idea that everyone expects to be rich out of high school and never work doesn't seem to exist by any observation that I have had.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
If anything, I'd say "your grandparents", who left school in the fifties and sixties during an economic boom and full employment, are more likely to think flipping burgers is beneath their dignity rather than the young generation who are leaving school in era of massive house prices, no job security and huge education fees and who simply need the cash to survive.
This ^^^^^
It was our parents (and their parents) that had the "go to college, a career is automatic" thing. Most didn't go to college, but those that did effectively bought themselves a career. They didn't have to work for it. Companies fought for them as the supply of workers was so short. It is from them, not from the last forty years, that the feeling that college was some magic guarantee of income comes from. It was the economic boom of the post war era, not the college or anything that they did, that made it happen.
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@JaredBusch said:
@art_of_shred said:
I don't care who said/wrote any bit of that article. I agree with 95% of it whole-heartedly. That is all. And, to be clear, I am speaking of the heart of what's said, not the silly details like the exact "$60,000" value, or the "car phone" remark. Those are only making a point, not the crux of the matter.
I very much dislike people that copy/paste crap on FB. Most of the time these people have no idea what they are even reposting. Seeing something blatantly wrong on ML is just insulting to the intelligent people that I thought were participating in this community.
The OP's posted information was two different things that were wrote by two different people and neither of the original authors were credited.
Who pissed in your Cheerios? If you don't like that the proper sources weren't credited, step up to the plate and give the proper credit. Either way, it doesn't change the wisdom the words express. That was my point. Maybe you disagree, which is perfectly fine.
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@art_of_shred said:
Who pissed in your Cheerios?
@scottalanmiller lately it seems.
@art_of_shred said:
If you don't like that the proper sources weren't credited, step up to the plate and give the proper credit.
I did. It was the very first reply to the post.
@art_of_shred said:
Either way, it doesn't change the wisdom the words express. That was my point. Maybe you disagree, which is perfectly fine.
I happen to agree in this case, but that is only because I went back and read the original source to confirm that the quote was not taken out of context. That was my only point.
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I'm curious; why does it matter who said something? What bearing does that have on the truth of what was said? Personally, I read the words and agreed. If I saw who said it, that would only add credibility to that person, in my opinion. Do words only get credit for you if they come from a person you have deemed credible? Not trying to argue, just genuinely curious, as that is exactly the opposite of how I would process it.
