When I was a kid at a certain point of time, it became my responsibility to show up for whatever it was I was supposed to show up for that day. School being the biggest one, but as I got into my teens, waking up to deliver newspapers every day at the crack of dawn was a chore I had to handle myself.
When I graduated HS, I entered the Air Force, where the burden of getting up at the crack of dawn was no longer my responsibility, they made sure we woke up when they wanted us to, whether we wanted to or not.
After basic training, I transferred to another school which conveniently was just across the air force base at Lackland where basic training was conducted. There, I was housed in a dormitory with a roommate in separate rooms instead of the old squad bays from basic.
My roommate had an alarm clock, so he got us up every morning.
Except one day, I was rudely woken up my our squad leader. My roommate had gone to the ER in the middle of the night, and didn’t have the alarm set, so I overslept. I was chewed out by our squadron commander, who didn’t want to hear any excuses.
From that point on, I made sure I had my own alarm clock.
The old axiom, fifteen minutes prior to fifteen minutes prior in the military was pretty much ingrained into everyone’s brain. If you had a Dr appointment, or some such activity, you were expected to be there early. At work, you were expected to be there before 7am (or whatever shift you were working), and there was no excusing being even a couple minutes late. In the Air Force, our day shift was from 7am to 5pm, a 10 hour workday, with an hour for lunch.
And this ingrained compulsion to be early for everything carried over to my civilian life. If my sister in law was throwing a party, I’d show up 30 minutes early, while she was still frantically trying to clean the house. It took a long time for me to adjust my attitude towards time and social functions, but it’s a habit hard to break. Even commuting to and from work, half the time is simply waiting for the next portion of my commute, arriving early to guarantee a seat in packed public transportation. When I go into the office, I get up at 5am to make sure I get to work by 8. I have the longest commute of everyone in the office, because quite frankly, it’s too expensive to live within 30 miles of Seattle. Most of the time I am the first one there.
Which brings me to the point of my article.
Young people just don’t seem to have the same work ethics as older generations. Oh, they work hard (mostly), but WHEN they work is a different story.
While that was satire, it does reflect at least some attitudes with younger workers. I know some that just can’t seem to make it into the office before 9am. I don’t personally care, that’s between their boss and themselves. But it’s a behavior I’ve noticed.
There was even popular videos posted of “day in the life” of a 20-something tech worker who seemed to spend 90% of their time not actually working in the office. Getting coffee, zoning out in a meditation room, chatting with co-workers, eating snacks, more coffee, lunch, listening to music, etc. The rest of the time was meetings. You don’t actually see them produce, well, anything.
I know, this is generalizing the mass, I am sure there are punctual hard working young folks out there. but there is a lot of evidence this is more than a fringe trend.
Thoughts?