sharke

TerraSin
Back when I did stage production a few years ago, I had a then Penn State University Senior student working with me one day. We were putting together some truss and this guy turns to me and he asks, "which way do I turn this (nut and bolt) to tighten it?" I thought surely he must be joking so I didn't even acknowledge it. He just sat there waiting for my response. I looked up at him and go "Really? You've got two choices. It's a 50/50 shot... wait, did you really just ask me that?"
 
The kicker, this guy was graduating with a degree in engineering. I wanted to run out of the building screaming.

I have clients who work in corporate jobs, often in charge of accounts worth millions of dollars and earning 6 figures themselves, who cannot figure out an invoice that I send them. With everything clearly itemized and a subtotal + sales tax + grand total at the bottom. They call me and say I don't understand this. What's this amount? What's this line? How much do I pay? It really is just a basic invoice with nothing ambiguous or confusing in it. Even when I explain, they still don't get it. I just can't work out how they get these jobs. 

It's the  curse of *specialization* in academia.  The general knowledge found in Plato's quadrivium (or liberal arts) is thought to be a waste of money and time.  We're raising a generation of one hit wonders, they can't think for themselves.  It's true that liberal arts majors aren't always hired for various jobs, but those at the top of the companies usually do have some type of a generalized education.  I'm not talking about STEM educations, those have always been somewhat specialized.  My tombstone is going to read *stay curious*.

+1 to over '50's, or employ Eastern Europeans if you can find any out of work. There are quite a number of them in the small town here (Poles, Magyars, Slovakians, and Bulgarians), and they put the local 'workforce' to shame.

It's amazing how bad these kids are at selling themselves to an employer. When I was at school we had lessons in interview technique, job application technique etc. Kids today have no idea how to give off the right signals. As an example, when I was emailing back and forth this flake that didn't show up last night, I mentioned the neighborhood that she'd be working in, the Upper East Side.

She replied back "well obviously that's not ideal since I'm coming from Brooklyn, but I suppose I can take the L and change to the 6."

By what standard of common sense would you start expressing negative vibes (of any kind) about the job to your prospective employer before you've even started? Every cell in my brain would, as a matter of instinct, compel me to say something like "oh that's no problem, I can easily get there on the L and the 6" if It were me applying. I really don't think these kids understand what a job actually is and what their status as an employee is. I really think they see businesses as "just there" to provide them with something to do.

Hi,
 
At 65, I'm not sure that even looking for a part time job ... is possible. I can see many employers ... "over qualified" ... and that means 65. "under qualified" ... teenager! "idiot" 35 year old that can only do dishes in a restaurant to support their child.
 
Of course, we could look at employers, but we won't do that here!

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/11/460698077/goodbye-jobs-hello-gigs-nunbergs-word-of-the-year-sums-up-a-new-economic-reality
 
Welcome to the Gig economy.
 
It is really rational economic behavior you are expiencing.
 
JR

RE: South Americans. 
 
Working late at my old employer, on the way out I had a conversation with the graveyard-shift security guard at the front desk. He was from Colombia, where he'd been a bank president. Now he sits at a desk all night, asking for badges.
 
What he said to me that night has stuck with me ever since (this was some 35 years ago). He said that before emigrating to the U.S. he'd been warned that because of his ethnicity he'd have to work twice as hard as an American to succeed - but the good news is that's really not very hard.

RE: Millenials
 
I try to be a mentor to my 14-year-old grandson. He has enormous potential, gets good grades and wants to be an engineer (a real one, not the knob-twisters who call themselves engineers). He's polite and intelligent, doesn't get into trouble, a model student.
 
The problem is that he has the attention span of a gnat.
 
I blame it on 24x7 entertainment. Even television is too great a commitment for him; he rarely sits through an entire movie (unless I've paid for it, in which case I feel entitled to insist on it). YouTube's 10-minute standard seems to be about his limit, and even then he often clicks on something else before it'd done. He's got a smartphone, a tablet and a laptop and one of them is fired up at all times. Extended conversations are nearly impossible, except on camping trips and only after he's gone through no-signal withdrawal.
 
I've tried to explain to him that lack of focus is going to be his greatest hurdle in pursuing a technical career. That he's going to have to read some pretty dense books, pay attention to sometimes-boring lectures, and often defer instant gratification when designing and testing things. But my voice is but a whisper in the storm of incessant digital input.
 

It all started with two unrelated things "we" did.
 
1 - We put helmets on the little ones for EVERYTHING.
2 - We have competitions without score keeping, awarding "participation trophies".
 
We've taught entire generations that effort doesn't matter; in fact effort is to be avoided unless you have an appropriate helmet fitted.
 
 

We're so dead.
 
- with any luck anyway.

BobF
It all started with two unrelated things "we" did.
 
1 - We put helmets on the little ones for EVERYTHING.
 

Actually, if all the parents of the so-called Millennials had remembered to put "helmets" on their little ones, then we wouldn't HAVE this problem.