FUCK YOU CORPORATE AMERICA.

While job searching, found this article that contributes to my misanthropic work despising mood. My comments will be in italics.


Young workers expect too much, employers say
????!!! We what????
June 27, 2005
BY MARTHA IRVINE


Evan Wayne thought he was prepared for anything during a recent interview for a job in radio sales.
Then the interviewer hit the 24-year-old Chicagoan with this: ''So, we call you guys the 'Entitlement Generation,' '' the baby boomer executive said, expressing an oft-heard view of today's young work force. ''You think you're entitled to everything.''

First of all, how rude can an employer be to bring that kind of shit up in an interview? I would never work for someone who would even bring up that kind of tripe - especially from someone who was also considered by the previous generation as just a bunch of kids who didn't fit into the establishment.

Such labeling is, perhaps, a rite of passage for every crop of twentysomethings. In their day, baby boomers were rabble-rousing hippies, while Gen Xers were apathetic slackers.
Now, deserved or not, this latest generation is being pegged, too -- as one with shockingly high expectations for salary, job flexibility and duties but little willingness to take on grunt work or remain loyal to a company.

Ok. Why is this even something that needs to be discussed? Yes, some of us have high salary expectations. Have you tried hacking out a living in this current day and age with a pile of student loans that come due the day they push you out of college? Yes we want flexibility and variety in our duties, it helps keeps us BALANCED. I'm sorry, but no one really wants to do a job that bores them to tears, and no one wants WORK to be their LIFE. I'm fucking sick of the work culture that demands that work be your universe. Evern wonder why there's so much job turnover? Because no one cares enough about their employees to pay them decently so they can take care of their bills, benefits to take care of their families, and enough vacation/personal time to take care of their sanity. You have to be superhuman to exist in many businesses. While still at the employment guide, I discovered that four sick days a YEAR were considered excessive. THIS, at a high stress job where people were frequently sick and would still come in and spread it to everyone else - and in a building with poor ventilation and horrible mildew problems.

In any job there's going to be a certain amount of grunt work, sure. But let's face it, it takes a long time to move anywhere in most companies, and sometimes, there's only so much dirty work that you can take. Some of the grunt work that people get is the offal that higher ups don't want to deal with, and some does get shoveled onto new people unnecessarily. Sure, we all need to cut our teeth, but we also need to be given acknowledgment for the talents we have and have them be put to good use instead of being stagnated in an entry level job that doesn't allow enough variety of work.

LOYALTY.

I'm sorry, I though loyalty was something reserved for friends, spouses, hell, even your country. I didn't think it was possible to cheat on your boos, seeing as how you're not sleeping with him - at least you'd better not be. If a friend was making you unhappy, casuing you undue distress, betraying you or not there for you when you needed them, you'd likely not want to be friends with them anymore and find someone else whom you could trust.

That said, who wants to work for a company -an organization- that has no real feelings, mind you who doesn't consider you as a person enough to value your needs more than their revenue? What reason do you have to remain faithful to them? WORK IS NOT A GODDAMN MARRIAGE. I think the people who are concerned about company loyalty (I.E. the higher ups) should work for a week in the place of those they manage - live with their budget, wages, financial situation, life issues, etc. and fucking see how they'd feel about company loyalty.

''We're seeing an epidemic of people who are having a hard time making the transition to work -- kids who had too much success early in life and who've become accustomed to instant gratification,'' says Dr. Mel Levine, a pediatrics professor at the University of North Carolina Medical School and author of a book on the topic called Ready or Not, Here Life Comes.

Who are these fucking people who have had too much success early in life? They must exist, but I know very, very few of them. They must have been the kids whose high schools actaully had a budget for after school programs, whose parents paid for their music lessons, bought them trinkets, cars, and an education.

The people who have gotten shit handed to them their whole lives, sure. They don't know what the fuck is going on and are definitely out for a rude awakening. but what about the larger majority of us who've worked shit job after shit job and STILL are at the bottom?

Coddling blamed


While Levine also notes that today's twentysomethings are long on idealism and altruism, ''many of the individuals we see are heavily committed to something we call 'fun.' ''

I'm sorry, has fun been outlawed? I didn't get the memo. So, you mean, we really are supposed to be struggling and hating what we do, and yet sticking with it because we are concerned with being loyal to a faceless organization that in the end has no personal interest in us as people? It's all good to work hard and work well, but goddamnit, this country has to stop being the superhero of the fucking world and realize that people don't exist to spend their waking hours in little gray cubicles and behind counters to earn someone else their extra automobile. If you don't enjoy what you do, and have som extent of fun involved, then you WILL be miserable and unproductive.

He partly faults coddling parents and colleges for doing little to prepare students for the realities of adulthood and setting the course for what many disillusioned twentysomethings are increasingly calling their ''quarter-life crisis.''

This I do agree with, as college does JACK SHIT as far as preparing you for anything. I was never coddled by my parents like some of the brain dead actors at my former school, but I agree that parents aren't much of a help either.

As far as the quarter life crisis, this is something that I believe has happened with some previous generations, but more accutely effects ours because of the climate in the work world and contributing lack of info about it. When you get out of school, and start looking for jobs and interviewing, then you start working, it's hard not to suddenly look around and say "Is this all there is? This is it? This is what I spent half my life going to school and paying for?" The benefits do not come close to balancing with the effort expended.

Who wants to live in a world where all there is is an endless mound of work, day after day after day? NOBODY. But that's how it feels to come out of school and realize that adults have failed you. They've failed to properly guide you and give you the hope necessary to survive and still be happy with who you are.

Meanwhile, employers from corporate executives to restaurateurs and retailers are frustrated.
''It seems they want and expect everything that the 20- or 30-year veteran has the first week they're there,'' says Mike Amos, a Salt Lake City-based franchise consultant for Perkins Restaurants.
Just about any twentysomething will tell you they know someone like this, and may even have some of those high expectations themselves.

Ok, I expect to work my way up. But, you have to pay someone a living wage to start out. It doesn't have to be grandiose, but it has to be a living wage. Why does no one want to pay what it actually costs to live? Is it because the previous generation didn't have to deal with the amount of debt that we do? So much debt that we'll be ready to retire and still paying off our school loans?

High expectations


Wayne had this response for his interviewer at the radio station: ''Maybe we were spoiled by your generation. But I think the word 'entitled' isn't necessarily the word,'' he said. ''Do we think we're deserving if we're going to go out there and bust our ass for you? Yes.''
He ended up getting the job -- and, as he starts this month, is vowing to work hard.
Some experts who study young people think having some expectations, and setting limits with bosses, isn't necessarily negative.

''It's true they're not eager to bury themselves in a cubicle and take orders from bosses for the next 40 years, and why should they?'' asks Jeffrey Arnett, a University of Maryland psychologist who's written a book on ''emerging adulthood,'' the period between age 18 and 25. ''They have a healthy skepticism of the commitment their employers have to them and the commitment they owe to their employers.'' AP

Finally, some sense. Skepticism, especially in work and government, is healthy at a certain level. If you are going to spend many valuable hours if not years of your life doing tasks for someone, you'd better damn well get decent compensation, respect, rewards, and understanding that you are a person. This is your life, you were not born with the specific task of being someone else's computer monkey. You have dreams, ambitions, and needs. you do not exist because someone wants you to work. You exist because of a higher reason. You have specific skills that could benefit someone in need of them, and should rightfully be paid for your hard work, not bludgeoned by society in a role that demands you pay up in order to breathe.