Yeah. Not necessarily singling your post out among several, it just seemed apt. I worked a summer at a Burger King, in addition to during high school two summers as a cashier at Target.
Now, despite having education, credentials (the usual CCNA, Security+ [a joke of a certificate, but apparently de rigueur]), undergraduate degree, two years of post baccalaureate in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Microelectronic Technician (so, I obviously have small stuff like inorganic chem, physics+calculus, first year calculus, linear algebra, discrete mathematics, numerical analysis, non-classical logics, etc., plus work in my actual interests like machine learning and automated theorem proving…that’s “unusual” for a guy with an UG degree with high honors in Comparative Literature from a top school working under top scholars directly), prestigious teaching fellowships as a grad student, and damn near a Doctorate in Comparative Literature with emphasis in technical philosophy under one of the biggest names in formal ontology on the planet.
I’m happy to be at Amazon as a T1 grunt. I can eat any of my manager’s lunch as far as banging out some spreadsheet stats, and any of the guys at the IT cage, but the corporate world is tight with a dime, let me tell you.
And it’s difficult to remain sanguine and optimistic among a system about which one has zero respect…if this corporation were a person, I’d be tempted to push it in front of a subway train at Port Authority, you know.
I don’t think the “no one wants” to work thing is exclusive to any particular working class, education background, or other demographic.
I think the problem is people aren’t tacking on a crucial qualifier to that statement. No one wants to work…for employers who aren’t fairly compensating their workers or treating their employees with basic humanity. Which unfortunately can be encountered in any job field.
I second the notion of ditching “unskilled” (not piling on anyone here, I’ve used the term too, but it’d be great if we could find a replacement). The whole “unskilled” thing has always rubbed me wrong, and it’s really evident how deeply this sort of thinking is embedded in our cultural psyche. People have plenty of skill, whether it’s flipping burgers or designing rockets.
I think we’ve got it backwards – we shouldn’t be describing the people, we should be describing the jobs. Instead of saying “unskilled workers,” we should say “workers in undesirable professions,” because that’s really it, isn’t it? It brings to the forefront the basic human need to feel satisfaction in what we do.
I dunno, “undesirable” is still very subjective. And you can find satisfaction even in the most mundane tasks. Ex: I work at a pharmacy currently. Definitely considered a “skilled” position, and I certainly find it satisfying. But the job I had before was on a landscaping crew. Some of it was building and planting and stuff, but most of it was “unskilled” grunt work like shoveling dirt, pushing wheelbarrows, and pulling weeds. Stuff that I thought anyone could do but once I saw other new hires dropping off after a couple of days on the job, I realized that these too are skills. And y’know what? I got immense satisfaction from the stuff like throwing dirt into wheelbarrows. Everyone’s idea of a “desirable” job is different, but the satisfaction comes from if you’re able to do your job well and if it makes the cogs of your brain turn right.
Personally, I wish that the phrase “entry-level” had a more general meaning, to simply mean, “jobs that are suitable for those entering the workforce.” As opposed to ones you need a degree or certification for.
So we’ve been dealing with my daughter having so much trouble during her first week in middle school. She can’t open her locker without help. You have to push up on it forcefully and she just can’t seem to do it. That would be okay if the school didn’t have the frankly insane policy of kids not being allowed to carry their backpacks to class. Probably some stupid anti-mass shooting or anti-drug move I guess, but we had backpacks all through school and there were no issues. And it’s not like a kid couldn’t just keep the gun in their locker, so I don’t get it. Anyway, that means she’s been carrying all of her books and papers and her school Chromebook to every single class and not even bringing her backpack home. It’s stressing all of us out. We’ve gotten teachers involved trying to help her, but it’s still a real uphill battle.
Is it a dexterity issue or a problem with the locker itself? Sounds like she needs a different locker.
And of course, she is in a new school and dealing with all that comes with that on top of what would normally be a minor hassle of a recalcitrant locker. Poor kiddo.
I think she just can’t manage to push hard enough. I don’t know if it’s just her locker or if it’s every locker. Like I said, we’ve gotten teachers involved trying to help her now, so hopefully that will resolve it, but it hasn’t yet. She did make some new friends though, so she’s more upbeat than she was.
I wonder if there would be a way for her to get into the school a little early or stay a little later to practice with it when she isn’t surrounded by the noise or hordes of other kids and trying to get to classes. An idea.
I think she’s working on it during homeroom. I know the teacher is giving her extra time to help her. She has ADHD so they are making accommodations anyway. I think middle school would be okay for her if she was just allowed to carry a damn backpack.
Apparently a couple of years ago, they didn’t even let girls carry little bags with sanitary supplies and even diabetics weren’t allowed to carry necessary things with them. That policy, thankfully, got dropped and she can carry a small purse, so at least she won’t get embarrassed that way.
I mean if they’re so concerned about what kids put in a backpack, there are transparent backpacks. I know because plenty of school districts use them. At least let them do that!
I was talking with a relative who’s a teacher on Friday, and she was saying how tough kids have it right now. If we’re all struggling a little to figure out what “normal” looks like in a post-COVID world, kids are struggling with the same thing plus every age group was sort of benched for a different set of developmental milestones. She also mentioned the greater instance of depression and anxiety. We’re only at the very beginning of observing what the effects of this major trauma will be for them.
It seems to me that erring on the side of extra flexibility and understanding for these kids, trying to meet them where they’re at in every small reasonable way possible, would be the obvious course of action. Being rigid about something as minor as “visit your locker x times per day” is just deck chairs on the Titanic. I’m sorry, Squid - I hope a large dose of perspective makes its way to the situation soon.
My son had it opposite most of last year. The middle school didn’t let kids visit their lockers at all, so they had to carry everything for the day in their backpacks. Thankfully they stopped that as covid cases decreased, but he kept doing it because he was used to it. Kid’s going to mess up his back…
I give those middle school teachers a lot of credit, given all the crap with which they have had to deal. On top of the typical hormones and adolescent angst, kids have been bringing their parents’ political griefs to school, and reduced social skills/respect are really playing a huge role in kids’ behavior. Not to mention the hassles that other parents are giving teachers based on their classwork, etc.
You make a good point. I suppose there’s no easy solution to this. I think what I was getting at was that people who we call “unskilled” are, by and large, doing jobs that are generally undesirable – just cogs in a machine making someone else wealthy, with no meaningful path to a better future. My guess is that folks who find true satisfaction in that are the exception vs. the rule.
My concern is exactly the opposite. Covid or no Covid, schools have been moving at warp speed to become paperless, and they’re not making intelligent decisions. Google Classroom, seriously?
“Hmm, it’d be nice to manage all my students’ grades and assignments on a computer instead of this old paper notebook.”
“Okay! Let’s partner with the world’s largest advertising company! We’ll gather every morsel of personal information about every student, for generations – name, home address, parents names, assignments, grades, everything – and hand it on a silver platter to this company who’s only function is to monetize peoples’ behavioral and personal data for profit.”
To be fair, not all school systems use Google Classroom. Mine uses Canvas and Skyward, which were designed for schools by much smaller companies. Still private companies, mind you, when I think this is exactly the sort of thing the Department of Education is for, but that’s probably too political for this forum.