Off My Lawn!

Not really, but I have been somewhat perplexed as to how young folks these days are not all that interested in HARD WORK.

Now I worked in all sorts of jobs before I picked up the roofing trade. Service station at 14 after school and weekends. (stick with me now)

Took a couple of years off when I got out of HS to chase girls and get drunk. You know--regular stuff. Worked a very dangerous job in the oil fields. Worked in a bank. Welded aircraft parts in a factory. Spot-welded dashboards into Mustangs like a monkey-'64 thru '67. ( and other jobs) Blundered into the roofing trade at 27 and fortunately, I was very good at it. Noticed EVERY building in the world has a roof and they will wear out again and again. Hmmmm. Self starter was I and could nail on anywhere between 8 and 15 squares of wood shakes a day. Paid well and outside work with different locations every few days was desirable. The $$ involved was very good.

OK, roofing is hard work, but to me it's enjoyable to take a shit roof and install a new, beautiful roof. This is where the "get off my lawn you kids--have you no respect," comes in. Yes. I'm old, still do some roofing, but my kids are running the company now. We/they CAN NOT find any decent help! They need good people--and can't find them. Adds in the paper, Craigs List and employment office gets mostly bullshitters that "know how to work and know roofing." It's maddening to hire someone and the usual---not much.

Is it the youngins' these days? Are youngins' giving up because of the way society is now? Can it be possible a generation is looking for hand outs without earning it? Is the work too hard? Every generation feels the young folks coming up are worse than the previous one. Man, I hate to take that attitude, as everyone needs chances to prove themselves capable of responsibility and being able to work. I just don't know, the boys are scheduled out quite a ways, but cannot keep up due to either irresponsible or non-existent workers. Give me some kind of an answer and you can hang out on my lawn. ----------Joel

 

i don't think it has much to do with age. seems like a vast majority of people hate hard work, period. i'm consistently perplexed by the laziness and sense of entitlement i see from people of all ages.

 

being on a roofing crew is hard work.....being the junior guy on a roofing crew is brutal work

having said that...i was junior man on a roofing crew....despite me falling 18 feet it was an awesome summer job....good money...great newfie crew that drank more than they did anything else....never on the job though

damn...my brother needs a job and he has experience.....too bad you aren't here

 

There's a comfortable chair and a couple 'a beers on my lawn for you.

 

I've noticed the same thing as far as people in general, but especially some of the young women, not wanting to do any physical work at all...I mean walking from here to there seems to be almost Too Much for them. wth

I would rather walk and move around than be in a sedentary desk job - which at one time in my life I did have!

But anyway, I've noticed also how very many people (of all ages) don't want to do anything...the older people all seem to be trying to get some kind of disability or another when I've SEEN these people can work, and the young ones would rather do nothing than get out and get a job at a convenience store or a fast food place. Now, let me say this - if people don't think you work your ass off working in either of these environments, then they need to do that - work in a convenience store or any fast-food place for 1 week.

I find it very disconcerting the number of people that would rather expend loads of energy trying to figure out what to do aside from a job, whereas if they spent just half of that energy on a job, they would do well. It even seems (to me) that when ON a job, young people often appear to try and figure ways (LOTS of ways) not to even perform the job they have. There are certain stores I no longer go in because it just seems like Way Too Much WORK for the clerks to wait on me. :-O

Now I'm looking after a 95 year old mean ass baby (my mother lol) as well as taking care of the house and the yard...the house sits on 2 7/8 acres. Of course I guess we have over 50 trees (at least) and that means I would LOVE for somebodyS to get ON MY GRASS since grass mowing here and there with a temperamental push mower (it doesn't like to start for me) is the worse part of my new "job". Anyway, I find I'm doing a lot of physical (and psychological) work now.

I don't understand laziness.

 

Lawn. Beer. You.

 

there is tons of hard working teens .....i see them out there.......i just wish to christ my own kid would start hanging out with some of them

 

You know, roofing is the kind of work where if everyone busts ass, you get more jobs completed and more money made. I also know that some people will never reward that bust-ass work. my son wants to reward workers and pay them well for that type of work---so far only a couple of bonuses paid out. His attitude is --everyone works hard--everyone does well. But hell, if no one works hard--what's next? My boys are killers on the roof
and try to set a good example. Very seldom works. Sigh.

 

:rofl:

 

I was sitting parked up in the car the other day watching a young guy putting tiles up on the roof of a supermarket - he looked like he was doing a neat and efficient job. The truth is that he's probably lucky to get that job anyway.

One problem we have here is that a lot of young people go and do university courses and then find it's not much help in terms of employment, so a lot of people with degrees end up doing quite low level work.

In the UK we also have to have lots of people come in from eastern Europe to do all the jobs Brits won't do. Many UK employers consider them more reliable and harder working then the natives.

 

Well, Polish people will work hard. That's just a fact I think. I've never met a real lazy one, even the bums work for their change. They migrate well North into Scandianvia, hard labor, work work work. Hard working people. There's an old saying about the Polish: "A pole is born with a sword in one hand and a brick in the other. After the war they shall rebuild".

I always hear the Brits so quick to complain about them but so quick to forget just how much they've done for them too. When the Brits were too scared to defend their country against the Luftwaffe, who do you think so eagerly and bravely raised their hands for the cause?

 

I'm not criticizing Poles or Czechs. Personally, I don't have a problem with people coming here to work, even if a lot of Brits don't like it. Fact is, without migrant workers, the country wouldn't function. I live near a large farming area where nearly all the seasonal work like hop picking is done by migrants these days. Used to be done by Gypsies, but they've gone long ago.

I actually had a brief relationship with a woman from central Europe, which although it didn't last, meant quite a lot to me. So for personal reasons I'm not going to argue against people coming here to work.

When you say who put their hands up in WW II, do you mean Polish flyers who flew with the RAF?

 

We are in a more technologically advanced time now. It's about all CS degrees :crowngrin:

 

It's not just teens that are lazy, I've worked with guys who can't be bothered to do the job properly, who try to do as little work as possible and get away with it. This usually means that the guys who work the hardest end up having to do the work that the lazy ones got away with, just to get the job finished on time. All through my working career this has always been the case, I've seen it happen many times over and over again. I think there will always be those that do as little work as possible, knowing full well that someone else unwittingly will cover it instead. What makes it worse is that these lazy workers use sneaky tactics to avoid working too hard, they are experts in the art of deception.

 

i wouldn't say they're experts; most of them are pretty obvious about it. they just know that as long as they do the bare minimum they probably won't get fired, because there's such a shortage of decent workers out there that the reality is most employers will have to keep a few warm bodies on their staff at all times.

then the people who refuse to work at all end up working their asses off to keep from working. oh, it's the first of the month! i have to go to every cash advance place to pay off all my loans today, then back to every cash advance place to get new loans tomorrow, and then i have to call every credit card company on the planet to find one that will give me a card i can max out for this month, and so on.

 

there is no lawn, it is not mine, and you are welcome to wander where you will.
you are not welcome though, to rob me of my freedom of though,
by the loud annoyance, of so called human entertainment.

i find the sounds of nature, and even those of technology, in the ordinary course of its functioning,
preferable to those made, by humans themselves, for the purposes of amusing themselves and each other, or generally most purposes, beyond those of intellegent communication.
(intelligent communication, NOT being the default form of human speach, nor generally most sounds made by humans intentionally)

i'm also one of those strange life forms, who fail to find destruction entertaining nor amusing.

nor do i find humor, a 'get out of jail free card'.

i have no argument nor disagreement, with anyone who does not choose, by an act of their own free will, to demand my attention.
as for those, attempting to avoid contributing to ways of life, they neither believe in, nor have any use in hell for,
i regard their boycotting of aggressiveness as both honorable and even heroic.
(and take a certain pride, in having from time to time, numbered myself among them)
(provided of course, they too, like anyone else, avoid making of it, an excuse to demand anyone's attention.)

 

If they are on my lawn they are hella lost.... and trespassing.

 

what tree, rock, or little furry creature, ever told humans, the earth was theirs, to buy and sell?
if you're far enough from town, to not have to worry about urban alcohaulics being likely, or even able to stumble that far out there, then why worry about their doing so?

 

Who said I was worried?

 

Best help we ever hired for the farm was this young kid we found living in a tent down on the creek. Like roofing, farm work is tough, physically. He worked his heinie off. I had to MAKE him stop at the end of each day.

He stayed about a week. Just long enough for me to get some decent food in his belly and for him to earn enough to pay his court fees. Parole costs?? I dunno.

And then he was on his way.

Very young.. but very hard worker, Scratch.