Editorial: Poorly educated, don’t-give-a-damn workers are dragging down the economy

[TexasTowelie]

[font color=green]This editorial by Will Deener appeared in the Dallas Morning News yesterday. It has received over 250 comments thus far.[/font]

My first insight — one that I have experienced first-hand, and I’m sure readers of this screed have, too — involves the erosion of our workforce.

OK, using the term erosion is much too polite, so I’m just going to come right out and say it: There are just a lot of unmotivated, poorly educated, don’t-give-a-damn workers out there who couldn’t care less about increasing productivity or being nice to customers.

This is only anecdotal but just the other day I was trying to buy some personal products from a major retailer, and the clerk couldn’t figure out how to open the secured container to give me my razor blades. Nor could she figure out how to scan the price of another item, so I just told her keep it. And she wasn’t polite, either.

My point is that we might have slack demand, but I submit the United States also has a slack supply of capable workers. Allow me to marinate that statement in some facts. A record number of people, some 90 million, have left the workforce in recent years and stopped looking for jobs — and no, that is not a typo.

The complete editorial is at http://www.dallasnews.com/business/columnists/will-deener/20150419-deener-poorly-educated-dont-give-a-damn-workers-are-dragging-down-the-economy.ece .

[surrealAmerican]

1. It sounds like the clerk at that store wasn't adequately trained.

Sure, you can blame the low-wage worker, I guess, but the boss has failed here. They failed their employee, and they failed their customers. You don't expect employees to magically know how everything works in your shop, even if they are intelligent and motivated. You train them.

... also, the writer sounds like a jerk.

[Coventina]

2. No kidding. As someone who knows several people looking for "entry level" jobs right now

I can tell you that "training" simply doesn't exist anymore.

A new worker gets a few hours, if they're lucky. Then, it's into the deep end of the pool!

[daleanime]

4. 'A few hours'? That would be very generous nowadays....

for the most part, you're lucky if an experienced worker is able to spare an eye. And of course the workers attitude has nothing to do with the poor pay, lack of benefits, and the abuse they endure at work.......




just in case.

[Enrique]

8. exactly

and they seem to be running giant stores nearly alone. That's why I stopped going to CVS, it was absurd. One person in that huge store, doing everything.

[daredtowork]

31. I read the apology of a former Staples employee on Yelp

He explained how lines were held up because he was requred to foist various superfluous "rewards" and "insurance" programs on every customer. Furthermore, managers weren't helping with the lines because they were hovering in some surveillance panopticon checking for whether employees were pushing unnecessary product. The poor schmuck wound up with how he was surprised that he enjoed working with the public more than he thought he would. The only thing he seemed to resent about his job was being pressured to sell people stuff they didn't need and the creepy spying of the managers.

[99Forever]

3. Sorry, but I can't...

... even give so much as a click to this kind of trashy shame the poor crap.

Maybe if the brainiacs running Texas gave two shits about educating kids...


... ah hell, what's the use?

[daleanime]

5. Agree with that.....

read every thing I need to just from the excerpt.

[TexasTowelie]

7. I only looked through a few of the comments,

but the author of this piece of crap took some heat from the readers.

He rags on the number of people on disability and comments that people can make more off of government programs than working. IOW, his editorial is a real shitfest.

[99Forever]

9. I truly feel sorrow for anyone ...

... who has to live there.

[daredtowork]

32. There are people on DU feeding the SSI fraud Fox Fact.

Apparently if it's not the source of support YOU desperately need, everone else who needs it is gaming the system and it's an "entitlement" we can cut.

This is my chief issue with Hillary, btw. Bill Clinton invented the "center" primarily by super-marginalizing the poor with "welfare reform as we know it". All the Republican cuts have been capitalizing on that rhetoric. Not only has Hillary shown no inclination to address the epic era of pooe-shaming and physical TORTURE on US soil that Bill Clinton inaugurated, she has dropped hints to re-affirm her commitmment to that stance. She has described herself as "center" (who is left on the periphery?), she has emphasized how she values hard work (people on welfare or disability aren't working - they are the "lazy, shiftless" poor. And there is usually a wink and a nudge implying they are black.), and her economic-speak emphasizes de-regulation (which inevitably favors the rich and their positional power over the poor.).

While upper class members of DU are trying to assert party difference, waving their arms and shouting about SCOTUS and climate change, they don't get that from the perspective of the homeless or those at risk of becoming honeless, there is no difference between the parties until Hillary steps up on pushing back against "welfare reform". Let's see her do something.

[Sparhawk60]

33. You Can Make More on Welfare Than Working

"people can make more off of government programs than working."

This is totally true, just look at all the cruise ships leaving Kansas 24/7, just filled to the brim with welfare queens!

/sarcasm off
// looks like we are bring back the '80's and welfare queens eating steak and riding in new Cadillac's

[Enrique]

10. i only read it to see if it was satire

apparently it is not.

[99Forever]

14. Must be a sign of the times that it wasn't.

I fear we've passed the tipping point.

[Enrique]

6. 90 million workers have quit their jobs

after dealing with Will Deener.

[TexasTowelie]

11. I wouldn't want to be around this jerk either.

I'm in the process of applying for disability. It is nothing to be proud of, but if you have enough problems that makes you unemployable and you've contributed to the system then you should not feel ashamed either. This turkey really pisses me off for his lack of compassion.

[betterdemsonly]

12. i think they make this stuff up personally.

It is just an anecdote from a man who is inclined to dis poor people anyway.

[Fumesucker]

16. It's selective attention

You see what you are looking for and don't see what you are not looking for even if it's right in front of you. Not everyone all the time but enough to really bias things.

If you are looking for people doing their jobs poorly there are enough out there who might just be having a bad day that you will sooner or later get a less than fully pleasant customer experience.

Take the selective attention test, it's pretty revealing.

[muntrv]

13. How dare those people in their 60s drop out of the workforce instead of working as a cashier at Wal

Mart! They think that they can retire or something?

[Fumesucker]

15. ...

[tularetom]

17. We cut funding for education and then bitch because there are so many uneducated people

That's the American way!

[winter is coming]

18. There' s not much point in giving a damn when it doesn't help you get ahead.

They don't make a living wage, nor have much hope of ever doing so and they're treated like shit.

[vanlassie]

19. Go to In N Out Burger if you don't think young

undereducated people can give good customer service. It's a training issue. Most big companies just want to skim the fat and don't give a rip about the customer experience.

[Art_from_Ark]

20. Skimming the fat

because Wall Street and CEO bonuses demand it.

[LeftyMom]

23. They get paid relatively well and they always have plenty of staffing.

And they have great service and gleaming clean stores. Almost as if paying people well and scheduling enough of them means they'll do good work. It's a mystery, I tell ya.

[vanlassie]

24. Yep. Who knew??? But they have a very robust

training program, too.

[DirkGently]

21. Oh yeah. All those slackers, that's the problem. Because razor blades.

Blerg.

[PowerToThePeople]

22. Dumb ass Repuke.

[strategery blunder]

25. So I have 2 part time jobs, one about 6 hours a week and one almost 30/week

I've continually requested more hours and training at the 6 hour/week job because, quite frankly, I only ever deal with about the 20% of the store nearest my register, and if a customer has a question about where something is that's not right around my register, I still usually have to send them to one of the most experienced employees. I don't even get enough hours to familiarize myself with the current sales, let alone all the times the seasonal displays change and I don't even know there's a new seasonal display out until a few hours into my shift. It's been a struggle to even get the company to train me for its inventory procedures, and even then they've dragged their feet on scheduling hours for it. And I've been there nearly a year...

The job where I get most of my hours, I seldom have to call managers for anything unless the customer specifically requests one, I can resolve most issues/complications without having to call a manager at all, I know where absolutely everything is, I know what promotions are out and when they are, and the store's managers have been grooming me and encouraging me to apply for FT positions within the company (which I am doing.)

The hourly pay is the same, benefits are pretty similar for part timers. Guess which job I feel invested in, and will bust my ass for, and guess which job I don't really care about? Yeah I bet that clerk who couldn't open the razor blades (per the editorial) was another clerk who gets six hours a week, and I bet the razor blades came from cosmetics (if it's a drugstore), and the clerk had never so much as handled that key, and there was no one in cosmetics. As for not being polite, I admit I occasionally find myself giving fewer fucks at my low-hours job because I still feel I'm trained at the bare minimum to run the register and I'm not trained to handle customer service issues that arise from different departments. (I do try not to make that obvious to the customer, but in a situation where it's relevant, I will apologize and admit I only get a single shift each week as I call for someone else to help, I'm probably even more frustrated than the customer is LOL.)

People who complain about running into slackers in the workforce really need to start asking employers about how well the alleged 'slackers' are trained. There needs to be far more customer-to-employer pressure to train employees properly for their jobs, because employers sure as hell aren't going to listen to employees (and/or the employees are too scared to ask).

[kcr]

26. Well, given the shoddy journalism standards they seem to have at the Dallas News

it probably does seem that way.

[TexasTowelie]

27. This jerk may have written his own ticket to the unemployment line.

Every time that he makes a mistake in an article that he has written he will be trolled with a link to this column.

[TexasTowelie]

28. There are 318 comments now.

A mix of comment for and against. Lots of anti-immigrant comments about H-1B immigrants also.

[still_one]

29. "Poorly educated, don't give a damn", hmmmm, why not just say the typical republican?

[moondust]

30. I guess I was wrong.

I thought most people treasured the opportunity to be squeezed like an old rag and tossed out in the street on a whim as long as it helps some billionaire's heir earn another billion.

[raccoon]

34. Another thing this idiot Deener says in the article:

This demographical shift is certainly one of the factors working against the supply of labor, but there is this, too: The U.S. birth rate is falling at just the time we are going to need more workers.

Well, Deener is probably too stupid to realize it, but there are fewer and fewer GOOD jobs (read: jobs that pay enough to live on), and
that's been the case for the last few decades.

[hobbit709]

35. Treating workers like shit and giving them low hours at shitty pay doesn't make for much motivation.