Now hiring: Lazy college graduate

Carly Halvorson

Published on Thu., October 23rd, 2008

Every morning during my internship with a non-profit insurance association last semester, I would log into my company e-mail, my personal e-mail and, most importantly, Facebook. After more than seven months of being able to learn what couple broke up or browse my friends’ photos while getting paid $13 an hour, one fateful morning, I was greeted with “the rat,” the company’s nickname for a prohibited Web site. My Facebook usage had finally caused my employers to block the Web site. I was frustrated that they took my favorite time-waster away from me, but then my rational side took over and I asked myself, “Shouldn’t I be working, anyway?”

With some companies going as far as creating recess periods during the workday, many have noticed a general trend in the new crop of young employees. According to a study by Roger Hill at the University of Georgia and Susan Fouts at Western Carolina University, employers from the baby-boomer generation have grown increasingly frustrated with their young employees, noticing a lack of work ethic and overall laziness when it comes to work.

When describing her own work ethic, Chelsea Rutrough, Salem, Va., freshman, admits the amount of work she puts in is dependent on how important the outcome is to her. In general she works hard, but if she doesn’t care much, Rutrough says she doesn’t put in as much effort.

“I work hard and put in as much as I need to get what I want out,” Rutrough says. “Students don’t want to be stuck at work. They would rather go to work, do what they have to, and leave as soon as they can.”

In her article, “The Work Ethic, in a Modern Guise,” Joanne Ciulla, author and professor at Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond, says recent college graduates enter the workforce with three qualities that set them apart from older generations: a sense of entitlement to a do-over, expectation of rewards based on time put into work and not the quality, and feeling they are above average compared to their peers.

“These aren’t necessarily bad qualities,” Ciulla says. “It’s just that every generation, every change gives employers different challenges in terms of what they have to work with.”

Ciulla cites the current education system as a significant contributor to these behaviors, and she says grade inflation is the main culprit.

“Grade inflation is the saddest failure of education system,” Ciulla says. “If students go through college getting As and Bs all the time, they end up thinking they’re pretty good, and the problem is that some of them really aren’t. I don’t believe in blaming students. It’s an education issue.”

In her article, Ciulla calls this the “Lake Wobegon effect,” which is based on a fictional town created by author Garrison Keillor in which all the children believe they are above average despite evidence to the contrary. Having such an attitude can lead to students working less but expecting more. Even worse, Ciulla says, is that young workers do the bare minimum in order to keep their paychecks, and getting fired is of little concern because they can always get another job.

Others point the finger at more general offenders, such as the student’s family or the community where he or she grew up. If a student is raised in a home in which the parents are unsatisfied with their jobs, it will be difficult for the student to become attached to a job as well.

“How much would you really worry about career opportunities with a company if you’re planning on getting a better job in a year anyway?” says Brandon Dekosky, Overland Park senior.

Dekosky says he thinks that, for students, the interest is more in the dollar figure on the paycheck than advancements in a career. Because of such priorities, Dekosky says employers would most likely complain that students don’t show enough dedication to their jobs.

However, not all employers see student workers as lazy workers. Using generational nicknames, such as “baby boomers” for those born between 1940 and 1960 and “Generation Y” for those of us born between 1982 and 2001, can actually cause division within the workplace. Kathy Buzad, assistant director for the American Federation of Teachers, a trade union, says these labels promote expectations of the certain behaviors associated with each category.

“We really have a problem with the stereotyping of behaviors,” Buzad says. “People say that younger workers don’t care as much as older workers do, but that isn’t true. We need to be very careful of this categorizing. It can cause divisiveness in the work place.”

In her experience working with teachers and union organizers, Buzad says she has not noticed a difference between her older and younger employees.

A final reason that could account for the differences between older and younger employees is work environment. Paul Marquardt, a client relations manager for Embarq, provides internal consulting to the Internet and phone service company from a human resources perspective. According to Marquardt, older members of the workforce feel these work ethic difference exist because younger employees weren’t exposed to as much manual labor as the older employees.

“Now that we’re moving into a more technological age, many folks think that a younger person’s work ethic must be lower,” Marquardt says. “People tend to glorify the way things used to be as how things should be, and that’s just not true.”

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