Spring is a ways off, and that limits the amount of available content I have for a post.  And my last 3 involved vacuum cleaners, lightbulbs, and fanciful theoretical mathematical models, soooo I think I need to change direction for a bit and diversify.

So I’ll do what everyone else does to fill empty blog space: complain about something, using an inflammatory title!

Here’s what I’ve chosen: “People just don’t want to work anymore.”

We’ve all heard it.  Online, by coworkers, by disgruntled consumers.

This phrase, generally uttered in exasperation by a Baby Boomer socioeconomic superior who’s currently unable to receive a service of some kind due to limited staffing, assumes an obnoxious smug self-importance that the world has the audacity to not cater to his every whim, or at least not in a timely fashion.  And, that this current state of affairs is the result of younger people being too lazy to work hard enough to achieve the high status of becoming the served, rather than the server–that is, how the above complainer feels he has achieved said status.

Rephrased: “I suffered some bad jobs and now I have a good job and now other people need to suffer those bad jobs for my benefit.”

This term gets too much use today, namely because of a certain recent “leader”, but it applies: this is narcissistic thinking.

This present situation is, of course, a result of COVID-19’s economic impact.  The jobs in question that people don’t want to work are the jobs that suffered greatly reduced demand from quarantines.  The businesses, as businesses do, simply reduced their staff as a result to balance the books.  Once quarantines lifted, demand increased, but the former workers didn’t want to go back to those underpaid customer-facing jobs.

The reasoning is slightly more complicated than people not serving you because they’re lazy.  I figured this logic chain to be fairly obvious, but it’s apparently not.  So to appease you self-righteous wealthy Republican Boomers judgmental privileged whiners, I’ll offer you just want you want: a service.  I will explain your logical error.

Three points:

1. People don’t want to work crappy jobs.  Workers are still eager to fill higher-paying professional positions.  No one wants to be the employee that has to deal with the above Boomer irate customer storming around complaining about staffing shortages.  (And that employee, despite doing exactly what the raging Boomer Karen customer wants (working a crappy job), will still receive the brunt of these laziness accusations that don’t even apply to him.)
2. Impacted workers, living temporarily on emergency government assistance, suddenly had a lot of time on their hands to shore up the skill gaps keeping them out of professional careers.  Now that they’ve done so, there isn’t much desire to return to jobs beneath their new qualification levels.
3. Of course people don’t want to work.  Who does?  People want meaningful careers, vocations, callings…whatever.  But those things don’t pay the bills, so people work jobs.  CEOs don’t stay in their positions until retirement.  They make their millions and move on.  Is that because they don’t want to work, either?

Ultimately though, the main point, and philosophy by which you should start to live, is…

It’s not all about you!

–Simon