I didn't raise kids, but my staff hire, train and oversee about 25 employees in the 18-22 year age range and have done so for the past 20ish years. The newer generation of kids are smarter and work harder than the past couple generations for the most part and certainly care more about the world and making it better than the kids of the 90s, 00s, and 10s. You always have to mentor and work with the slackers to either bring them around or let them go, that's always been the case throughout the generations. Often it's their first or second job, they have to learn what's expected of them, learn what work life is like and frankly that's on their managers/supervisors just as much as it's on them.

Old people always complain about the younger generations, that's a given. And I think in general what's changed in the United States over the past 4 or 5 years is old people now complain constantly about everything and need to mind their own fucking business if it isn't having and impact on their life of job. The current kids will do just fine.

I know a lot of people in bands, no one making $500 a gig is paying a roadie and merch person, they are hauling their own gear and talking a friend or partner into slinging merch that night. And realistically the band is being paid $200.

How to say you are an out of touch old person without directly saying you are an out of touch old person. Apparently you don't understand inflation.

This needs to be said again and again to every boomer that complains about the kids these days.

My work employs 25-30 college kids at any given time, they are 18-22 years old. Honestly, they have better attendance and job performance now than the kids 10 or 20 years ago, for us the new generation are better employees. We also have a min wage of $17, so we expect a lot out of them and it's clearly communicated in their onboarding and training. We run a tight ship with clear expectations and constant mentoring and communication with our staff.

The biggest change I've seen over the past few decades is the younger generation doesn't stay in the job as long. They are happy to jump ship if they find a better position, higher pay, or another opportunity. They are better at advocating for themselves and following the path they want and have less dedication to their employer. I wish I was like that when I was younger.

Yes, min wage in Seattle for employers with over 500 employees is $17.25. Our min wage employees always call in when they are sick or can't come in. Sure, occasionally one doesn't, they get a written warning and their supervisor has a discussion with them. They are fired by the 2nd or 3rd instance, this very rarely happens. Our employees are so much better at calling in now than the kids 20 years ago or even 10 years ago, so it's weird for me to hear that other people have a different experience. I wonder if this is a regional thing or a training/supervision thing, rather than a generational thing? Or maybe we are just lucky and hire well.

Most food prices here dining out have doubled since pre-pandemic, I just eat out less. I still always tip and you won't find me bitching about tipping, these people worked all through the pandemic and were hurt badly by it, I appreciate their work.

Yeah, anytime an employer is publicly blaming having to pay their employees more to customer, I'm never going back. That's unethical and jerky behavior. Raising your prices to cover your costs is completely normal in capitalism, blaming your employees is a sign of bad ownership/management.

There was a restaurant/bar owner out by my cabin in rural Washington that whined to my girlfriend and I for 20 minutes about having to pay his staff more because the minimum wage had gone up. I told him point blank I was never coming back because he was blaming his employees. The place went out of business within a year, it turns out the staff and entire community got sick of the dude yapping at them about it.

Huh, I didn't realize states shut any places down. There was a brief moment when our restaurants closed for inside dining, but I really love the innovation that came out of it with ramped up to go services and massive building of outside dining. There are so many more bars and restaurants I can take my dog with me to now!

Sadly most small businesses fail, especially bars and restaurants. I've had a number of friends open them and most of them have failed. Those that didn't were smart, they took over existing spaces and didn't have to spend a lot up front on build out and they had experience owning or managing similar businesses ahead of time. One friend wanted to open a bar/restaurant with no experience did it the right way, he went to work at a bigger local place for 2 years to learn bartending, how the kitchen ran, what worked and what didn't. After he felt like he knew the ins and outs of running a bar, he bought a local one and took over and made it quite successful.

Me too. For a few months local restaurants could only do carry out and I was happy to help keep them and their employees afloat and started tipping 20% and carryout. I've dropped that back down to 10-15% now that restaurants have returned to normal, but I still plan on tipping for carry out going forwards.

Exactly, they don't normally tip in Europe, but servers in Europe get free healthcare, free college, have way better mass transit so they don't buy cars and auto insurance, and they get more paid sick and vacation leave. American restaurant staff have a lot more to pay for out of their pocket. Health care in particular, the reason why most of us work for years or decades longer than we want to before retiring is because our healthcare is so damn expensive.

Ah yes, because the healthcare industry isn't crappy and completely overpriced, benefitting seedy corporate healthcare companies and their investors over the healthcare of their clients. I wait weeks to months to get an appointment now, have much higher copays and billing, and the level of care has dropped dramatically over the past decade. The healthcare industry in America is broken and overpriced.

These are hardly the biggest problems with the healthcare industry in the U.S. and I see you making alot of excuses for an industry that has made record profits off of the American people while their services have declined, life expectancy has declined, and prices for healthcare have climbed astronomically. Most of the regulations that are in place are because these companies were using shoddy, expired products and making people sick for so long the people demanded government step in a regulate them. Part of government's job is to protect consumers through regulation, it's bull for corporations to blame their worse services costing more on a few regulations, paying their employees terribly, etc. while they make record profits.