If you've returned home and have been looking for a well-paying job lately, you know that the competition is fierce. It's getting harder and harder to find work anymore that not only looks good on a resume, but pays a decent wage. For the student, this is an especially difficult task. We scan website after website looking for jobs that will hire youth, only to inevitably have to settle for something mundane in food service or custodial work or as an office gopher, making less than $10 an hour. If you're one of the lucky few, like myself, who's been offered a well-paying job working for someone with a good reputation, you do everything you can to NOT screw it up.
However, if you're also like me and have co-workers who don't respect the position as seriously as you do, you understand the frustration that comes when you work with people who clearly only took the job for the money.
Don't get me wrong, I can understand taking a position based on how much it pays. As college kids, we've conditioned ourselves to live on a steady diet of Ramen noodles and ice cream, so I get why it's nice to make a little extra cash every now and then. The issue I have lies in the mindset that so often accompanies students who haven't had a real job before- the mindset that somehow makes them think they can skate by while doing the absolute minimum. These are the people who bury their eyes in their phones constantly while on the job, who FaceTime their friends when they have a minute of boredom, who procrastinate on even the simplest task so their boss has to eventually hand it off to someone else, and those, even, who will audaciously sit in their swivel chair of arrogance and dare anyone to fire them. In my experience, these represent the unfortunate majority of students in the American workforce. And dear God, it needs to stop.
A lot of American kids still do not understand that having the opportunity to work and to make something of yourself is a privilege, not a right. So, to see someone squander that opportunity to make a lasting impression by being an absolute pain to work with, is a little insulting to those of us actually trying. When I go to work, I show up on time, I do the work I'm given, I ask other people in the office if they need assistance, I am doing exactly what I am paid to do. If I am not, then I do not deserve to be paid for the time I spend doing nothing. It's quite simply stealing from the company if you choose to do otherwise. And it's unfair to the rest of us, who are actually trying, for you to occupy jobs that could easily be given to people who are interested in working them.
Therefore, a simple note to the people out there who are "working" just for the paycheck... please start doing your job. Or give it to someone who genuinely needs it.
Sincerely,
Those of us who need it