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Whither the way of the Boomer; or, Where Hydro rants about the Gosh-durned millenials
The dominant trend of the new generations is to replace the boomer's functioning social technology with actual technology that doesn't work and then justify it with orgiastic doomerist neuroticism.
Downstream in the thread- literally the first topic this week- there's discussions of modern dating and the social technology around it. The point I made was that the loss of meeting people in real life didn't happen because of the sexual revolution, because for 40-50 years after the sexual revolution people met in real life. The loss of meeting people in real life happened because of the apps. And of course the apps displaced meeting people in person, and it kinda seems like everyone who actually wants to have a relationship and not just a hookup would rather meet people in person. But the justification for nobody meeting in person anymore was #metoo when people defended the apps, and 'well it would be kind of awkward' sometimes. Usually the latter explanation is male, and when you drill into it with 'the worst she can say is no, why don't you give it a whirl' the explanation is 'because then I won't be able to speak to anyone she knows ever again'. Sorry, rejections just aren't that awkward. And of course #metoo is in its usual formulation also delusionally neurotic.
But I want to talk about jobs. It's time for a nice change of pace. Back in the day, to get a blue collar job you walked in, physically, to a blue collar workplace and asked for one. It's true; ask the old men and they will tell you. And you can in fact still do this; I reckon any one of you can find a job within biking distance of your house if not walking distance by asking around enough, in maybe an afternoon's effort- granted, probably a job as, like, a dishwasher, but the boomers don't regale you with stories of walking into a job as CEO of the company. No, they found jobs as janitors and cashiers and, yes, dishwashers and they got their positions as lawyers and accountants through classified ads. The point is, the zoomers have the same opportunities as boomers to go find employment, at least if you use a big enough scale(Detroit has fewer opportunities than in 1955). No, not as computer programmers, but well-remunerated white collar work has never worked like that. My grandfather(RIP) used to tell the story of how when he first started college he could find a job in an afternoon for his spending money, and can anyone do that anymore? I did it in the 2010's. And it seems to be that the now-hiring signs adorning many stores and restaurants are there with this expectation, elsewise why would they exist? It's just that zoomers won't apply, as any restaurant manager will tell you. Instead there's online applications of the sort that are notoriously shitty when as anyone who's gotten that sort of low-level job recently can tell you, HR just filters it out for not having ten years experience and a masters degree in washing dishes when the store manager would've happily hired you after a handshake. I listen to restaurant managers complain about it all the time, usually in rather different language. It's not hard to draw the connection to millennial dating woes above; if you're too scared to ask a girl out due to paranoid imaginings you're probably also too scared to just go talk to the manager and ask for a job.
Downthread also, there's discussion of 'why do women give up the tradlife when it delivers the things they say are important to them' to the answer of 'because they believe most men will horrifically abuse them as soon as they can get away with it, even though that belief isn't true'. Likewise, this is the same quality of orgiastic doomerist neuroticism. In the fifties, when a large majority of women were totally dependent on their husbands, my great-grandmother was considered singularly unlucky because her second husband beat on her and was an alcoholic. Obviously, these two sets of implied numbers don't match up.
In the breeding of hunting dogs, there is this quality of just going for it which is referred to as grit. It seems our society is sorely lacking in grit. Safetyism is a dominant component of our culture, and this gets used to justify throwing out social technology that just makes things work.
I feel like this is a little bit unfair on zoomers here. It's true that online applications are kind of a waste of time, the response rate is so poor. At the same time the boomer nostrum of "just go in and give them a firm handshake" might have worked for (white) men back in 1955, an age when people were happy to hand out junior executive positions to (white) dudes they just met, but it's just silly in this day and age. The old world is dead, but the new struggles to be born - in the meantime we have crappy online job boards.
Personally, looking for temporary work in New Zealand, I've gotten work through all of online applications, pavement pounding, agencies and word of mouth. There's value, too, in being aggressive - just asking people you meet if they know of any work going has some response rate. I think maybe some people worry they're being pushy but most managers do not like looking for new staff and are happy to see people who just want to work.
(More that all of this is for low wage/status work. The game is totally different if you want like, a real career)
No one is suggesting that walking into a business will get you a position as VP of random bullshit, responsible for spending time on the golf course.
It’s that zoomers won’t show up in person to apply for even low level jobs, and you have to grind it out a bit at a low level job to get a better one. That’s the point of your grandpa’s stories about ‘I got a job as a janitor with a firm handshake and diligence led to me getting promoted to the mailroom and then a clerk and whadooyaknow, I would up retiring a vice President’. And part of the reason this doesn’t work anymore is the unwillingness to give it a whirl.
This really does seem totally out of step with how corporate jobs work in my experience. The people who do the janitorial work in my mega bank are almost all contractor immigrant and there is no existing track for them to become direct employees, they'd apply through the external portal like anyone else. I don't know a single person who's career looks anything like what you're suggesting younger than 55. Furthermore the people complaining about having trouble getting a job have usually studied something and want to work in that field, you just don't take a finance degree through the mail room, which as far as I know doesn't even exist anymore, into an associate role, it wouldn't be seen as relevant experience.
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