GENERATION 'WHY'

Having spent 41 summers at Cleves I have seen 3 different generations of employees come and go. The first one being the ‘Baby Boomer Generation’, the Second one, my generation ‘Generation X’ and the one I have worked the most with, this generation ‘Generation Y’. There are so many differences between the 3. The ‘Baby Boomers’ were just happy to have a job, the ‘Generation Xers’ were happy to have a job that came with the the chance to party and most of the ‘Generation Yers’ have a job that interferes with the party. As I have said before back when I was 19-22 I went out 6 nights a week, maybe got 8 hours of sleep a night twice a week. We all partied hard and got up, went to work and never complained. Most of us were scared shitless of the management team and the thought of being hauled into one of the Manager’s offices was quite frankly horrifying!

I started working as the Director of HR in 1996 and quickly after, once the shift from Gen X to Gen Y occurred, there was a definite change in the staff’s behaviour. I would have to say that the most difficult years for me would be 1997 - 2003, with 2002 being the worst by a long shot. That summer the doors in the staff house were being broken and kicked in every day, several kids were late for work almost every shift and there was a definite rebellion against any sort of authority with many staff constantly asking why they had to do something. I have decided that the internet is a major cause of this generation being so different (how ironic is it that I am posting this on the very same internet) and has turned a lot of them into the instant gratification generation. Before I go on I have to say that a lot of the kids in the last 10 years have been great, but the attitude of a few of them is that they start work and can’t understand why they aren’t the manager of their department one week later. I still smile when I think of the day about 10 years ago when we were just opening and I asked somebody to vacuum one of the areas of the dining room. The obviously slightly spoiled girl turned to me and said ‘Sorry Sandy you will have to show me how to use a vacuum, I have never had to do that before’. WOW we interviewed well that year!!

Some of the kids in this generation ‘have a very large chip on their shoulder, that’s very unattractive’ (kudos to those of you who get that movie reference), questioning authority all of the time and could care less when they are late for work. I am sure some of it stems from the ‘get a trophy for showing up to a sporting event’ that is the norm for kids now - what happened to getting a trophy for winning!! It has just made so many of these kids feel that they should be given raises and praise for just showing up to work when they are supposed to. Over the last couple of years I have actually noticed the behaviour and attitudes getting better and the kids have some respect for authority again but that just happened fairly recently.

So many of the doors in the staff house were being kicked in every year that I actually had to write a policy that if somebody kicked in a door they had to pay the damages and labour to fix it (I think I charged them $150.00 and they lost their entire $50.00 room deposit), if they did it again they had to find accommodation somewhere else. One night one of the girls who worked in the kitchen got totally plastered, kicked a huge hole in her door and then told the Night Manager and Security Guard to fuck off. She was actually painfully shy when she was sober, or so I thought...I called her into my office and told her I was firing her, not for kicking in her door but for her complete lack of respect for the Night Managing team.

About three weeks later I came back into my office after having lunch with my friends in the dining room to this exact voicemail, (It was way too good not to memorize) ‘Ya hi Sandy, this is Laura, you know the one you fired. I was at Cleves today and saw that somebody had kicked another hole in the door to my room. Did you fire them too you AAAAASSSSSHHHHOOOOOOLLLLLEEEE’ I am sure most Directors of HR would be horrified by that, but I can honestly say it is still one of the funniest things I have ever heard. Just imagine how proud her parents would be to know she called me and left that voicemail. I have to say the joke was actually on her, I saved that voicemail for months and had a lot of my friends call in and listen to it. She just about crapped her pants the next summer when she and I ended up alone in the bathroom at Bala Bay one night, I loved seeing the blood drain from her smug little smart ass face when she saw me walk in!!