Hey, let's all see what else we can stereotype...
I tell you, Russell Freeman 30 yrs old, supposed "Gen-xer". I heard somebody try to blame us for the reality shows on tv, for Mtv to stop showing music videos. Probably a damn Gen-xer in the plane that hit the trade center.
This all seems kinda silly to me. I am 30 years old and I have been on my own for 13 years. I did not finish college, but I can read and write fairly well. I know the difference between can't afford to pay and not willing to pay. I work smart, and hard when I have to, or sometimes because it is fun. I think the start of this thread was something about how to hire and retain cheap labor for dangerous work. Or maybe it was what makes employees want to stay at a company for low wages and dangerous work.
Any good tree guy I ever knew did good treework, was a good employee only because he loved to climb, work as a team and had the ability to make a game out of making sh*t disappear, especially rotten elm brush piles. It takes a good, fun,productive team to make people wanna stick around. If the boss is a part of the team, even better. Fact is that less than 2 percent of the population can do what we do; even less do it well. We stay with what is comfortable, if not we move on.
Undoubtedly there are a certain percentage of people from every generation who aren't willing to go out and drag prickly brush up and down hills, stairs, across yards and feed it into a potentially dangerous machine that is loud and can impair their hearing, or risk major bodily injury every time they pick up a chainsaw. Believe it or not, many people try to avoid worksites where the judgement of others has to be trusted while risking death. Some people don't like to bleed from cuts and scratches they don't remember getting, I however, am not one of those people.
What I suggest is that maybe the is not best forum for a debate on whether or not my generation is lazy, as we are all tree guys here. We work hard because we are passionate about what we do, this transends all generations. You can't teach this, and no amount of money is going to purchase it. If you want good employees, don't hold them to the same expectations you hold for yourself, as you will only be disappointed. Instead, find out what motivates them, let them feel they are part of the team. They will either catch on or they will have to move on; this sh*t ain't for everybody.
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lol
