That ain’t workin’

I’ve been getting more and more frustrated in my attempts to find people who know how to work.

I understand that every job involves skills that can only be acquired by doing a task over and over. It’s called experience and it does not come automatically. But there is the understanding of what work is that seems to be missing in many otherwise fine people.

I’m thinking that more recent generations have grown up in a world in which work means going to sit at a desk, driving somewhere, making phone calls or shuffling papers. The physical work, the making, the cooking, the building, is done by others who exist in a world which is never seen by anyone other than themselves.

As technology has intruded more and more in our daily lives, each generation has come of age with less of an understanding of what work is. It’s kind of a diminishing returns thing which seems to have resulted in a lot of people who never had the opportunity to see real people doing real work. They simply never learned how to make anything because those they grew up around didn’t make of fix things. So now, before we can teach a new employee how to perform specific tasks, we have to teach them how to work. It isn’t easy.

The look of shock when someone realizes that, yes, you actually have to work, would be funny if it was not so unsettling.