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Over the years I've had thousands of employees. We shifted standards down to the point where we could not accomodate the ineptitude anymore. We have cut back to barebones run with the people we can find who do meet our standards. They are out there but there are fewer and fewer of them.

I'm sure Cogadh is an excellent employee and compared to many of the boomers an outstanding employee. The top 20% has always been, well, the top 20%. In my businesses we don't fish in those waters. We pull from the general population and it is there that there has been a seachange. I refuse to do the equivalent of pictures on register keys.

The new class of employees are undereducated and under-motivated. I am continually searching for the dynamic that they posess that can be exploited. It must be there, intelligence hasn't died, and they seem to have an easy facility with communication but how do you bring it out and use it. So far I can't see it.

One thing that does give me encouragement is the image that I get from the guys in Iraq and Afghanistan. When there is a newscast from there I watch the background, the guys doing the job. They are confident, competant and decisive. These guys aren't coming back to be assistant manager at Burger King. I see a whole new leadership class developing and it looks good.

About twenty years ago, I worked at a V.A. hospital far enough away that we had a carpool.

One day a manager of the canteen got into a conversation with the personnel manager in our carpool and asked him how he could get 100% out of the poor employees that his office kept sending him.

Without skipping a beat, the personnel manager reminded the canteen manager that the job he offered was of low skill requirements and the only thing of importance was he getting 100% of the 10% of skills the job demanded.

When the canteen manager admitted that there were those who gave about half, the personnel manager then told him that it was only 5% that he was missing.

"They are confident, competent and decisive. These guys aren't coming back to be assistant manager at Burger King. I see a whole new leadership class developing and it looks good."

You are dead on right and I have thought the same thing for some time but was recently told by an elder boomer at a bar:

" No way, man - they're all gonna come back all f-ed up and filled with guilt over what they did man ".

It was a very short conversation.

We pull from the general population and it is there that there has been a seachange. I refuse to do the equivalent of pictures on register keys.

But who lowered those standards in the public schools? Who pioneered self-esteem over education? Who never spanked their kids and gave us so many spoiled children who turned into spoiled adults*

Who was that?

*yet still not enough to keep social security solvent....

I have nearly 3 years towards a 4 year degree and it amazes me how much more I know than these young whippersnappers just out of college with 4 year magna cum laude degrees.

They don't teach enough real things in college. One kid I work with took a class in Psychology with a chapter on the psychology of the Cub fan (and loves to harp on me about it I want to punch him in the nose.) what does that have to do with business?