COLUMN: The flip side to flipping burgers

My brother owns a landscaping business, and he swears he will never hire a teenager again.

Recently, he had two 16-year-olds working for him. The first, Nick, was a complete slacker; he just sat on the ground in the dirt and played with the sprinkler parts rather than putting them together. “Come on Nick, let’s get going,” my brother would yell from across the yard. He was constantly hounding Nick to get his part done, walking him step-by-step through each process day after day. The second kid, Mike, was never reminded what to do and never sat down until the job was done.

Mike and Nick lived in the same neighborhood, went to the same high school and both came from similar backgrounds. My brother said he would trade in 15 Nicks for one Mike. Nick lost his job before the end of the season; Mike has been with the company for more than a year now.

The lack of work ethic isn’t evident only in high school. Adults today enter the workforce qualified to do the job, but apply without learning the value of work.

Learning to work has nothing to do with physical labor. I absolutely hate yardwork. Growing up, when my brothers would go outside to help in the yard, I would volunteer to clean the entire inside of the house from top to bottom rather than grab a shovel. But the same principle applies, we were taught to put in 110 percent to whatever you are assigned, if we didn’t, we were told to do it again.

My family has been going to the same doctor for more than 10 years. In that time, he has hired at least six different nurses. At our most recent visit, the doctor candidly explained his frustrations regarding his nurses. He said they are always eager to help the patients and dedicate themselves to do the job well – before they actually get hired.

Once they have the job, the cell phones come out and they spend more time arranging school schedules for their kids or hearing the latest gossip on their girlfriend’s marriage than running the office. This gives our doctor the additional job of babysitting his staff while he is trying to run a successful business and provide healthcare to his patients.

Whether it is because they are taught they are more important, they are too arrogant to listen or because they flat out just don’t know how, there are too many people today who don’t understand the value of work.

My parents live next door to a family with seven young children. Every weekend those children are out in the yard helping in anyway they can. The oldest mows the lawn while the younger kids weed the garden or hang the laundry and even the 2-year-old carries rocks from one pile and puts them into a bucket nearby.

In some cases, parents will give their children everything they need, and they don’t ever learn how to work. Other times they are simply never taught to work, they do not know how to mow a lawn or clean a toilet. I was shocked when I moved into my apartment freshman year and three of my six roommates had never done a dish and two had never loaded laundry into a washing machine.

The Baby Boomer generation has raised a silver spoon generation. We may be educationally qualified to earn the job we would like, but far too many of us are not qualified to keep it.

Flipping burgers through high school might not have ever been viewed as glamorous, but I bet most of those students who worked in fast-food earning their way through school know a thing or two about the value of working to earn what you need and doing your job the best you can, regardless of what job it is.

Work doesn’t always require getting in the dirt or standing behind a hot grill flipping burgers. Working requires taking responsibility for what you do and accepting responsibility when something is asked of you. Whether it’s in school or at work, responsibility is required of you to earn the grade you want. If every employer handed out midterms to each employee which determined whether the employee kept their job or lost their job, their turnover rates would likely decrease.

Years ago, when children were brought into the world for the purpose of helping the family, the value of work was instinctual. Today, this is not the case. It is easy to go through life slipping your way past the hard stuff, ducking under the obedience and dodging the bullet responsibility. But keeping the job requires a display of dedication, sacrifice, obedience, patience and responsibility, all values learned as 2-years-old while moving rocks, one at a time, from one pile into another.

Next time you are assigned a task at work or you’re asked to help out, stop thinking of ways to get the most out of doing the least. Jump in, do your part, put in 110 percent, then sit back and look at what you’ve accomplished. I’d be willing to bet you’ll accomplish more than you thought and most likely, it’ll be easier than you expected.

Pass it on.

Emma Tippetts is a junior majoring in law and constitutional studies and print journalism. Please send any questions or comments to etippetts@cc.usu.edu