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offenders, such as the student's family or the community where he or she grew up. If a student is raised in a home in which the parents are unsatisfied with their jobs, it will be difficult for the student to become attached to a job, as well.
"How much would you really worry about career opportunities with a company if you're planning on getting a better job in a year anyway?" says Brandon Dekosky, Overland Park senior.
Dekosky says he thinks that, for students, the interest is more in the dollar figure on the paycheck than advancements in a career. Because of such priorities, Dekosky says employers would most likely complain that students don't show enough dedication to their jobs.
However, not all employers see student workers as lazy workers. Using generational nicknames, such as "baby boomers" for those born between 1940 and 1960 and "Generation Y" for those of us born between 1982 and 2001, can actually cause division within the workplace. Kathy Buzad, assistant director for the American Federation of Teachers, a trade union, says these labels promote expectations of the certain behaviors associated with each category.
"We really have a problem with the stereotyping of behaviors." Buzad says. "People say that younger workers don't care as much as older workers do, but that isn't true. We need to be very careful of this categorizing. It can cause divisiveness in the work place."
In her experience working with teachers and union organizers, Buzad says she has not noticed a difference between her older and younger employees.
A final reason that could account for the differences between older and younger employees is work environment. Paul Marquardt, a client relations manager for Embarq, provides internal consulting to the Internet and phone service company from a human resources perspective. According to Marquardt, older members of the workforce feel these work ethic difference exist because younger employees weren't exposed to as much manual labor as the older employees.
"Now that we're moving into a more technological age, many folks think that a younger person's work ethic must be lower." Marquardt says. "People tend to glorify the way things used to be as how things should be, and that's just not true."
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October 23,2008