I've never been apart of this sub but I thought you all would appreciate this story. My FIL is a typical old school conservative, “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” type. He joined the Marine Corps at 18 years old, served for 5 years, then got a job at a paper mill where he has worked for the past 28 years.
Here's what his job is like at the mill. He commutes 1.5 hours each way to get to work everyday. He works 8 hour shifts and typically works 6 days a week unless he uses vacation time. Everyone works a rotation between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd shift that rotates every two weeks. If your replacement doesn't show up for their shift, you are required to stay on until they find someone to come in or until the shift is complete. Yes, that means staying at work for 16 hours. This will typically happen 2 or 3 times a month. Then you are still required to come into your next regular shift. So he will work 16 hours straight, drive 1.5 hours home, sleep for a few hours, then drive another 1.5 hours to go back for another 8 hour shift. Also, the plant stays around 120 degrees in the summer months.
Last month during the peak of the Omicron surge the plant almost had to shut down because too many people were out sick. My FIL made a pact with another co-worker that they wouldn't get tested for COVID and would keep coming in no matter what in order to keep the plant running. They worked alternating 12 hour shifts for two weeks straight with cold symptoms and kept the plant from shutting down. He was very proud of this by the way. The company that owns this plant had close to a billion dollars in profit last year and had almost 2 billion in profit in 2018.
So a couple days ago I was driving with my wife when he called and they were chatting for a while. He then started ranting about work and how short staffed they are. He was complaining how no one wants to work anymore and how lazy the younger generations are. That everyone just wants to live off of welfare and millennials and Gen Z have no work ethic. He said that they keep hiring new young guys to come in and they all just quit after a couple weeks and he doesn't get it.
Well, I'm sure everyone here can figure out what the real problem is. But nope, according to my father-in-law the problem is the good for nothing, lazy, welfare leeches who don't want to work anymore.