While a push for higher wages for low-skill work has led some fast-food restaurants to begin installing kiosks to replace cashiers, another issue is causing teenagers to lose out on first-time jobs: A terrible work ethic.
Bloomberg reports that senior citizens are now taking jobs that traditionally went to teenagers — flipping burgers and waiting tables at dining chains and fast-food restaurants. Senior citizens are actually being recruited for these jobs because they’re more reliable than teenagers today.
“Restaurants are recruiting in senior centers and churches. They’re placing want ads on the website of AARP, an advocacy group for Americans over 50,” Bloomberg reported. “Recruiters say older workers have soft skills—a friendly demeanor, punctuality—that their younger cohorts sometimes lack.”
It’s not just that kids today aren’t hard working (and that doesn’t apply to ALL teenagers, obviously), the change in who’s working is also the result of a labor shortage and seniors who are bored with retirement.
Bloomberg spoke to Stevenson Williams, the 63-year-old manager at a Church’s Chicken in North Charleston, SC, who said he just couldn’t sit around anymore and decided to get a job.
“It’s fun for a while, not getting up, not having to punch a clock, not having to get out of bed and grind every day,” he said. “But after working all your life, sitting around got old. There’s only so many trips to Walmart you can take. I just enjoy Church’s Chicken. I enjoy the atmosphere, I enjoy the people.”
Williams took a job at Church’s four years ago as a busboy and moved up quickly. He now manages 13 employees and may work 70 hours a week He said he often has to teach teenagers who work for him how to interact with customers respectfully.
“A lot of times with the younger kids now, they can be very disrespectful,” he told Bloomberg. “So you have to coach them and tell them this is your job, this is not the street.”
As Bloomberg noted, hiring older Americans makes sense because they have decades of experience but don’t demand higher wages.