at my company which deals in welding and fabrication we have over the past 12 months had 3 would be apprentices. all off them have lasted no more than a month basically because off there attitude. they showed very little interest in the job and basically were only interested in sciving and doimg as little as possible. bearing in mind a good chance of learing a good trade as past them by i wonder if a lot of youngers seem 2 think jobs are 2 a penny and can drift thro various ones. its not 2 say all kids are like this but in my exp a lot of them want good money but arnt willing 2 put the work in 2 become skilled and fully trained.

got to agree on that mate,as an employer myself i won't consider anyone in their teens....infact i much prefer over 25's because people of this age know that you get nothing without putting in hard work.

just another point on this subject which i didnt add was these lads were given well above the minimum wage so there was no cause 4 argument on that front.

A lot of young workers expect a high wage for little work to keep their expensive habits going (drinking, going out, holidays, etc) Not many would be willing to learn a trade and benefit long term, they just want some quick cash for nothing, at least this is what I have seen working in various places.

Originally posted by Beastieboy
A lot of young workers expect a high wage for little work to keep their expensive habits going (drinking, going out, holidays, etc) Not many would be willing to learn a trade and benefit long term, they just want some quick cash for nothing, at least this is what I have seen working in various places.

You do have to be careful though, don't allow yourself to get into a position where you tar all youngsters with the same "can't work won't work" brush for the sake of a few numpties.

Meh, numpties :lol: , makes a change from chavs.

i woudnt say all youngsters have this attitude but i have 2 agree that there main aim is quick cash. all apprentices are told the situation and need 2 realise that in the long term a trade will hopefully give them a better and longer term prospect of earing a decent income.

I can empathise with you brooksy, though I'm 20 and have seen the whole "learning a trade" business from the opposite end.

About 2 years ago I went to work at a brewery as the assistant to the master brewer. This was to help them out and, if I was good enough I was to become an apprentice and be sponsored by them to get a proper qualification.

I was working a 40 hour week doing an essentially manual labour job. On the days we were brewing I did not even have a lunch break. After 2 weeks the Master brewer left me to it on a day to day basis while I felt he apparently did nothing and let me do all the work.

What i think some young people feel with training is that the person who is training them takes liberties with having an extra pair of hands, sometimes this is the case and sometimes it isn't.

What i felt resentful about was that I was being paid less than minimum wage (3.20 at the time) for doing an incredibly hard job, full of health and safety risks and I was expected to be grateful to them when I worked my fingers to the bone (I got the callouses to prove it) and proved my ability to work unsupervised doing a job that required me to use scientific/engineering skills and be responsible for maintaining the product's quality. These responsibilities were put u[on me and they hadn't even applied to give me any formal qualifications.

I told them some of this stuff, that was unhappy with the way things worked and they ignored the problem. I was also frustrated because despite my role there, I wasn't allowed to make any decisions or they said that I because i wasn't officially a trainee they wouldn't put me forward to go on a course to learn more of the chemistry side of it.

In the end I handed in my notice (3 months) and worked out 2 of it before they decided to 'let me go' because apparently 'my usual acceptable work standards had fallen' which was partly true, I'd decided to do exactly the work they paid me for (no more hours than on my contract, refusal to do the jobs not on my contract such as data input and answering office phone calls when the boss decided he wanted a day off and the master brewer couldn't be bothered to come out of the cellar to answer the phone).

I'm now back at college studying a mix of academic and 'mickey mouse' subjects.

I guess i am different to many of the youngsters you will encounter as I couldn't care less about the money, I just wanted to be treat like a proper employee and for my 'superiors' to put an equal amount of effort in that I did, was that too much to ask?

Wilf

I want to work in a engineering evrioment and I am 20, a couple of months ago I started with a company in halfway who do welding and fabrications and because I had no experiance I was put on a 16 year olds wage but it did'nt bother me as I wanted to learn, but what did me was this kid who was 16 and started the same time as me was on 170 a week because he was the mangers son, it did'nt bother me but when they did'nt pay my wages for 3 weeks I left.

just to let you know there are other reasons why people leave.