Managing/Teaching Generation Ys

Teaching Generation Ys
Managers, Educators, Parents: You may find this note that I sent to my colleagues of some interest. I had sent this out under the Title: "Teaching Generation Y to make $75K".
Laptops in the classroom, text messaging during lectures, or better still Twitter; Linkedin to Facebook during HW time. Wow, they are multitasking. Aren’t they good!
Boy, we thought we had it rough: papers with grammatical errors or no punctuations; inability to follow instructions; not showing up for classes, etc.
You, on the other hand, memorized multiplication tables (16x12), large chunks of poetry (Kubla Khan, anyone? Coleridge, eh!) and the Periodic Table.
Now, it seems to be impossible to tell anyone today that they are not doing a good job without them quitting or leading to a loss of self-esteem. You on the other hand were told that you needed to pull up your socks—and you took such criticisms on the chin. All these complaints and more have been repeated at various faculty meetings and around the proverbial water cooler.
Boy, time to give some thought to those employers out there who have to deal with the new generation! Case in point: According to FORTUNE magazine, to be a UPS truck driver/delivery person, a job that pays on average $75,000 (yup! +benefits, they say) you have to memorize huge chunks of information and protocols. It used to take them 30 days to train someone. With the rise of the next generation the training now takes anywhere from 90 to 180 days!!! And they quit if they are told that they messed up.
Employers are now having to come up with entirely new strategies for training and retaining the new group of hires (including dealing with the rise of the helicopter parents – ask me about this another day). Examples abound…Since not everyone reads anymore; here is a link to a Video Blog by a Gen Y reporter that tells you the UPS story:
http://money.cnn.com/video/ft/#/video/fortune/2007/11/16/nh.ups.fortune
And, of course for the gentle reader, who wants detail, click on the link to go the Article:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/11/12/101008310/
Best,
There were a lot of responses to this initial note. I will try and post a few as I collate them.