A lawyer and I were on site the other day. He had asked me to send a technician to do some noise measurements on the weekend.

So I arrived and said hello and I set up the instruments and then did the calibration and we sat around, talking. And he said how long had I worked for Machoy and I said, well, ever since I started it and he said, oh, wow, I did not realise that the boss would come out on the weekend. And I said, yes, it is I, the principal engineer, the head honcho, the boss man, le président- directeur général, the chief cook and bottle washer. Me.

Pay for Weekend Work

So, he said, I guess you came so as to make sure the measurements are right, right? And I said, no, any of the staff can do this – it’s just difficult to get them out on the weekend. So, he said, well, I guess that is how it is, after all I am the partner in my practice and my staff do not do weekends. I suppose they expect pay, he said. So I told him even if my staff get paid for weekend work, they still do not want to go out.

Thus, we started on a general discussion of young people in business today (specifically those between 25 and 35) and this is what we thought:
• Young people’s report writing and general writing discipline are not very good. Reports (in my case) or legal pleadings (in his case) have to follow a line of thought that is fairly easy to follow and well set out. In my case, our reports are set out as Introduction, Background and Present Situation, Measurements or Findings, Discussion, Recommendation and Conclusions. He has a similar layout for his documents. Our common problem is not that our young staff get the grammar or spelling wrong, or even the line of thought – the problem is that they can get this all perfect but, all too often, they do not check their work and so many mistakes, even spelling errors, go unnoticed, only to be picked up when the partner (in his case) or principal engineer (in mine) reads through the document before signing. Thus, senior staff effectively become document checkers, which takes up time.

• The young staff seem quite content to exchange time at work for money, and no more. They can stretch out a project or the production of a document way more than they should. They seem not to have ambition to move higher. They seem quite content to rent accommodation and drive relatively new used cars, have MacBooks, smartphones, and fashionable clothing rather than have old, used cars, simple phones and be paying off a property of their own. They do not seem to understand that, by the time you are 40, your bond will only be paid off when you are in your sixties. So, getting going as soon as possible is a Very Good Idea.

• The young staff do not seem to have much adventure in their lives. They have (in my firm) 14 days’ leave a year plus a month over the year-end break. They tend to go to resort-type destinations or places with organised activities. High on their priority list is the presence or absence of Wi-Fi or GPRS at the location. To be cut off from these is something they do not want to happen.

Hard-Working

We discussed if there were generally any exceptions to these observations and we both agreed that women whose home language is not English are generally more diligent, ambitious and live fuller lives and that people who come from other African countries (particularly Zimbabwe) are hard-working and self-motivated and seem to have adventurous lives. They seldom produce poorly written documents and have great ambition.

I can understand the latter – when you know how bad things can be, you tend to try to stand out so you never have to go back. Or, perhaps, it is just their upbringing.
So, that is what the lawyer and I discussed.