this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
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Just curious, why is it that you say it's not the reality that it's important for older trader workers to teach the younger ones? Isn't that how institutional knowledge is preserved and passed down, and how trades have been learned since time immemorial?
Oh, I was referring to what was happening within our workplace. The older workers refused to teach the apprentices anything. They expected us to just know stuff and treated us like idiot slaves when we inevitably failed. Apprentices were constantly thrown under the bus when something went wrong.
There was a huge knowledge gap between the older and younger workers. Those older guys were years away from retiring and were leaving us younger workers with no knowledge. Knowledge we need to pass our classes and grow as trades people.
The GM's message was meaningless because it was all words but no actual meaning or support for younger workers. He's a petty child who hated younger people and queer people in particular.
I see. That definitely sounds like a toxic work place, but I'm not convinced the manager was at fault for saying it should be otherwise. Then again, I don't know the particular situation, and if the manager had a pattern of being toxic in other ways then I could see the insincerity causing you to snap. It still seems like you focused on the wrong problem though, just from what you've written here.
Also, the young people failing was a reflection of the older generation's failure to adequately train them. I've noticed this a lot with boomers. They're so addicted to their feelings of superiority that they'll sabotage people's progress just so they can continue looking down on them. That phenomenon is at the core of many socioeconomic and political problems today.
Management there enabled the culture of agism, sexism and racism by not addressing the issues. They have a history of this that can be traced to the human rights tribunal in this country. Multiple times. He was the top person in the company. If no one below him is listening, where was I to go to make my complaint? If he cared so much about family, it would not have gotten to that point.
I asked to address the work culture in the company. I didn't just focus on agism, I made sure to speak up about racism, sexism and the unfair treatment of all the contractors working there.
The corporate HR person I was working with saw I was motivated to change the culture and had no interest in money or retribution. She not only supported me but was encouraging me to join an employee representative position that helped employees at a corporate level rather than at a company level. It has a name which I forgot.
I would have taken that position with the intention to be as annoying as possible or make an even bigger statement later. I was going to get fired but I wasn't going to quit and give them the satisfaction of me chickening out first.
I stand by my actions and motivations.
I agree with all of that because I experienced it first hand. I was often shunned because I never listened to their outdated or blindly ignorant advice and bullied for trying to take the initiative to learn for myself. It took me a while afterwards to understand that being me and doing what I thought was right for myself made them feel threatened enough to lash out at me.
Yeah, it's vital for the young workers and the company, and while the older workers may not like it, it's either paying it forward or it's accepting responsibility associated with higher skill
Right, in all likelihood those older workers received mentorship when they were young. But now they want the next generation to pull itself up by the bootstraps. Humanity didn't get where it is today by reinventing the wheel every generation.
And the same old people are probably like "young people today are so incompetent." But they're the ones who were supposed to train them, so that's a reflection of their own incompetence!
because in corpo speak this extra responsibility/work they want you to take on rarely comes with extra pay, even though they're posting record profits
Is "training new employees" a part of the job description? If so, then it's not an extra responsibility.
And for the record, I agree that workers should be fairly compensated for their efforts, that corporate greed is a problem and record profits shouldn't be the highest priority. But if someone has a lot of seniority with the company or years of experience in the trade, then hopefully their pay reflects that difference.
Plus, if young people aren't being mentored by the older generations, then that means they would have to go elsewhere and pay to receive instruction outside of working hours. So that's still extra work, and another way to outsource company expenses to the least financially stable.