They’re standing in a group, the teenagers outside my work-place, but there’s no communication between them. They’re all texting, frowning at their upheld mobile phones in stances that strike me as Shakespearean (Alas pr Yrk). Perhaps they are texting each other. I stare, composing a blog-post about them in my head, and one of them, thumbing a keypad with one hand while drinking coke cross-eyed through a straw, suddenly scents me and looks up. For a terrible moment I actually think: Wait – can she see my thoughts? Are they appearing on her screen? Can phones do that now?
I have not made the transition into our current age. It took me a long time to get used a phone vibrating on my person. I went through a long phase of experiencing phantom buzzing. Once a packet of fish fingers seemed to vibrate in my hand in the Frozen aisle in Sainsbury’s and I answered it. Back when I was a school mentor, sometimes the whole classroom would buzz, and not with enthusiasm: the kids could not leave their gadgets alone. They loved them. They stole each other’s stuff. Friends often stole from friends. It was a girl’s school. I noticed that if a girl stole another’s boyfriend, reconciliation was possible. If a girl stole another’s Samsung, things would get seriously Old Testament. (You’ve never seen a stoning until you’ve seen someone being pelted with twenty Motorola Pebls.)
Perhaps, like me, you are one of those people who finds it easy to grumble about kids today and their techno-materialism. Take this easy test: If you punctuate your text messages scrupulously and never abbreviate, you and I are soul-mates (or ‘slmts’, as the kids would put it). We are the kind of people who tell our kids they should get out more, and wish that other people’s kids got out less.
But these kids did not invent the gadgets that hypnotise them. They did not invent the Xbox. They do not sell themselves ringtones. My generation came up with lots of that stuff. Moreover, it is adults who profit from all the industries that seek to keep youths in a state of high excitement. Selling to kids is very big business; it pays to have children forever wanting more. And as someone who works in I.T., albeit tangentially (in recruitment), I am profiteering just like all the others.
I wish I had something better to hand on to the next generation. Any ideas?
This is a blog about ethical recruitment, so I’ll finish this post with a quick note about work. I’ve said before that those of us who choose to work hard for most of our lives deserve more than pay; we deserve for our careers to make us happy. Our time outside work shouldn’t feel like respite. We should be able to honestly promise our children that working hard at things they enjoy – or with people they like being around – will most likely bring them happiness as well as a living. Otherwise, the only incentive we can give to kids to work hard is that they’ll be able to buy more of the crap we tell them they need.
The thing is, I don’t think we can or should expect our bosses to hand out happiness. We need to look out for each other, somehow. We need to be the custodians of other people’s careers, trying to creating environments in which everyone’s talents get recognised, put to use and rewarded. We should help each other find the roles, the companies, and the colleagues we’re best suited to. Recruitment companies can help do this, obviously, by caring more about people than about immediate profits. That is what the ethical recruitment movement is about: how we can do this without going broke. But how can people outside recruitment transform the world of work? How can we make our employers look at us and think, ‘These people really want each other to be happy here’? ‘These people are trying to help each other succeed’?
Any ideas?
Feel free to comment. (Remember to pnctu8.)
Picture: toothpaste for dinner
