Why are Gen Z getting fired? One of the reasons is a lack of initiative.

Best advice I ever got, from a mentor aptly named Bubba.

“Your job is to empty the trash can. If I have to tell you the trash is full, you aren’t doing your job.”

This is not related to Gen Z alone.

I have people in their 40s on my team who do this.

They suck at follow up, which means I am having to devote part of my focus in making sure to track their progress.

And if they do follow up, they will send emails back and forth for a week instead of getting on the phone and moving things forward in a 10 minute call.

(This is why to me, "this could have been an email instead of a call/meeting" meme doesn't always make sense)

I'm an ICU nurse, one of the most experienced on my unit, and Gen Z nurses are why I always refuse to be charge.

So we use 50mL or 100mL normal saline bags to reconstitute antibiotics. The size of the bag depends on the antibiotic but that's not the point. Supply delivers them Monday through Friday and gives us a massive restock Friday evening that should last until Monday.

It rarely lasts that long however we can get more bags from supply. Specifically, and preferably, the charge nurse can walk to central supply and get more bags. The house supervisor can get more bags if charge is busy. Pharmacy can send up more bags. Another unit can send more bags. There are half a dozen ways to get these bags restocked on the weekend.

We ran out of bags at the beginning of my shift Sunday evening. Charge does not have patients because charge also functions as a resource nurse so I was never in the supply room. I did not know that we had run out of bags.

I found out because the pharmacist called me to ask why two separate patients were having their antibiotics marked as "not given". I go to ask the nurses of those patients why they didn't get their antibiotics for nearly 8 fricking hours, one of which was a sepsis patient, and the nurse is like, "We didn't have any bags. 🤷‍♀️"

Of all the ways to deal with that situation, she literally picked the worst one.

I'm like, "Why didn't you tell me?" It's unit policy to inform charge of any supply shortages. She's like, "I told -other nurse- and she said she just doesn't give the medication either." I go to talk to this other nurse and she was like, "Oh. Supplies aren't really my job." But reporting unit shortages is their job. It is literally written in black and white in the new hire binder.

I won't even get into the IV pumps beeping. I can tell you exactly how many Gen Z nurses we have that night based on how many IV pumps are just left to beep because they will not check on a patient that is not theirs.

One of them just let a patient's IV pump beep half the shift because, "I told her not to bend her arm." I go in there and the woman has better veins than an 18-year-old firefighter who dabbles in rock climbing. It took me less than two minutes to get a forearm IV.

You have a bed confined patient that soiled themselves and need help cleaning them? You need help ambulating a patient? You need a dual sign for a critical medication? The eyerolls are endless. I have had other nurses wait for me to be available, when I have patients, to avoid asking them for anything.

It is like they have decided that their entire job is just their specific patients and anything that is not directly related to their patient care should not involve them. It's ICU, we don't have techs, we have a free charge and each other.

She explained literally doing your job like a lazy pos vs doing a job properly. Pretty simple.

In this scenario, going above and beyond would be driving / flying / teleporting over to company b, not following up a few times and making a phone call. Going above and beyond is not sending your boss an email before they email you.

If people think doing the job is doing only exactly what you’re told explicitly to do, that’s incredibly frustrating and I don’t see any scenario where it wouldn’t piss someone off. Needing a micromanaged list of / process diagram for everything is insane.

She’s just explaining what initiative means to people who mistake that word for motivation

The way she told that story reminded me of how bad movies have gotten because people are on their phones all the time and need basic plot details re explained to them throughout.

I’m a director and have 110 people ultimately roll up to me. I can’t tell you how many times a similar situation has occurred with younger employees. And ithey are all union so they are not overworked. They just can’t comprehend that a phone call can sometimes save you dozens of emails or more. They’ve grown up that text and email are the only effective ways to communicate. “Boss this task can’t be done I’ve been on it for a week now what do you want to do?” What do I want YOU to do? Handle it! Then I get involved and 10 minutes later it’s resolved

I get what she is saying but she also left out the part where they have piled so much work on you that you didn’t have time to do multiple follow ups.

How about this: Maybe if the worker is young and just starting out you could train them to do their job properly?

What is so hard about having a meeting to discuss how to handle communications and job etiquette?