Should young workers still have to 'pay their dues'?

[Jilly_in_VA]

Fetch coffee, file expense reports, take the night shift – entry-level workers are expected to do the grunt work. But is there a point to this professional hazing?

When Caitlin, a 24-year-old in Pennsylvania, US, graduated from her nursing program about a year ago, she was assigned to the night shift.

“Most new nurses are sent into the night shift, which some people love,” she says. “For me it just wrecked my body and my life. I went into a terrible depression. I’m a super extroverted, daytime, sunshine person. It totally messed up my eating habits, my hormones, everything.”

Caitlin, who is withholding her surname for job security, says her circadian rhythm was so thrown off, she became unable to drive herself home after a shift without falling asleep. “Once,” she says, “I woke up in the opposite lane, a half-second from a head-on collision.”

She approached her superiors and human resources to try to get her hours changed, to no avail. “The way you get to day shift is a seniority list based on when you started,” says Caitlin. “In order for me to get a full-time day shift position, I had to basically wait for people to quit, retire or leave. At the time, there was a day-shift position available, but they wouldn’t give it to me because there was someone who’d been there longer than me. It was a tough lesson: they weren’t going to let me skip the line.”

Ultimately, says Caitlin, she wasn’t shocked by that outcome. As one of the newest nurses on staff, she knew she was expected to work those overnight hours, no matter how tough it was. “You’ve got to just pay your dues,” she says. “I was kind of taught that is how life works. You’re at the bottom until you work your way up to the top.”

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20211025-should-young-workers-still-have-to-pay-their-dues

[LakeArenal]

1. Whether we like it or not everyone pays their dues.

“Dues” are just the things you run into through life. You pay them by accepting what is and working through them.
Call it character building
Seniority at work
Running into a wall
Or life’s curve balls.

Whatever it is....everyone pays them.

[Jilly_in_VA]

5. If you actually read the article

I fail to see some of the examples cited as "necessary". Fetching coffee, for instance, or the boss's dry cleaning. Or, for nurses, starting on the night shift. (There is a saying that nurses eat their young, and having been one since 1986, I can attest to that. I tried to be nicer to the newbies than some of my co-workers were. I got dinged for that.) I tended to stay on night shift because I liked it, not because I was new, but it's tough.

[LakeArenal]

11. Had to do all those things. I'm not sure why people would expect differently.

Our dues were three years where he worked days and I worked nights.

Sucked driving in winter
One day a week with him.
Asked to pick up things for people on my way to work. Stay later when short handed.

After three years conditions changed.

Worked then at a bank that told me after a few years you can work your way to loan officer. When that time past and an opening came they gave the job to an outsider with no banking experience. I had fetched a lot of coffee, files and lunches in that time.

It’s life and working.

[Jilly_in_VA]

12. And that makes it right? n/t

[LakeArenal]

13. Well I'm not Don Quixote. From the other comments you'd hope you'd get it by now.

If she doesn’t like it then find another job.
My husband’s twin sister was a nurse.
She did what she did with grace and patience. If someone else can’t do that then don’t be a nurse.

[Sherman A1]

2. Well, the alternative to that is that they start at the top

and I just don't see that as desirable. Young folks need time to learn their jobs, the culture of the workplace and gain life experience. So Yes, one has to pay their dues in one fashion or another.

[Johnny2X2X]

3. It's unfortunate

But in careers like nursing, you do have to pay your dues to get the good shifts. Maybe that type of nursing isn't for her, but I'd bet there are other nursing jobs to be had where 1st shift is available.

3rd shift isn't for everyone, I worked 3rd shift for a bout a year, it ruined me physically, when I couldn't do it any longer I found other work.

[MineralMan]

4. Well, with the nursing shortage that exists, I'd think she

might look for a different job if the one she has is disruptive to her life. However, new hires often get the undesirable shifts. I'm not sure that's "paying dues," but it is a reality.

There are plenty of open nursing jobs almost everywhere, though.

[blueinredohio]

6. I don't know if the place has 2-12 hour shifts or 3-8 hour shifts but

if they have a second shift do that then you're not staying up all night. When I was working seniority ruled, you got what your seniority could get you.

[Jilly_in_VA]

7. Very few places

have 8 hour shifts any more. That's a reality. My daughter worked in a nursing home briefly and they did, probably still do. All the new CNAs trained on 3-11, which she liked. Then they put her on 7-3, which she absolutely hated. It was a lot more work and the nurses (she said) were hateful, probably because they were understaffed.

[blueinredohio]

8. Day shift also has more bosses

all the big wigs are there. Other shifts are more relaxed.

[jimfields33]

9. Absolutely you should have to pay your dues

I literally know some young graduates who expect to have a top level job. Hmmmm. Nope. You start at the bottom like everyone else.

[GoCubsGo]

10. Because only poor, poor Caitlin's circadian rhythm gets thrown off.

Is this really about "paying one's dues," or is it about "young workers" who think the world revolves around them, and that they're entitled to positions ahead of others who have been busting their asses to move a head far longer than them? Your circadian rhythm is thrown off? Boo hoo. You think your co-workers aren't dealing with the same issues, Caitlin?

[ProfessorGAC]

15. Circadian Rhythms Are Maleable

People who work alternating shifts have some issues with it.
That's why fixed shifts, no matter the hours of the day, are preferred by most people.
If one is always working10pm to 6am, the body adjusts.
So, it sounds like she doesn't really understand what that buzzword means.

[GoCubsGo]

20. Yep, or she just doesn't want to admit the real issue.

That what's really getting "messed up" is her social life. I think she understands what the buzzword means. She just doesn't understand that she isn't special, and that she needs to adjust the way everyone else does.

[Amishman]

22. experience does not equal ability or even competency

Sometimes they really are that good and the company will lose them if they are forced to 'pay their dues' first

A few jobs back we interviewed a kid fresh out of college for an entry level .net developer spot. Nothing fancy, but the tricky part is what he was working on had a two way integration with a piece of crap related system that had been developed in house and no one was left who really understood it.

He was quiet and honestly didn't impress me (lead analyst on that project) but our lead developer who did the technical interview praised him.

We hired him, I think we started him at 60k.

He was late for meetings, on his phone all the time. Begged for remote access to he could work from home occasionally. Project manager hated him from the start and wanted to fire him before he even hit his 90 day review.

Then his finished code started hitting QA testing. QAs could hardly find anything, his work was essentially perfect from day one.

By the time his 90 day review rolled around, he had rebuilt the API with the shitty connected system in the time he had left over at the end of each sprint.

I ended up doing his 90 day review because our PM had quit. At the end of his glowing review, the kid said something like 'I'd like some more money'. I told him to hold on and walked down to our SVP's office. I'd been been keeping her informed about the rockstar we'd found, so I was able to walk back ten minutes later with a promise of a $20k raise.

By the time I left for another job, he'd been there slightly over a year, was a lead developer and was making over $120k per year. He'd singlehandedly overhauled not only the system we brought him in to work on, but made huge improvements in everything that was connected to it.

We had a senior developer, who'd been there for many years, quit when the new guy got lead. Management didn't even blink and let him go, he was average and replaceable, the new guy was anything but.

[madville]

14. These are always funny, story as old as the world

The junior employee always gets the short end, that’s the way it works. They have to climb in the hole, clean up the mess, work the nights and weekends, start at a lower pay rate, etc.

Seniority is nice though, once you put it in your time of course. Nothing will make employees disgruntled quicker than giving a more junior employee a better shift or pay rate than the senior workers.

[SYFROYH]

16. For the most part, yes.

I’ve always thought the medical work modes in hospitals were unnecessarily rough, but it’s the job one chooses.

It’s not really hazing if it’s work related.

[Wingus Dingus]

17. Good Lord the whining. I worked night shifts, first as a nurse aide, then as an RN, for years.

I was in my thirties with two children, and a military spouse who was often deployed to the other side of the world and he ALSO worked in shifts when he was home, and no extended family near us for a thousand miles. Was I exhausted? YEP! Did I wait for my first chance to get out of that situation? YEP! It is indeed "paying your dues" so that you can move into a better position. However, nursing is such a broad field that she could easily work in an office or clinic somewhere doing day shift, or working in a procedure-specific field like dialysis or something that usually takes place during the day.

[Amishman]

18. Depends on the industry

In IT it's a strong meritocracy. If you're really good, you get what you want or leave, no point it waiting around a few years.

[meadowlander]

19. This is confllating two different issues.

1. Should more junior members of staff grow up and realize that work is about doing the job that needs to get done and not the job that they fantasized doing?

I think we can agree that the answer is yes. You pay your dues doing boring or unpleasant work to show what you can do before you are set free on more difficult but more interesting work. That's true in just about every industry. And even senior people pay their dues by doing boring and/or unpleasant work some of the time because most jobs have a relatively high proportion of boring and/or unpleasant work that just need to be gotten on with.

2. Should someone with a documented health issue be forced to soldier on through working conditions that are making that health condition worse?

I think we can agree that the answer is no. If working night shifts are sending her into clinical depression or creating a health and safety hazard for her driving home after her shift then her employer had a responsibility to make accommodations for her either by taking her off night shifts or providing some alternative way for her to get home safely.

Depression is a psychological disability under the ADA which means her employer is required to make reasonable accommodations for her. That's the next step she should be taking, not complaining that her employer is being inflexible by not letting her jump the queue over more senior staff.

[Jilly_in_VA]

21. I think

starting at the bottom is one thing. I think being treated like shit when you're at the bottom is quite another. For instance, as the article points out, the new nurses getting all the Covid patients all the time just because the senior nurses on the shift didn't want to take them...that's BS. And there's enough of that that goes around. Been there and seen it. In one hospital I worked in (the absolute worst one) it's what they did to the travelers on some units. Not all. On a few we still ranked above the newbies.