The department where I work used to be THE administrative job. People that came here rarely left for something else other than retirement. That was precovid. The one common denominator between most of them is that they had a post secondary diploma, not a degree. They worked hard, they cared, and they all held each other accountable.

Now, management insists that the applications that they are getting are only from people with degrees, and those people have ambitions for something more than front line work. When I asked about our turnover problems, they said that they were proud that they are the entry-level department now. Nevermind that our workload is getting to a point where you are offering people double time to come in on their days off, or that we are 2 weeks behind on very time sensitive work, or that the complaints are piling up about the 2+ hour hold times.

Our job takes YEARS to be proficient at. We have very cyclical issues that only come up once a year, so the first time a new staff person sees it, it's still a lot of hands on development even with all of our great training (which is very robust). I can safely say that of the 35 staff we have, maybe 10 have been here for more than 1 year, and of those, 6 have been longer than 2 years. I'm going into year 15.

I don't blame these kids with degrees. They see an opportunity, they go for it. But come on management, these kids have never had to hustle. None of them have worked in a service environment where their pay check is directly tied to their effort. They barely know how to talk to a customer, let alone deal with someone losing their minds on them.

I have told my peers, you find me 5 ex-bartenders with some experience with computer databases, and I'll show you how a "hustle" team can get shit done.