Unless it’s on their own terms, it seems nobody wants to work anymore. Less and less people seem to appreciate what they have and even more fail to comprehend that they just might not be worth as much as they have been paid in the past.
That sentiment seems to be all over today.. Nobody wants to work.
Now just wait a minute. Is a modern thing? …recent mood swing? Post-COVID and all that?
So it was fascinating that that exact quote, bold in the first paragraph of this post, is not from life after COVID.. it is not from 2023. Or 2022.. or even 2021 and 2020. It dates back to 2011.
Graham Messner’s published opinion piece made the rounds in various news rags in February of 2011. We were told by Messner, and others in society, that work was over. People just weren’t applying for jobs.. We all got lazy.
A “Berwick Man” commented on this nobody wants to work anymore issue back in July 2007 in the PRESS ENTERPRISE.. Everyone is lazy, he said.. that was the problem. And nobody wants to work…
It would appear nobody wanted to work in 1999 either. As a matter of fact, law enforcement blamed the mentality for organized crime!
In an article about a Philadelphia policeman who was a gang informant … his name was Ron Previte.. and it was his final conclusion that ‘nobody wanted to work.’ They just wanted to rob people..
Oh.. we aren’t done yet.
If you thought we were done. You are wrong. You just don’t want to work anymore.
The problem was rampant in 1984. In an article appearing in the NEWS RECORD in North Hills PA, Priscilla Petty wrote an op-ed about how nobody wanted to work. She said getting a job is all in the interview.. Huh.
Petty said that everybody wants to come in late and leave early .. nobody wants to work anymore–too many vacations and too much sick time.
..You can keep on tracing it back.. Way back.
In 1966, Hal Boyle lamented in the Associated Press that no one wanted to work. They just wanted to retire, he wrote. According to Hal, it was a problem playing out in businesses all across America..
Surely this was just a modern problem?
Wait.. what’s this?
In 1955, Bob Bozeman wrote this in the Alabama EVERGREEN COURANT: A lament that no one, he said, wants to work anymore..
So 1955.. that is is.. the roaring IKE days.. That is when it started! Now we know. Everyone started to not want to work around then.
Hold on to your highway system!
In March 1940, Wisconsin’s Governor declared that no one wants to work anymore!
Alright this is getting old.. when did people want to work!?
Not in 1922 when the Kansas NEWS-JOURNAL said this on May 5:
Or in 1916 when the The Binghamton Press in New York published this headline: “Prices to Be High for Thanksgiving Dinner.” Part of the article showed a small, bolded heading that read, “Nobody Wants to Work.”
Or in 1905 when Edgefield Advertiser in South Carolina printed a letter from a subscriber. Following a mention of crop yields, the reader wrote, “Labor is scarce, high, and very unreliable. None want to work for wages.”
But finally.. the big one.. we go back to 1894 when the Stockton Review in Kansas noticed, of all things, that 1800s folks just.. drumroll.. didn’t want to work anymore.
x x x
So do people want to work anymore? Maybe .. maybe not. Maybe no one ever really wanted to work. Perhaps as industry changes, and industry itself has huge voices within the hallowed halls of mainstream journalism, they always get their word out there.. their lament that NO ONE wanted to work anymore. They created that aura of discussions.. this mainstream talking point that people said without much thought. It seemed true. No one wanted to work..
No one ever really wants to work. So the basic headline is real and true. But in the end, people work. The 9 to 5 continues. While Overtime was a punishment for companies post New Deal politics, it became a badge of honor for American workers.
So while no one wants to work anymore, maybe the real accurate headline over the previous 100 years would better be written, “no one wants to work THIS MUCH anymore.”
