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Overheard At The Pizza Parlor

A mom-and-pop merchant struggles to stay open with a Millennial crew

I’m sitting here at a mom and pop pizza shop working on the end notes for my book. I’m listening to the owner, a frazzled-looking middle-aged man, complain to what looks like a regular customer, and elderly woman eating a salad.

“I can’t count on any of these kids,” he said to her. “They don’t think they have any obligation to come in to do their shift if they don’t want to. One of them called in this morning and said that she didn’t feel up to coming in to work. She didn’t sound too sick to me. She just didn’t want to be here. They drink too much the night before, they don’t come in — and they don’t see nothing wrong with it.”

The old woman nodded.

“That’s how they all are,” he continued. “So I gotta come in and do their shift. I try to tell them that it doesn’t matter how sick I am, or what I have planned for my day off; if they don’t do their shifts, I’m outta luck. I don’t understand this generation. When I was there age, I worked through sickness a lot of the time. Everybody did. Wasn’t it that way with y’all?”

The old lady nodded again.

“I don’t know what happened. People not like that anymore. You can’t count on nobody. It’s hard to find good help these days. Sometimes I don’t know how we stay open.”

FWIW.

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