Job jumping traits of Gen Y may save them financially

Getting more than one job may not be the end of the world

Photo: tlkativ

The global financial crisis has sprung more uncertainty than anything else in the past decade, and it’s more widespread than any other situation in my lifetime.

People are worried about losing investments, losing money and losing their jobs, but what about the vast number of Gen Yers who don’t yet have a secure job to worry about?

I think if anything people are going to have to learn how to hold down more than one job at a time, particularly when it comes to industries like hospitality and retail, because less and less employers want to invest in full-time staff with financial situations just barely hanging in balance. Plus, these industries are the ones that often need workers, especially part-timers and casuals.

Although the recession worries me, I find this aspect of the situation riddled with irony.

As The National Business Review reports, it’s a commonly accepted fact that Gen Y often move from job-to-job to get what they want out of work. Job jumping (as I like to call it) has been skewed as a negative trait of this generation, but it could be an important factor in surviving tough economic times.

The diversity of skills that come from working in more than one industry, and the desire to work in different environments, might just make Gen Yers adaptable enough to deal with working harder to pay the bills.

This time last year the idea of having three or more jobs would have seemed insane to almost everyone. Even during the onset of the economic crisis there were people both older and younger who thought it ridiculus.

In October last year the editor of News.com.au, David Higgins, asked me to write an opinion piece in response to recruitment agency Talent2 accusing Generation Y of being “untrustworthy” in the workplace. Their stance revolved around research that showed a significant amount of young people access social networking websites like Facebook and Myspace while at work, and divulge information about their employment.

My response covered a variety of issues with the research which I won’t go into again here, but one of my statements was that I had four jobs and was a full time student. A response from one young person, “Emily” to that statement was that I must be stupid because of all the tax I’d have to deal with (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea).

Four jobs sounds extreme, I know, but they were a combination of seasonal work and contracted work that didn’t take up a lot of my time. They did, however, prepare me for working more than one job as a graduate. Now, more than ever before, I think people will have to start thinking about working more than one job at a time.

Sure, the tax might seem bad but maybe, just maybe, it will stop so much job jumping from Gen Y.

On sharehouses

So long and thanks for all the sh*t

Photo: Amazing Amazone

In the last three years I have lived with an average of nine different people a year in sharehouses around Brisbane, and in that whole time I’ve never written all that much about them. I thought John Birmingham said it all pretty well in He Died With a Felafel in His Hand and that Richard Lowenstein’s film adaptation showed it all. Turns out there’s an endless amount of stories and angles you can deal with, so I’ve got my five cents’ worth to add.

It all revolves around house work.

Things might start with the dishes getting to a stage where they devour the benchspace in the kitchen, move on to the garbage and recycling spilling foul-smelling unidentifiable watery stuff on your clothes and escalates from there. Maybe you have to cut the hedges at the front of the house with little pink stationary scissors because no one else will organise to get it done. Maybe you have to throw out the rotting pile of fruit that’s claimed the floor adjacent to the dining table.

Sure, you get that all the time. It’s part of the Great Sharehouse Experience, and it makes up half the funny stories you can tell once those days are behind you.

What I didn’t know was that moving is just as much a part of this Great Sharehouse Experience. I’ve never heard much about it before – I suppose because in sharehouses you often get people coming and going in between lease renewals. So when my last sharehouse got sold I got the full moving fiasco without warning.

It starts small enough, like the dishes. Someone accidentally takes something that’s clearly yours and brings it back, no problems. Then you realise that they’ve also left behind furniture, plants, rubbish and, oh? Is that a bean bag filling up our garbage bin so we can’t put anything else in there? Wonderful.

It’s even more fun in a big house. Play clean-ups and find the giant box of skank clothes left by one girl, or the broken outdoor seat that someone brought home and no one wanted to claim after they realised how unfixable it was. Plus, if you have an owner overseas, enjoy finding stuff he’s hidden away like that giant, scary metal lamp behind the hot water system.

My favourite, by far, is the endless masses of cardboard boxes, bike parts, car parts and other rubbish – usually found in, or adjacent to, the garage. This is always more rubbish than you could fit into two giant garbage bins and more than enough recycling material for two of those wheelie bins. Imagine a pile of cardboard and rubbish so big it starts to take up a third of the reasonably-sized driveway, and comes up to your knees in height. Now imagine trying to squeeze that into a compact two-door car.

Now imagine realising you don’t have anything to do with 90 per cent of that crap. Bike? What bike? No one who ever lived here ordered a new bike – oh, wait, our housemate’s sibling got it delivered here. Our housemate who is conveniently out of town while we’re here slaving away in the sun, ripping up stupid boxes we aren’t responsible for so we can have a better chance of getting our bond back.

We stood there, hot, sweaty and tired. A day before the lease runs out and seriously pissed off that we have to deal with this stuff at our old house, even if it is only to let the $800 cleaners in and get rid of the crap. Fuming at our (friends) housemates for ditching us with so much crap and swearing as cardboard cuts our fingers and dust clogs up our airways.

I was pissed off, doing the work with my two current (and thankfully amazing) housemates but feeling like even a barking dog would set me off on a crazed, hissing rampage.

Enter the real estate agent, a day before the lease expires, with a bitchlook at us for being there and a glimmer in their eye promising us bond hassles.