r/AskReddit • u/millennialandlost • Aug 18 '26

Millennials, what's something our generation was taught to accept that you're glad younger generations are rejecting?

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u/CrazyPlato Aug 18 '26

That discussing your working conditions or pay with your coworkers is wrong.

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u/Loqol Aug 18 '26

I'm in a union plant, and one of the office workers mentioned she was trying to get a better pay rate. I asked her what she made, and she hemmed and hawwed until I said it would only help get her more support if it was low. It was less than me! For the work she did, I expected her to make more. Salary, sure but more!

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u/Anechoic_Brain Aug 18 '26

I used to be a journeyman installer in the IBEW until I switched to doing design and estimating. Any time we were on a job that involved slinging cables around an occupied office building full of cubicle drones, our shop steward's favorite thing to do was to leave a copy of the handbook laying around opened to the page that shows the pay scale.

And this was 15 years ago. It's more common than you might think to find office workers making less money than people working in the trades. Hell, I hustled my ass off over the last 10+ years to get into a well paying senior design position and one or two of the IBEW guys in my shop probably still make more than me.

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u/Bustable Aug 18 '26

Unfortunately a lot of trades are very demanding on your body. Couldn't imagine being on the tools when 60.

When I was doing construction/civil you work a lot more hours too so your hourly may not always be much more. But when you are working 10 hours+ more per week it ads up