I got a plan. A cunning plan. A plan that I feel needs to be introduced into this country as soon as possible (obviously). I want to start a revolution- a social revolution, if you will. I want to shake up the schooling and work system in this country.
Now, I feel that a bit of background information's needed for this post. I ply my trade within the confines of the retail sector. It's not a job I hate (most of the time), but it's not a job I love. The biggest downside is that I have to interact with people on a daily basis. I know, I know, I knew about that before I started the job, but I never realised how irritating it can get sometimes. When you get people who quite clearly can't be bothered to do anything for themselves, that's when the job gets annoying. When you get people who are, shall we say, not the brightest tool on the shelf, and you realise that you may as well be talking to the nearest wall, that's when the job gets mildly frustrating. When you get people who treat you like something you stepped in, that's when the job gets downright hateful. This is the reason I want to shake up the school system- these problems all come down to a lack of respect- a lack of respect for the staff and a lack of respect for their working environment.
So, how do we solve this problem? Well, it's actually very simple. We need to find a way for people to learn respect for the retailers who work hard every day to keep their customers happy. Obviously not all customers can leave a store happy. Some of these people will let you know that they're not happy, and demdand that you do something, citing phrases like "the customer is always right" and "retail law" and other buzzwords they've heard on watchdog shows on television. The fact of the matter is this: the customer is not always right. In fact, the customer is very rarely right. This is one of the things we need to teach people. By breaking down this barrier of ignorance you open up the opportunity for understanding and learning.
Probably the most effective way for people to learn about an industry is to actually work in it. At the moment, the British schooling system has a work experience program, where children who are 15/16 will go out for two weeks and work for a company. This system is, frankly, useless. Two weeks isn't long enough for a person of that age to fully understand and comprehend what's happening within a business. Plus, you get children who want to work in, for example, a care home, but instead get told that the placement's full so they have to go work for their local shop. Because they don't want to be there, they won't make any effort to do the job. I know this, I've seen it firsthand. As such, we need to get rid of the work experience program in it's current form.
Instead, we put in a totally radical system. When children leave school, they have to do six month's work. But not just any work, they have to do six month's retail work. Believe it or not, retail work is more than just stacking shelves. It's an extremely complex industry, and there's a hell of a lot more happening behind the scenes than most people realise. Speaking on a personal level, I have to liase with five different outside companies, which I wasn't expecting when I first started the job. I think people would be amazed what actually goes into the running of a shop.
Now, you obviously need to give these people an incentive for doing the job, otherwise they won't turn up to it. The most obvious one is to pay them for it. At the time of writing, the minimum wage for school leavers under the age of 18 is £3.68 per hour. If you get them working 30 hours a week, that roughly equates to the same amount of time they would spend in school, and gives them a weekly pay of £110.40 per week, depending if the individual employers wish to pay them more or not. An additional point on this is that it's not really fair for the employers to be forced to pay school leavers this much, so the government will supplement half of it- £55.20 comes from a government grant, and the rest comes out of the employers pocket. When these children get older and start to pay tax, they'll effectively pay this money back and pass it on to the next generation of school leavers. This would actually mean you get a permanent circulation of currency- when someones's 15/16 they don't think about saving up their cash, they think about how they can go out with their friends, spend it and enjoy it. Look at that, I'm also putting forward a solution to help the economic crisis without even trying.
Money can't be the only incentive for people that age. This is where I think the Americans have the right idea by having a permanent record for people. I think this is a system that we need in this country. Not only can you put people's school grades onto it, you can also put if they completed their six months retail service or not. If they did, then great. If not, then they effectively "fail" school. To put it another way, it becomes part of the curriculum. Granted, there's no exam for it, there's no grade for it. If they turned up to their placement every day and put honest-to-god effort in, then that works in their favour. If they turned up every day but didn't bother to do anything, then that goes against them. If they don't turn up at all, they don't get paid and it goes on their record, thus rendering them unreliable and, in turn, unemployable. If you don't do your placement, then you only apply for the bare minimum of benefits, so it encourages you to actually turn up and the do the job even more. By making the downside as bad as possible, you're practically ensuring the fact that people will turn up and be bothered to do the job.
There are no doubt holes in this theory. I like to think that I've thought this through pretty damn well, but if there is anything, I encourage you to point it out to me so I can refine it.
Well, that's my theory. My main idea is for people to see when happens in retail and thus they gain a respect for the job and the people, and that the respect will be spread across the generations. Thank you for reading this far, and give me yo' opinions.
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