| I’ve been noticing a pattern lately, and once you spot it, it’s hard to ignore. It often starts with a simple, well-intentioned phrase: “I’ll get back to you.” Except a lot of the time, they don’t. Not with a yes, not with a no — just silence. And it leaves you wondering how businesses that supposedly need work can be so casual about letting opportunities drift away. It feels like a perfect example of over-promising and under-delivering, even when the promise itself is tiny. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realised this behaviour doesn’t sit on its own. It seems to live alongside a broader shift in how responsibility, respect, and value are understood — particularly across generations. Courtesy used to be the starting point. Now it often feels optional. Informality has blurred lines, and “being direct” has replaced being considered. Confidence is encouraged early, which can be a good thing. Still, without experience to back it up, that confidence can spill over into bluntness or even belligerence, especially towards older people who are assumed to be out of touch or irrelevant. One of the clearest places this tension shows up is around pay. I’ve noticed that many younger workers genuinely believe they should earn the same hourly rate as someone double their age with far more experience. From their perspective, an hour is an hour, and with the cost of living being what it is, anything less feels unfair. But hourly pay has never really been about time alone. It’s about what gets delivered within that time. Experience compresses value. It means fewer mistakes, better judgment, quicker decisions, less supervision, and a deeper understanding of consequences. Two people can work for an hour and produce entirely different outcomes. Older workers aren’t paid more because they’re older. They’re paid more because they’ve already paid the price — in errors made, lessons learned, responsibility carried, and consistency built over years. When that gets flattened into “we both turned up for an hour,” it understandably feels dismissive. And yet, beneath what looks like entitlement, there’s often something else going on. Anxiety. Pressure. A sense that the ladder has been pulled up and the future is narrower than it used to be. Demanding equal pay and equal footing can be a way of protecting against the fear of falling behind before you’ve even found your feet. What ties all of this together — the missed follow-ups, the vague promises, the blurred respect, the wage confusion — is accountability. Many older generations were taught that how something lands matters more than what you intended. Many younger people were taught that if you didn’t mean harm, that’s enough. Neither view is entirely wrong, but when they collide in the workplace, friction is inevitable. The answer isn’t nostalgia or blame. It’s clarity. Clear communication instead of polite avoidance. Clear expectations instead of unspoken resentment. Clear explanations of value rather than assumptions about entitlement. Respect that runs both ways, grounded not in age, but in behaviour. Because no matter how much the world changes, one thing hasn’t: if you say you’ll get back to someone, it matters that you do. |
Over-Promising, Under-Delivering, and the Generational Disconnect
Earthly Comforts 
Very well analyzed Rory. This is a global phenomenon. People have let go of respect, honesty and good work ethics.
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Good morning Sadje, yes they have. I see that new credo everywhere l go and it saddens me as it must do you.
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Very true. The only good thing is that when we meet people with good values, we are quite pleasantly surprised.
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