http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18788754

Hope you can view this in the US sometimes the BBC blocks videos.

Essentially this owner of a high-street retail store is struggling to find staff who can turn up on time, speak to customers etc.

I see this the whole way through the food chain.  Even graduates leaving university can be unemployable.  The lack wisdom, humility, desire to learn.

Could it be that they don't want to pay adequately for people with those skills?

That above is true in many cases.

This is true for the U.S.  I see it all the time in customer service venues.  These kids are technologically competent but deficient in social skills, critical thinking and common sense.  

I am not the most formal person but my friends' parents and anyone my parents' age was always Mr. or Mrs. so and so.  Not so with these kids.  Their elders are seen as peers because their own parents acted like buddies, not parents.  They lack the accompanying civil tongue and respect.  Not all the kids are this way but much of the generation is.

Since many were catered to and treated as special, they did not receive the character formation and resourcefulness that hard work provides.  When the collapse hits these kids won't make it.  

Most can't spell or use words correctly, either.
Awhile back the schools were using 'creative spelling'.  That is, they were never corrected & so they took to spelling phonetically.  Thus we now see them writing about their curiosity being peaked,  or not knowing the difference between everyday & every day.  Drives me crazy.

Texting makes the problem worse.  It is a language unto itself and used to replace normal writing.

Who on earth would down-thumb catherine's post?!  What she posted was the absolute truth!!
Maybe they're mixed up & down-thumbed because they don't like texting, rather than her post?  

Little boys with vendettas.  They don't like what I've said on other threads and follow me around thumbs downing all my posts.  The integrity of the ratings system is pretty much violated by people with multiple accounts and outsiders trying to play havoc on the forum during the crisis.  If names were attached to the ups and downs it would go a long way towards curbing this bad behavior.

Thanks for saying something though  :wink:

If they would pay higher and offer a suitable amount of training they would have plenty of competent people.

As far as customer service the company needs to be blamed first.  Many times there is very little training given and ridiculous standards to be met. They are not rushing past your issues because they don't care but the company requires calls to be handled in less than so many minutes. They don't want decisions based on critical thinking, they want people to follow a script clicking yes or no buttons.

Companies want to pay as little as possible and that is what they are griping about. For that $12/hour job raise it to $24 and it will improve the pool of applicants.