When I was in college, I was considering getting a job at a guest ranch instead of spending another summer at the same restaurant I worked for during high school. At the time, though, I had long dreadlocks down to my shoulders, so I was unsure if many ranch companies would be interested in having me.

After finding a guest ranch in Utah where I thought I might like to work, I sent an e-mail to the manager asking if they had a uniform policy regarding hair. He told me that they did, and that “unnatural” hair styles were not allowed. He further told me that he thought that someone asking about the ranch’s dress code didn’t have priorities in line with those that he sought in an employee.

Without trying to sound overly immodest, I think he screwed up big-time.

In that brief exchange, he turned down an Eagle Scout getting a college education who had years in the service industry. And he screened me out of his hiring process based on a single question.

Now a large part of this was my fault for only giving him that single piece of data. Had I told him everything else I just told you maybe he would have responded differently. It was a mistake that was a result of inexperience.

When you’re dealing with new employees, don’t forget that many of them lack experience in the business world. That’s a part of hiring young people. If you have an unnatural surplus of experienced young people, feel free to ignore that fact. But otherwise, when someone new to your business does something that seems absurd, either as an applicant or as a brand new employee, remember that it might be a reflection of his inexperience. You can grow an inexperienced person into a heck of an employee if you take the time. But not if you discount him before he can get a bit of experience.

For whatever reason, every boss I’ve ever had has felt compelled to use little clichés in an attempt to encourage, train, or even chastise me. I’ll usually smile and move on with life. What they fail to realize is that I don’t smile because I’m enjoying my work or their aphorisms. Instead, I’m amusing myself. Usually at the expense of my boss.

When dealing with Gen Why, managers should remember that we are a generation for whom sarcasm and cynicism are the norm. We didn’t grow up on Leave it to Beaver. We grew up on The Simpsons. Our sense of humor and our sense of what makes for a normal (or an irritating) interaction is far removed from the good old days that sprouted these expressions. Yet, managers keep using phrases that even seemed to irritate the Beav, thinking that we’ll spring to our feet with a “Yessir! Good point, sir!” each time they share one of these little pearls of wisdom.

So, on Mondays, I’m going to take a few seconds to address one of these clichés. I’ll tell you what I think when I hear it. (This part doubles as a great way for me to relieve a little Monday tension.) After that, I’ll break down in a sentence or two the lesson I think should be taken away from my reactions to this particularly bothersome managerial “technique.” With a little luck, common sense will prevail and managers will stop spouting this junk.

This week’s winning expression:

Boss says:

“I’m not paying you to stand there!”

I think:

“As a matter of fact, you are. See! I’m on the clock. And I’m standing. Simple as that. Or was this a request for me to start working?”

The lesson:

Say what you mean. Mean what you say. I’ll accomplish a straight-forward task and appreciate your no-BS style long before I will voluntarily allow my boss to win a battle of wits.

My first day of my first real job, I walked in and was introduced to my trainer: Jim.

Jim was an interesting choice to be my trainer. On the one hand, he clearly knew his stuff, and he could communicate the information adequately. This is always a good thing for a trainer to do.

On the other hand, Jim was a middle-aged father, while I was seventeen-year-old kid without a care in the world. Common ground was a little hard to come by in this arrangement. To compound things, Jim was a very strange guy. “Eccentric” and “idiosyncratic” are both very accurate descriptors of his personality.

So, here you have me, already a little nervous about this new adventure known as “working” and Jim isn’t helping the situation, despite his best intentions and efforts. It turned out in the long-run; I worked for that company all through college. But it was definitely a shaky start.

By now, you must be asking, if Jim wasn’t the perfect, best, or even really a great person to train me, who would have been?

One of the most important things I’ve found both in training and in being trained is that common ground is a key element of effective teaching and learning. If someone is trying to convey a massive amount of information to you (recipes, specs, procedures, whatever), the little mnemonic devices he brings to the table can be the difference between learning quickly and learning almost nothing. If you put me with someone whose trick for remembering the secret ingredient is that it fits perfectly into the rhyming scheme of the third verse of an E.L.O. song, you’re asking, nay - begging, me to forget what I’ve been told.

One of the simplest ways to create that common ground is to put new employees with trainers who are near the same age. It’s a simple equation. Similar experiences, similar tastes, and similar world-views equals lots of room for common ground. When it comes to creating those nuanced little ways of teaching someone, shared territory is what makes the difference.

The strength of the (often unintentionally) nuanced approach someone might take to training a peer of a similar age is a result of the simple mechanics of learning. If I’m going to try to take in a massive amount of information (recipes, specs, procedures, etc.) I want to learn it from someone who can communicate it to me as closely to the way I think as possible. That means I want someone who will use examples that make sense to me. It means I want a trainer who will refer to things I know about. It means I want to learn from someone who speaks my colloquial language fluently. Sure, if I ask a question I’ll know I’m in the right when I’m told “Nice work” and offered a hand shake, but a “Fo Sho!” and a fist pound offer a whole different layer of reinforcement.

Please, please, for the love of everything sacred, do not take this as my request to middle-aged managers to start adding “izzle” and “heezy” to everything they say. If you do this to me, I’m out. If you say it was my idea, I’m suing. When someone who clearly isn’t supposed to be using lingo tries to use it (you know who you are), it doesn’t create a common ground, it creates a no man’s land. Suddenly, something that was cool and enjoyable seems forced and more time is spent dwelling on the manner in which the information was communicated that the data that was transmitted.

Someone who can speak to my level without talking down to me will be the perfect person to train me because we’re on the same wavelength. That’s why I like being trained by someone my age. Think about it next time you have your new Gen Why training with a much older person. Especially if your trainer is as eccentric as Jim was.

One of the things that drove me insane working in the service industry was the rarity with which the employee schedule was posted with anything resembling advance notice. There were occasions working in restaurants when I wasn’t sure one day if I was working the next because the schedule wasn’t completed. And while that was the rare case, it wasn’t the least bit unusual for the schedule to go up only three or four days before the first day it covered.

“But the order has to be in by Tuesday or there will be no produce! The schedule will have to wait.”

Stop thinking that! Stop it now. You have fallen prey to the schedule delay fallacy. The schedule is one of your most important tasks to complete in a timely fashion. By all means, put in your produce order, but do not ignore the schedule.

Managers seem to fall for the schedule delay fallacy for a couple main reasons.

Probably the greatest contributor is that my peers and I can often accommodate short notice. I’ll readily admit that my schedule as a student was a lot more flexible than that of most career-types. A lot of managers take advantage of that. But the mistake they’re making is in equating flexibility with amiability. Yes, I can probably re-arrange things so I can be in tomorrow on short notice. Hell no, I won’t be happy about it. (See how many times late notice that I’m working can screw me out of Friday night plans before I cease to be flexible, amicable, or your employee.)

The other major factor is that the schedule’s deadline seems flexible. Vendors won’t send you product if you don’t submit your order by the deadline. However, if the schedule goes up a day late, staffing will inevitably make it in. Notice, however, that I said that this seems to be the case. Every day that passes increases the likelihood that your employees will be making plans that interfere with what you’re writing on the schedule. We need time to arrange our schedules, just like your vendors. What kills me about this is if a manager puts in an order for product late and the vendor can’t accommodate it, the manager says “Bummer. We’ll sort it out on this end.” But if that same manager posts the schedule (an order for labor services) late and one of the employees (vendors of said labor services) can’t accommodate it, the manager says, “Tough. You’ll have to work it out.”

At times, I have harbored the suspicion that schedule writers knew some conflicts would be inevitable, but felt that the things I wanted to do outside of work just weren’t very important. Even if this is a completely baseless suspicion, it should tell you this: While they might not seem significant in the grand scheme of things, or to managers personally, or to the operation of a business, the things young people want to do outside of work are important to us. Missing a planned Friday night at the lake may not seem like a big loss compared to missing a mortgage payment, but that evening is what I look forward to all week. Paying for it is why I have a job. Some day, I’ll have a mortgage to pay, too. But right now, going out to play is a major priority in my life.

When I get scheduled at the last minute I feel like my boss is taking advantage of me and marginalizing my interests. I understand that business necessities are what drive the way the schedule is written, and I will work with that. But there isn’t a business necessity that says the schedule should go up just a couple days before it matters. Managers who do this are taking my flexibility for granted and telling me that they expect my job to be the overriding priority in my life. Be warned: Work isn’t my number one priority. Never has been. Never will be. And most people my age feel the same way.

So, get that schedule out early. If you let your Gen Whys play hard, they’ll be more willing to work hard.

Check out this hat from Chipotle:

It’s cool. It’s a style I’d wear - it’s a style my peers wear. It’s the kind of hat you find at trendy stores. This part of Chipotle’s uniform is even for sale on their website!

Now, think about the hats issued as a part of most uniforms. They’re cheap, institutional and ugly.  They’re the kind of hats that sports clubs give away for free at stadiums and people still won’t wear them.

I’ve watched countless struggles to force Gen Whys to wear their mandated uniforms, but Chipotle’s hat is so cool I want to wear it and I don’t even work there. Make your uniform something young employees wear anyway and it won’t be much of struggle to get them to wear it.