I'm closing in on 9 years working for General Electric Appliances. When I was hired, there were a whole lot of hoops you had to jump through; background tests, testing, orientation (unpaid), training, just to get a job here. Fairly simple stuff that basically boiled down to "can you follow written directions?" and "do you come to work?"
It was a place people retired from after finally getting a GE union job. The hiring event I applied at began online at 6:00 am and ended when they had 3000 applications. The hiring website shut down before 6:45.
Five years ago, we were sold to a Chinese appliance corporation called Haier. The standards virtually vanished. They set up kiosks in the mall for people to apply.
While we do still get some very good employees, many (as an old Army saying goes) "Couldn't pour p!ss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel."
Workers don't care, they don't even want to work. So many are just here "half a--ing it" to collect a paycheck. We've had folks just walk away from the assembly line during a break and not return to the next day. Back in the day, that was called "job abandonment" and your ID badge wouldn't work the next day.
I do have a long time employee who works for me. She is around 60 and has been at GE for 27 years. She is probably the dumbest person I have ever worked with.
We recently started running a new refrigerator model. Our normal model has a right and left hand door with a bottom freezer drawer/door. The new model is similar, except the top two doors are shorter and a center drawer has been added below the right and left hand doors above the freezer drawer. It is called "the center drawer" and can hold beverages like cans of drink or be used as a deli tray or put a pizza inside.
She's a tester and the computer screen gives prompts on what do do on all units being tested. Testing is really easy, takes about 10 seconds and goes like this:
Open LH & RH door
Look for Model Number Label
Close LH & RH doors
Open Center Drawer (these two steps were added for the new style fridges)
Close Center Drawer
Open Freezer Door
Close Freezer Door
This genius was failing units because she was never trained on how to open the center drawer. She says, "No one trained me, I don't know what the center drawer is".
I told our boss that if you work at Subway, you don't have to be retrained every time they add a new type of bread or meat. "I haven't been trained on how to add extra cheese."
She's done other things that were quite stupid and usually says something like, "I'm not dumb." I used to think she just played dumb, but after six months of dealing with her on this easy job, I've learned it is not an act.