Good post GA76. I fully agree with you. The sad thing is it will not get any better. With the projected short fall of sparkies getting worse every year, the standands in selecting someone to train will get lower and lower. A warm body is better then nobody.
Socity in general has created this illusion in our school system that in order to succeed, you must go to college. anything less, you are a bum. The world still need ditch diggers. Kids want a cushy job playing computer games. The selection pool for good apprentices is quite small.
As journeymen, it is our responsibilty to train the the green horns. With the "interesting" pool that we have to work with, we have to adjust just the same. If we teach and apprentice how to do something half-ass or do it with a crappy attitude, he or she will go threw life doing it the same way until they wise up of get killed in the process. One day that person will likely be training some else and he or she will teach that person to do it the same way.
As journeymen, we have a huge resposibility of not only doing safe, reliable electrical work, we are the teachers of the next generations of sparkies rather we want to or not. Even if you ae not directly working with a newbie, if they you see you doing something and it is wrong, they may likely assume that it the status quo and run with it. As we workup the ranks in our places of employment, your employer will likly task us to show the greenies the ropes. It is expected from you rather you like it or not because you got the experience the recruits need. It is all part of being an electrician or any job for that matter to include digging ditches.
