the meeting from work

[This was moved to its own post from footnote [3] in the one about southern Maryland's harmful effects on the psyche of young single adults like myself due to it getting too long and so I could work with the paragraphs. If you haven't read that post yet then go read it first.]

Consider the following example as proof of my earlier point regarding the disparity in numbers of young men and young women around here. Judging from discussions with people I hang with, it has been roughly duplicated at other places of work in the area. So it's apparently an area-wide concern with enough impact to have drawn the attention of employers who otherwise shouldn't care about such things.

About 8-10 months ago I was one of maybe a dozen people at a focus meeting on engineering morale and retention. The goal was for some off-site people in attendance to hear from some of us what our concerns were and what we thought could be changed to decrease the restlessness in the engineering population. Since there has been an alarmingly high exodus of young engineers leaving within their first few years at the site, this sub-issue was bound to come up here and there throughout the discussion.

At one point during this meeting, a supervisor in my department made the observation that many in the younger crowd who currently work or have worked for the company recently have, after moving here, started dating women who live elsewhere or been interested in dating and looked elsewhere to meet that need. (When you hire engineering grads you usually hire men, so our "up-and-coming" workforce is predominantly male.) He didn't say this was an issue within the company's control, but he did point out how it has drawn away past new hires and could continue to cause attrition, and thus ought to at least be acknowledged and looked at. It was actually amusing in a way because he went so far as to imply that there are almost no "available" women in the area, then stuttered some and tried to backtrack on his phrasing, as if he felt like he needed to be more politically correct in how he addressed the issue. But by then he had stated the obvious and I chalked it up to him saying what he really meant before he could catch himself and filter his words.

Being the only young, unmarried fellow in the room, I of course felt a little awkward being there, and I wasn't even thinking about contributing to that discussion. But during this I did meet eyes with another supervisor I know better and am on a slightly more casual level with, and he had this smirk on his face that seemed to reflect something between pity and understanding of the situation I must find myself in. I couldn't tell whether he was laughing or empathizing, but he clearly knew who in the room was being indirectly referred to. I returned his look with the best "yeah, no $&%#" face I could come up with. That was the end of that, but I'm confident he understood my "unofficial" agreement with what was being said.

So here you have older guys who have families and could care less about the whole social side of things in the area, and who seemingly would not be up on any details, saying they could see a problem. I repeat, no personal interest, brought families to this area, still recognizing a problem. When people that far removed from the issue can point it out, it's real and concrete, and not just a bunch of hard-luck guys (and gals) complaining about their lack of a social life.

At work, the issue hasn't since come up so formally and directly as that, at least not in my presence. And it would of course be wrong to say that’s the only reason or even the biggest reason for young folks leaving. I'm sure, though, that with retention and hiring issues currently getting a lot of attention at my workplace, it's on minds and being discussed behind closed doors.