Kids these days

I like to think I have a pretty good work ethic. I saw how hard my parents worked when I was a kid and I like to think I learned by example.
Which is why I really do not understand people who don't work that same way.
Granted, maybe you don't love your job and maybe it is not what you hope for in a long-term career sort of way. But it is your job.
You made a commitment to be there and when you are not, you can really fuck up someone else's day.
This is especially true if you work at a place that turns out a product every day. Every day that you are not there, someone else has to pick up your work and finish it.
No, I am not just rambling. Yes, I do have a specific example.

There was this young woman at my office who was basically on the level of a clerk. She was employed part time doing various work for various departments. The work itself is not particularly difficult, nor is it particularly interesting.
But it is time-consuming. And it is the type of work that, if you word it right, can sound pretty good on a resume.

So last week, Thanksgiving week, she was supposed to come in Monday to get some work done in advance in order to have Thanksgiving off.
But she didn't show.
And she didn't return repeated phone calls.
She was off Tuesday, but still no call back.
Wednesday, when she was again scheduled to work, no show and no call.
By this point her work is at a point where it cannot wait.
So guess who gets to do it?
Yeah. I was thrilled.
But that is fine. I get paid the same whether I do the challenging stuff or the mindless stuff.

Anyway...
Thursday; No show, no call.
Friday: No show, no call.
Saturday: eh... you get the idea.

By now we all have gone through the "Man, I sure hope she is OK" bit. We have called her and called her and someone even tracked down her mom's number and called her.
"No, nothing is wrong. Sorry, I don't know where she is, but she is fine."

I even checked her MySpace page to see when she last logged on. It was within a day. So she must be fine. You can't very well log on to MySpace if you are face down in a ditch someplace, right?

So we figure she just ditched the job. She had another one, so maybe it was all too much trying to work two jobs.
Or maybe by about Wednesday she figured she was fired anyway, so why come in for the reaming.

Whatever the case, I just really do not understand that mentality.
Is that just how people fresh from college think? Do they think that is OK and professional?
I know this was not her dream job, but it was work in the field of her choice at a very respected company. Maybe it was not what she wanted to do forever, but a good reference from there might carry some weight going forward.
I guess I just don't get why you would toss that away like garbage.

Who does that and feels like that is right?