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There are a lot of people out there with chips on their shoulders. Perhaps someone younger and more qualified took their job. Maybe they’re struggling to keep up in an evolving workplace. Who knows, maybe they had a less-than-desirable conversation with a new hire while the said new hire was making some new fandangled bulletproof coffee in the breakroom.
But no matter the circumstances, just know that there will always be a divide between the older generation and the newer generation who are just now entering the workplace. To assert their dominance, the older generation will label them “entitled” and “lazy.” It’s their way of establishing ethos and kicking the new hires while they’re already down. Unfair? Sure, but they’ve earned it, right? Eh, debatable.
Either way, this column from Entrepreneur left nothing on the table when it came to nailing every insulting take on millennials in the workplace. Let’s get right to it.
1. Work is usually work.
Worst Quote: “Work, especially entry level work, usually isn’t fun. As you dream about the nap pods of Google and the snack crammed refrigerators of the dot coms, recognize most of corporate America is not as hip or enlightened as these few outliers.”
I hate to break it to you, but no one sits at their desk constantly thinking, “I wish I were at Google right now eating an acai bowl before my morning pod nap.” Unlike the generations before us, most twenty-somethings who hate their job are crippled with student debt and trying to figure out why they struggled through four years of overpriced college to do menial tasks that they could’ve done right out of high school. The circumstances are different despite the tasks being the same – the only difference is that cloud of five-figure debt. Everyone knows start-up dream jobs like from The Intern and The Internship are just unrealistic at this point.
2. Advancement takes time.
Worst Quote: “One day, after listening to a young woman complain bitterly that she had worked at the company for over a year and still had not been promoted; I took her on a tour of “Cubeville”. Cubeville was an open-area filled with 50-some cubes where men and women approaching retirement age did engineering, accounting, purchasing, and sundry other tasks associated with business. I explained to this young malcontent that most of these people had 15 to 30 years seniority and had never been promoted.”
I love the idea of this writer with a chip on his shoulder taking a 23-year-old girl into “Cubeville” and being like, “See all these 60-year-olds? These losers have been here forever and are so beaten down by their lack of promotions that they’ve completely given up.”
That’s the type of motivation in the workplace that young people love seeing out of the older crowd. It’s truly inspiring to get your first job and be told that the rest of your life is going to suck. You middle-to-upper management guys really know how to get our wheels turning, don’t you?
3. Integrity is important.
Worst Quote: At the end of the day companies still expect a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay and ethics would seem to dictate that while at work you at least spend more time working on the things you are paid to do than you do posting on Facebook.
You know there’s a cultural divide between the writer and his targeted audience when he lectures us about sitting around at work posting on Facebook. Last time I checked, the only people who still post on Facebook are, well, people your age. Kid Rock once said, “You get what you put in, and people get what they deserve,” so yeah, you could say I understand that good work equals fair pay. But come on, man. Kids these days are Snapchatting selfies from their cubes and endlessly scrolling the Instagram discover feed.
4. Work cuts into your social time.
Worst Quote: “Work will cut into your social life. Requests to leave early because you have a concert to go to, pick up your college buddy from the airport, or for some other social engagement grow tiresome quickly and not just for your boss but also for your coworkers.”
Let the kids run, my man. It’s motivating to workers to be able to comfortably take an hour here and there without feeling all the weight of the world crumbling down on them. People are social, they’re busy, and the hour they’re taking to “pick up their college buddy from the airport” probably isn’t going to end up costing the company millions considering they’re just posting those meme things on Facebook, right? Right.
5. No job is beneath you.
Worst Quote: “I can recall a co-worker complaining that he didn’t get a Master’s degree to stuff binders as I secretly calculated the obscene amount of work I was being paid to do even though an elementary school kid could have not only done the job but most probably have done it better.”
Call me crazy, but I’m in the camp who thinks that a lot of jobs are beneath people. Workers who took four years of unpaid internships and went back to college for a graduate degree are probably too qualified to be stuffing those binders you talked about. Nevermind the fact that your company hasn’t gone paperless yet, but come on, dude. You really having someone with a Master’s degree stuffing fuckin’ binders? If that’s not a complete misuse of talent, I’m not sure what is. Whoever is that guy’s superior needs a stiff talking to and an intern from a local university to do that shit for him. This isn’t rocket science.
6. Satisfactory won’t cut it.
Worst Quote: “Don’t expect praise for C-work. There are no participation ribbons for you in corporate America and no great accolades for lukewarm performance … Oh, and as you get better, you’re boss’s expectations get higher so once you’ve finally earned that “three” [in your work review] you will have to work even harder to keep it next year.”
Not to throw stones at glass houses, but it’s pretty shitty to skewer someone’s “lukewarm performance” in your column where you misuse “your” and “you’re.” If you go to the original article, you’ll also notice that you missed a couple commas and periods in that paragraph as well. But hey, I wasn’t praising you in the first place for this c-level work so how much can I really expect? .
[via Entrepreneur]
Image via Shutterstock
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Will
Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.
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Thanks for the shit economy, boomers. You’re the dead weight at the top that can’t afford to retire thus keeping the talent from thriving. And the generation above y’all hated your hippie asses.
Finally someone said it
I work with people that are living, breathing examples that satisfactory certainly DOES cut it.
I work with living, breathing examples of living, breathing cuts it.
I basically profit close to $10k-$12k every month doing an online job. For those of you who are prepared to do easy at home jobs for 2h-5h each day at your house and earn valuable paycheck while doing it…
Go to the web:>>>>>>> MaxIncome10.Tk
Older people only hate millennials because they’re jealous that we’re young.
Wrong, older people hate millennials because the vast majority of us are selfish assholes with no spine, no character, and no substance. Having a goddamn computer in your hand at all times has made just about every privileged person a facsimile of the same bored asshole. Bored assholes are easy to hate. When you bring nothing to the table, you’re just another mook.
Someone just turned 50
Yeah, because there’s def not older people who are selfish assholes. Let’s turn a blind eye to the executives taking multimillion dollar bonuses for delegating work and then going on vacation half the year, let’s also forget about lobbyists because I know so many of them who are millennials, oh wait, no I don’t. We can gloss over all the people who bought subprime mortgages they couldn’t afford in the first place and also the people who pouched them because they were def really young in age, oh wait, still nope. Let’s talk about the asshole who yells “get off my lawn” because he’s def living in his prime, at least that asshole has a lawn to yell at people for, I have a couple of nice shirts. I’m sure all of the people involved in the Panama Papers were young and ethical business people as well. We also can’t forget the guy who cheats on his wife and divorces her for the younger woman as he abandones his family that’s def not selfish at all. I’ll look at my phone screen and pump out comments like this as I sit on the toilet in solitude because I know that at the end of the day I haven’t fucked anyone over besides myself for listening to these older fucks for half my life.
I’ve noticed some a lot of old people get very bitter and impatient in their old age. Kind of like the way youre being right now.
The people that write these articles remind me of every 50-something, middle management goober I’ve ever encountered that thinks they’re above everyone because they get their Macy’s suits tailored by their local dry cleaners.
Where am I supposed to get my suit tailored? Ummm…asking for a friend.
Usually an old Italian guy who owns his own shop.
Or an Oriental. Don’t forget them.
Who do you think runs my dry cleaners?
Touche. There are a ton of Asian-owned tailor shops in my city. Should have clarified.
Everyone knows Jos A Bank is the go to.
Jos. A. is for middle-aged, tubby, middle managers.
Fuck this guy for being mad at us for ‘stealing company time’ (I HATE that phrase). Call me as misguided as you’d like, but shouldn’t it be the manager’s job to see that workers are twiddling their thumbs, and give them more work? I don’t think it is any young person’s fault that they can get the full day’s work of three boomers done in 45 minutes just by using keyboard shortcuts and being able to type proficiently.
if you work for a public company take the time to find the proxy statement thats handed out to the shareholders during their yearly meeting and you get see all the fringe benefits the C Suite and BoD get and you further realize the level of BS the guy that wrote this article is full off for complaining about letting his employees off from work a little early sometimes.
All economic data from mid 1950s on suggested we should be working less and less due to efficiency and technological advances, and predicts that by 2030 we should be averaging 15 hrs A WEEK. too bad that since 1979 we work nearly 4 weeks longer.
This guy seems like the person who would make the “fair pay for fair work” quote, but then scathe anyone who complains about working overtime and not being compensated for it.
Salary is for suckers
My favorite is that I’m not supposed to leave a little early to pick up my friend from the airport when they come to town for a weekend, but they can drop everything for days at a time because they have kids. My plans last a weekend, their issues will come up for over 18 years!!
THIS. My co-worker will take 2-3 hour lunch breaks to take care of her ailing mom and/or go pick her kids up or get their crazy meds from the pharmacy. No one bats an eye. I need to take off an hour early for an appointment, and the entire office goes batcrap crazy.
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If someone’s been working at a job in an office for 15-30 years and haven’t been promoted, they’re either a government employee or there’s something seriously wrong with them. That’s not in any way shape or form “normal” and a “teachable moment.”
It’s teachable, just the wrong lesson. It says “go update your resume and find something with greener pastures.”
I’d quit that job on the spot, fuck that.
Nah, pretty common in engineering. If you’re making $200k on autopilot there’s often zero fucks to give over a promotion requiring more work/responsibility for a 20k/year bump that the government takes half of anyways. Twice the work for 5% pay increase, nah, fuck that, autopilot away.
Please show me how to get to this fantasy world where autopilot cubicle engineers make two hundred thousand dollars a year.
I think we’re looking more at $45-60k jobs. I don’t know too many people that would be bitter about making $200K when they’re 45.
Definitely true. We can’t get engineers out of their jobs unless we give them a severance.
These older people are proof that they need to just stay home, learn how to cook for themselves, watch re-runs of Murder She Wrote or some other shit TV show and then just go to bed for the remaining 25 years of their lives. They had everything good growing up and now they are raping our generation in every way possible. They should also stay home on voting day because they only have to live with the consequences of their misguided philosophies about life and society for a couple decades if lucky. They shouldn’t be allowed to drive cars past 5 AM, they should all be crammed in zoo like atmospheres and delegate all of their work remotely since they don’t do much at the office anymore anyway and they should be put on display to younger generations as motivation to not be like them when they grow up.
Just go all Soylent Green on them