The Village BBS
General Category => General => Topic started by: jtslade on August 20, 2017, 08:59:12 AM
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Great article.. my favorite excerpt. No offense to Millennials...
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/08/why-generation-x-might-be-our-last-best-hope
....The members of the in-between generation (X) have moved through life squeezed fore and aft, with these tremendous populations pressing on either side, demanding we grow up and move away, or grow old and die—get out, delete your account, kill yourself. But it’s become clear to me that if this nation has any chance of survival, of carrying its traditions deep into the 21st century, it will in no small part depend on members of my generation, Generation X, the last Americans schooled in the old manner, the last Americans that know how to fold a newspaper, take a joke, and listen to a dirty story without losing their minds.
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GenX (my generation as well) feels a bit cheated, I think, because growing up our grandparents (WWII/Greatest Generation) still controlled politics, and our parents generation (Boomers) controlled pop culture for an inordinately long time. Now the Millennials (born 1980-2000) are adults and seem to have already snatched much of pop culture away from us.
I think they're in for an unwelcome shock though, because the generation after Millennials (2000-2020, give or take - no nickname for that generation has stuck yet) is just now becoming adults - and they're gonna want theirs too. Gonna be a lot of Millennials who worked as unpaid interns for years, only to finally get a paying position, and then be replaced by another unpaid intern from the generation younger than them.
Politicians are pretty much going to have to be Gen X for a while, because the Boomers are aging out and the Millennials are still too young to be trusted by most.
Some of the complaints about Millennials really do seem to be widely true as well - I've got a lot of co-workers who disappear in the bathroom multiple times a day with their phones for 15+ minute breaks they're not entitled to. Learn to look busy at your desk dammit - quite possibly the single most important job skill for any white-collar position - you can't make it so obvious when you're just killing time.
I've also had arguments with several younger people, trying to explain that no company is ever going to find taking 1 sick day every single month acceptable. Not all individuals are like that of course, but many of that age do seem to be.