Posted: 7/3/16 at 7:32pm
I was going to respond further to this thread, but what the ****, instead, I'd like to announce that MikeInTheDistrict is now my official spokesperson.
Posted: 7/3/16 at 7:58pm
Updated On: 7/3/16 at 07:58 PM
Posted: 7/3/16 at 8:05pm
mike said "Most of us would find generalizing people based on their race/ethnicity or their gender or sexual orientation distasteful. Certainly, plenty of people do so. Many of us have the misfortune of being friends or family with people who will latch onto every article on, say, crimes committed by blacks or Muslims as opportunities to level categorical judgments on people in those categories.
Of course you realize I have not done that at all, so I do not take that part of your post to be aimed at me.
"Why is, then, permissible to label people "self-entitled brats" based on the year in which they were born? We don't choose our age any more than we do our race or sexual orientation."
Because I don't equate the two parts of your statement. I have no idea why a certain faction of population behaves the way it does. I have no idea exactly when it started nor why.
p.s. Mike - You don't choose your age, race, or sexual orientation but you certainly choose the way you behave.
Updated On: 7/3/16 at 08:05 PM
Posted: 7/3/16 at 8:39pm
Jane2 said: p.s. Mike - You don't choose your age, race, or sexual orientation but you certainly choose the way you behave.
That is my point. Millennials are a varied lot composed of many individuals with many different upbringings, educations, personalities, values, life goals, etc. There are some trends, but the majority I know in person act no better or worse than any generation before them, and don't deserve the a priori scorn thrown their way. This particular generational strife seems mostly a media-manufactured circlejerk.
Updated On: 7/3/16 at 08:39 PM
Posted: 7/3/16 at 8:51pm
Well, I can't speak for anyone but myself, and my opinions are based on personal experience, not media.
Posted: 7/3/16 at 9:43pm
That's the only kind any company does anymore.
Not true PalJoey, company's just disguise it as "educational experience" and for credit
group of people who are not even employees of a company
They are employees of the company Jane.
Posted: 7/3/16 at 9:54pm
^ whatever. I'm over this.
Posted: 7/3/16 at 9:57pm
Jane2 said: "^ whatever. I'm over this.
Ok. Fine. Doesn't take back the rather ignorant things you've said but fine.
Posted: 7/3/16 at 10:12pm
whatever Beads.
Posted: 7/3/16 at 10:59pm
Platypus said: "3. " I have never had a job before (I’ve always focused on school)"- The last time I checked, the school year is about 10 months long in high school and 8 months long in university. Did you also need 2-4 summer months of doing nothing/partying/socializing to focus on school? This is a very special kind of Millennial. I went to private school, surrounded by upper class and upper-middle class kids, and I don't think I've ever encountered a single person who made it through university without working a single job. My parents were very generous when it came to helping me pay for school, and they did want me to be able to focus on school rather than my finances, but the financial assistance always came with expectation that I would work in the summer to earn some extra cash. I'm amazed that this person was even able to get an internship with zero work experience. In my field, internships were so competitive that you worked your way through school even if you didn't need to, just to have experience to list on your resume. I worked 2 jobs along with 2 volunteer positions during my last year in undergrad, both for the experience and the money."
How do you know the LW wasn't taking extra classes in the summer? How do you know that they were spending those summer months partying and socializing? Like, is your complaint here really that this person didn't have a job before this internship/that their first job wasn't early enough in their life to not be deemed lazy and entitled?
I do know people whose parents didn't let them get jobs because they, yes, wanted them to focus solely on school. You don't know what this person's situation was before this internship.
Posted: 7/3/16 at 11:08pm
^ whatever. I'm over this.
Its hard being wrong.
Posted: 7/3/16 at 11:37pm
"Yes, the interns in this case acted like unconscionable dumbasses."
Well folks...I believe we have a consensus. With that, I'll dispense with my can of bash-some-millenials-today.
If I may be serious for a moment, I do find myself guilty of conflating the issue of unpaid internships with corporate dress code policy compliance. I think that unpaid internships suck ergo my admission to giving them a resounding hell-to-the-no back in the late 80's. At this point in my career, I'm more casual than business and would have a hard time signing a contract with a firm that attempted to compel me to show up looking like a clone of one of the VP's. Thank goodness gone are the days in which I have to mimic the aesthetics of corporate overlords down to tie patterns and choice of wingtips.
This next bit is going to land me on the outs with a few fellow Boomers. But, I sense that many of us are slightly jealous of millennials, especially those of who bookend the generation around 1964 and were never really part of the Reagan/GOP-hating counter-culture. My mom is a Boomer at the other end. Many of my friends and I do NOT like being lumped with our parents for a number of reasons. My clique and I toed the line after reading several tomes on how to win at office politics and Sun Tzu's Art of War before graduation.
As an undergrad, there were no social media outlets enabling us to rally around one another. The reason I cited episodes of the popular series All in the Family was to provide some perspective. Political correctness was still in its infancy so the prevailing sentiment back then toward women & underrepresented communities in certain industries was "f*ck your feelings". Upon entering the workforce post-graduation, we resented the system but we didn't buck it.
Entitlement is not something I've ever felt entitled to for a number of reasons. I've always done whatever was necessary and legal to get me from point A to point B, without chronicling it for all the world to see via a blog or a post at bww, ordinarily. That said, I realize that my personal narrative is likely much different than that of most millennials here for reasons beyond the age differential.
We're going to have to find a bit of common ground somewhere. We Boomers are poised arguably to become either the nation's salvation or the biggest drain on the economy in 15 years or so according to several accounts.
Fire away fellow Boomers!
Updated On: 7/4/16 at 11:37 PM
Posted: 7/4/16 at 5:43am
Quick reminder that Baby boomers sapped up the planet's ecological resources – leaving young people the only ones who care that our planet is dying because we are the only ones who have to deal with it.
Baby boomers are the ones who elected Reagan into office, who cut welfare programs to make being economically disadvantaged more frightening than ever.
Baby boomers could afford to go to college while working a part-time job at minimum wage. Now, you would have to work a full time job plus an extra part time job at minimum wage to pay for college. Additionally, college is more competitive than ever. How many AP classes did you take in high school? I took three last year (and I'm on the lower end of the spectrum) and it is unlikely that I could ever get in to a college. that most would consider "decent".
Generation Z grew up during times of war and economic ruin. In a few years, there will be high school students who have never lived during peacetime.
Baby boomers were the ones who got divorces at record rates, leaving millennials with mental illnesses at record rates. Seriously, how many of you can name at least half a dozen people who you were friends with during high school who have attempted suicide? I can.
Millennials are pushing for social justice in ways that baby boomers never even considered, and are desperately trying to clean up a planet that was a mess when we got here, all while being criticized for being lazy by the very generation that screwed it up for us.
Not saying everybody is necessarily at fault, but come on, understand that we are a generation plagued by instability and fear, not by the stability of the '50s and '60s.
And, to baby boomers, when you were growing up did your parents encourage you or tell you that you were a corrupt generation?
Because....
If your parents encouraged you, then you're the generation that can't understand that the world moves on beyond you and has no concept that young people are going to be different than old people, unlike your own parents.
Or....
If your parents criticized you, then you are merely participating in a cyclical structure by which the older generation always criticizes the younger generation. Do you believe that you are worse than your parents? Of course you don't. In this instance, you are just upset that you are not longer relevant.
Either case, you are the ones at fault.
Updated On: 7/4/16 at 05:43 AM
Posted: 7/4/16 at 6:03am
Yes, because EVERYTHING was so stable in the 60's and early 70's! There was no Viet Nam or draft. Young men weren't sent to war right after High School to die in the jungle. SMH.
Posted: 7/4/16 at 6:05am
Apologies. Economic stability.
Posted: 7/4/16 at 6:30am
During peacetime our economy doesn't do well. Ask Jimmy Carter about the Great Recession he inherited.
Posted: 7/4/16 at 6:53am
I was more talking about the '60s, but fine. You're right and my entire post is completely irrelevant and I'm wrong and lazy.
Should have known that actually trying to get a point across would be pointless.
Posted: 7/4/16 at 7:03am
No, I am merely pointing out your gross generalizations. You portraying your generation as victimized or put upon by the older generations (Boomers, Me, X, Y, etc) crying "Oh poor us!" is sort of playing into Millennialism, no?
Posted: 7/4/16 at 7:14am
College should be competitive, at least to get into the good ones. We shouldn't be getting a trophy for just showing up. I went to college in the early 70's and many of my classmates had full time jobs to pay their way through. The money we didn't get from our jobs was taken out in student loans (which by the way, I FINALLY paid off about 8 years ago). It was not a cakewalk as you portray it to be.
Updated On: 7/4/16 at 07:14 AM
Posted: 7/4/16 at 8:00am
SNAFU said: "No, I am merely pointing out your gross generalizations. You portraying your generation as victimized or put upon by the older generations (Boomers, Me, X, Y, etc) crying "Oh poor us!" is sort of playing into Millennialism, no?
"
No, my general point is that every generation has its own problems and will continue to have problems, and trivializing what every generation goes through is ineffective. I would never say that the Vietnam War or the AIDS crisis was a trivial problem, so why should mental health or economic crisis be ignored?
And my point about higher education was that it is getting more expensive, not that it was inexpensive, which is actually true.
Alright, I'm officially wrapping up my discussion about this, mostly because I find that it is like talking to a brick wall, and really frustrating for myself.
Posted: 7/4/16 at 8:45am
ok...I just fired up my time machine. Please join me on a lightning round tour of the 1960s.
1960 - The late US Senator Jesse Helms launched his career as executive VP and commentator with the Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC) in Raleigh, NC. He often referred to the nearby University of North Carolina (UNC-Chapel Hill) on-air as the "University of Negroes and Communists". Helms would go on to become the longest serving US Senator from the state of NC in history. He would also play a pivotal role in the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan years later.
October 14 - 28, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
June 10, 1963: President John F. Kennedy federalized and dispatched National Guard troops to the University of Alabama to force desegregation.
June 12, 1963 KKK-organized murder of NAACP organizer Medgar Evans
September 16, 1963 KKK-organized bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama
November 22, 1963: Assassination of US President John F. Kennedy
July 16-22, 1964: Harlem Riots
August 28-30, 1964: Philadelphia Riots
February 19, 1965: Assassination of Malcom X
August 11, 1965: Watts Riots
July 5, 1966: Hough Riots
July 12, 1967: Newark Riots
April 4, 1968: Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 4, 1968: Baltimore riot I
June 6, 1968: Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy
August 20, 1968: Warsaw Invasion of Czechoslovakia
June 1969: Stonewall riots
Note: I financed my undergraduate education at a "public state university" by a combination of gifts from my parents and other relatives, student loans, and a part-time job during school terms way back in the 1980s. Fortunately, a company in a neighboring city hired me for 2 summer tours in its Engineer-in-Training program. According to my dad, the company's headquarters exported most of the local jobs overseas and shuttered the plant a decade after I graduated.
Updated On: 7/4/16 at 08:45 AM
Posted: 7/4/16 at 9:01am
"Its hard being wrong."
I'll take your word for it, I wouldn't know, lol.
Seriously, one thing you have to look forward to when you get old - you no longer care what anyone thinks of you. If you're lucky enough to be secure and have high self esteem. Lots of luck!
Posted: 7/4/16 at 9:08am
"Alright, I'm officially wrapping up my discussion about this, mostly because I find that it is like talking to a brick wall, and really frustrating for myself."
And we know how Millenials can't deal with being frustrated. 
Posted: 7/4/16 at 9:24am
Don't get discouraged, Fantod. Where there's a will, there's a way.
Posted: 7/4/16 at 9:38am
Just thought of an anecdote from yesterday. I'm coming back from the shore, toting my heavy luggage. In Penn Station. I get to that short flight of stairs on my way to the subway. People tend to sit on those steps, because they want to. I need to hold on to the rail in order to schlep my luggage up the stairs. I come across an older man in my way. He sees I'm having trouble and quickly moves to let me pass. I then come across a millennial couple. They don't move. I say "please move, these aren't seats." They don't move and tell me to go around them, where there's no rail. I say "I need to hold on to the rail." They don't move. I then say louder, "move." The girl says to me "respect" as she finally moves. I guess they felt entitled to sit on the steps. I guess she felt like I should respect her for sitting on the step and refusing to let me pass. The rules are for someone else, not them.
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