Interns fired en masse for protesting dress code — Page 5

To be fair, the world is a different place today. Growing up in the 60's, we said good bye to our mothers at 9 AM on a summer morning, hopped on our bikes and weren't heard from until we crashed home for lunch (if we didn't buy a slice somewhere or ate at a friends house). We really weren't expected to be seen again until summoned for dinner (each father had his own whistle or if he couldn't whistle a triangle). There were no cell phones or computer games. Hell, we weren't allowed to bring calculators to school, only slide rulers.

If we failed a class, it was OUR Ass and not blamed on the teachers as it is today. I am sure if you looked beyond the dumb Common Core teachers required to teach, you would find them just as dedicated to their jobs today asthey were back then, always struggling with not enough money for supplies or salary for the job they do. What is different is that the responsibility for Billy getting a good grade has switched from Billy applying himself to something the teacher must be doing wrong. Awards were given to those who worked hard and earned them and not just for showing up. We were told to try our hardest, that we might not be special but work was expected of us.

Because the world is a more dangerous place, parents have become Helicopter Parents. Little Billy is unique and special. I remeber in very end sixth Grade my Grammar School switched to the Pass Fail system instead of normal grading. Boy did I feel rooked! Why work so hard if you were only to get a P or an F!

I guess what I am trying to say is, Millenials themselves are not completely to blame. Changes in Parenting attitudes and Teaching play a big role in the way they learn to handle things. These Interns wanted their opinions heard, where I was taught, until you earned the privilege to voice an opinion , you kept quietand buckled down to athourity. Every generation goes through the period from High School to College where they have all the answers. I know I went through that! It takes experience and hard knocks to suddenly realize just how much you don't know.

Yes, just as it's not helpful to trivialize the issues of the Millennials (and, ahem, us GenXers), it's not helpful to ignore all the chaos that the Boomers went though. Yes, post-WWII, the world experienced an economic boom, the likes of which (in spite of all Donald Trump is promising) we'll probably never see again. A confluence of factors brought that about, but it ended by the 1970s during the oil crisis.

Likewise, the so-called Greatest Generation may have done an admirable job navigating the Great Depression and WWII, but they were often terrible and abusive parents. Leave It to Beaver and I Love Lucy didn't quite capture the PTSD (which the medical system hadn't quite know what to do with, beside perhaps a transorbital lobotomy, tranquilizers, or shock treatments available at the time), rampant alcoholism among the men returning home from war, and the depression that came to be commonplace the 1950s housewife. The first antidepressants became available during this time. Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Betty Friedan were among this generation. So was Joseph McCarthy. Philip Larkin was, too, and he wrote the famous lines in "This be the Verse": "They **** you up, your mum and dad/They may not mean to, but they do/They fill you with the faults they had/And add some extra, just for you."

So, every generation has its grievances with its parents and with its successors. But it's never helpful to perpetuate the cycle.

Updated On: 7/4/16 at 10:35 AM

sally, didn't you know that respect is the word given to the wrongdoer, not the victim of their crime.

Millennials....GET OFF MY LAWN!

How's the altitude on that horse?

More on entitlement: Talking specifically about the workplace, I can't stand unwarranted entitlement. If someone does not have the requisite skills, or if the organisation does simply not have the business need, I don't believe they should expect or deserve that position, that salary or that promotion. But I am not convinced that unwarranted entitlement is largely confined to one particular generation. Perhaps people just find it ESPECIALLY annoying when it's a younger person, but I can see it everywhere. E.g., I have seen older non-university educated nursing staff complaining about younger university-educated staff because they are given more responsibilities due to their education/training - those older people are not entitled to anything simply because of their age. If they want the same responsibilities, they should seek out further education. I have seen older people mask poor technical skills behind age and 'experience' that also seem to feel entitled for roles and levels of responsibility that they aren't equipped to deal with (and indeed, unfortunately it hasn't ended well for them because of it). I feel like if the roles were reversed and these were 'millennials' complaining people would find it especially annoying. I'm just not convinced there are as larger differences between generations as people claim there are. It doesn't matter what age you are, most people want to get paid more, and most people want greater responsibility/promotions/skills.

Horse Tears, your entire accusatory post to me is based on your assumption that this rude couple was white. You have no idea what they were now, do you? You don't because I never mentioned it. And you won't know. My complaint was about the age group of these people. Race is on YOUR mind, not mine.

I don't appreciate what you implied about me. I think you have a lot of nerve making those assumptions about me and I resent it.

Yes, I know you said it was hypothetical but you did say this - "why is it more acceptable for you to make these sweeping pronouncements about the largest generation of people in the US based upon a couple of anecdotal incidents? "

I resent that, Mr./Ms Millennial, because that's NOT WHAT I DID.

You know what really bothers me about posts like SNAFU's, fondly recalling their childhood in the 60s while bemoaning what happened when parenting millennials? If a baby boomer is a parent, their child is most likely a millennial. (In fact, millennials are called echo boomers.) So you know who allegedly screwed up parenting? The people who apparently had such a perfect childhood that they chose not to replicate their parents' parenting styles when raising their own children.

I'm shocked.



[insert Liz Lemon eyeroll GIF because, yes, all we darn millennials can do is post memes]

"So you know who allegedly screwed up parenting? The people who apparently had such a perfect childhood that they chose not to replicate their parents' parenting styles when raising their own children."

Oh boy...givesmevoice has alluded to the elephant in the room...boomer parenting styles. Having grown up in the god-fearing Old South I'm comfortable suggesting that most Millenials would be disturbed by the childhoods of my fellow Boomers and me in that context. Corporal punishment ruled the day. In short, parents (and school teachers) were still beating their kids' (and students' azzes right and left. Parents were the absolute authority in their kids lives as long as they all lived under the same roof. And they did NOT drug their kids to deal with behavioral issues including attention disorders. A paddle, belt, switch, ruler, or fist was the Greatest Generation's answer to disciplinary problems in my childhood household as well as throughout the neighborhood. If that was not your experience, then consider yourself lucky, fellow Boomer.

In the mid-70's, the American Psychological Association made a pronouncement decrying the use of corporal punishment in schools, juvenile detention centers, and anywhere else children were temporary wards of the state. See APA on Corporal Punishment.

Most Boomer parents with whom I'm acquainted, even in my family, were always slightly fearful of having charges of child abuse brought against them by a school official if Johnnie showed up to school with a welt from a belt. Between liberal lawmakers rushing to enact new laws in response to the APA pronouncement and liberal talk show hosts publicly shaming parents who still put heat to the seat, many Boomers opted for time-out and other forms of behavior management with respect to their children, including the drugs.

Growing up in the Old South, I'm also comfortable suggesting that forced desegregation of public schools throughout the south played a huge part in the public's changing attitude toward corporal punishment. I started public school in NC in 1970 the same year the state's public schools were desegregated thanks to a federal court order. It was NOT a smooth process. The aftermath created such tension that local townspeople were openly saying that "none of those teachers from another flock had better put a hand on my child". My experience was similar to that of countless similarly-aged family members throughout the region so I wouldn't dismiss this as purely anecdotal. It helps to have lived through the era.

Those of us old enough clearly remember the 60's for what they were, a toxic brew of bad race relations, the pestilence known as the Vietnam War, and the assassinations of a sitting US President, his Senator brother, and the nation's most prominent civil rights leader. Similarly, we vividly recall the 70's as the era marked by many women in the USA claiming their personal sovereignty at long last, some very bold souls that carried the G & L in LGBTQ willing to say "enough" to hate-mongers, Watergate that forced a sitting President to vacate the office, and the god-awful intractable Cold War that would give rise to the Reaganites of the nation.

I don't mean to discount the struggle & concerns of Millenials, but to me, some of it is in your heads; the rest is not really that novel. Many Boomers like me bore the yolk of student loans and crawled before we were able to walk metaphorically speaking. You didn't endure lynchings, bombings, routine police brutality, and kangaroo courts for being black (or brown), or back-room abortions or beatings at the hands of your husbands (or divorce papers) for embracing the Women's Liberation Movement, or Stonewall, routine bashings for appearing LGBTQ or the first wave of HIV/AIDS. And because corporal punishment was very passe when you Millenials hit the scene, it's now unconscionable that any human should ever lay a hand upon you for any reason whatsoever, even in the streets here in the States. However, reality is sometimes different than what we've been conditioned to believe.

Updated On: 7/5/16 at 10:23 PM

After a thorough study of this thread, the Council of Generational Matters is ready to issue a ruling.



While qolbinau is a terrible reflection of her generation (we'd like to see credentials attesting to her education and level of success), we have still ruled overwhelming in favor of the Millennials. The Boomers, as they have for decades now, have overwhelmingly proven themselves to be the absolute worst. Take comfort, Millennials and Generation X, and just know that - despite their denial - the Boomers will not live forever. It just seems that way.



This ruling is final.

Givesmevoice, my parents were not Boomers. I was born in the late 50's. It is my generation that is the cause of the shift in parenting. Yes, it is my fellow Boomers who raised the first Millennials, or the later Millennials parents. The shift did occur under our watch. It doesn't mean the shift is any more real or apparent. Some changes are for the good. No longer can you beat the crap out of your kid in public without the fear of Child Services paying a call. Before then, that was considered parenting. Some results are rather upsetting, the entitlement and feeling that everyone deserves a prize.