Why Millennials are Nicer than Boomers

[pbrower2a]

(08-03-2019, 11:45 PM)taramarie Wrote: Well I can only speak from experience here. I have worked at a few boomer led companies and three millennial led companies and my mother also is a boomer. The boomer led companies were all about treating their lower rung employees as "replaceable" as they literally had said. Very cut throat and one boomer literally had me in tears when ripping into me, not listening to what was going on. I was being trained and they were expecting me to read minds when not properly given tasks to do. I was bored and told them I am not about to fake work and give me something to do. Instead I was ripped into and to stop crying and wipe my face before going back to work. Another boomer run company literally had said we are expendable as if we don't matter at all. We are to be used. After this I ended up working for people around my age as I could not stand the ill treatment from my parents generation. The difference was vast. It was not rung climbing, but we are all equals and we were all treated with respect and valued as not only individuals but as a team.

Old enough to remember the GI Generation as bosses -- I can state with little qualification that the GI bosses were better. But there was far more social mobility among the GI Generation than among Boomers, and many of the GI generation who became bosses remembered when they were economic outcasts and especially being soldiers who had to master teamwork just to survive.  Boomer bosses created cliques, and not teams.

Quote:A real emphasis on positive reinforcement, not about use and abuse, we were valued for our skills and what we can contribute and we were all heard. Before I snapped my ankle in half I was quite enjoying working for a millennial run company where I feel I fit in nicely. I don't think I could go back to working for a boomer run company after the nasty treatment I have received. That is no way to treat people. My mother with regards to bad service she is very notorious for ruffling feathers over it and she will literally scream about it. I am a millennial and I just sit and quietly listen to her about it and I just cant stand the bad vibe you know?

I do not know if it so applies to New Zealand as in America, but Boomers born into the middle because Daddy was a veteran and got to get a degree on the GI Bill often were born on third base and thought they had hit a triple.  (Sorry about the reference to baseball which may be alien to New Zealand, but a baseball diamond has four corners called bases, a single is a ball that one hits in such a way that one can reach the first base but no farther before the ball that drops can be thrown to first base... a double allows one to reach second base, a triple allows one to reach the third base, and a four-base hit (home run -- it is never called a "quadruple") is usually hit fair out of the field of play and allows one to run or trot around the bases without being put out. A triple is ironically the most difficult hit because it usually requires a very long hit inside the field of play that allows one to run three bases, and that opportunity is rare).

I come to the realization that although many of us saw the GI generation in the middle-to-late parts of their lives, none of us can remember what early life was for them. Life for a GI child could be hardscrabble in ways that even today's poor people cannot comprehend. The primitive technology of their time was the least of their problems. Many lived on subsistence farms, and they had to subordinate the delights that many of us take for granted to farm chores. Before the Great Depression, many ended their schooling after eight years instead of twelve so that they could get an early, ill-paid start in industrial work or commerce by age fourteen. Not only blacks and Hispanics who long got the shaft (and in some cases still do), but also people not of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) origin were born into the underclass. In many cases such people got to prove themselves in the Armed Services in the ultimate crucible that proved failure or competence -- World War II. If one made rank in the war potential employers did not care that you surname was "Sullivan", "Rossi" or "Kowalski".

Quote:In the same situation if I get bad service if its really bad I inform those I know on fb to beware of a certain company and tag in my friends so they all know. I cant think of any situation where I have actually screamed like that to a company for bad service. I tell my boyfriend who is a fellow millennial (we are moving into our first house together) to just call a company and talk to them to encourage them to come finish a job on the house and what happened that was not done very well. But we don't carry on the way my mother does or any boomer bosses I have had. They seem to like the sound of their own voice. I rather a more calm approach to get things done and to try treat people who are doing a job with respect and hopefully get the same treatment. But when working with boomers from my experience, not so much, but when around people of my own cohort, the experience is far more welcoming. Same can be said from seeing how my mother carries on if she is unsatisfied she cant wait to rip into someone to get what she wants. My mother used to do this with former bosses of mine before I told her to kindly stay out of it. I asked her one time do you love a good fight? She said oh yes and then went on a rant as to why it is justified to treat a company or person or people as if they deserved it. It just isn't my approach and I don't think it is necessary. I am unsure if this sort of thing makes my generation nicer, but my generation as a whole has had a different life experience and a different way of being raised. Perhaps boomers are more entitled as a whole or they learned early on to be loud to get what they want as they seem to as a whole be crusaders for their ideals.

Some people have the attitude "I've got mine -- $crew you" whenever they perceive that you can do nothing about the situation.

Quote:I am going to have to think on this one. But it seems like a live up to my standard attitude whereas my generation from my experience seems to be more about working together and learned to be more understanding of situations for those on lower rungs in the work force. We also have had less of a good start in life by comparison so it may make us more compassionate. The examples with boomer and millie companies I think is a very good example of how leaders in the companies view how to treat those just starting out. It really is interesting and would be good to see if my experience is not a good example of how it is out there. I hope that my experience isn't the status quo and I just had a run in with some awful boomer led companies.

Advanced formal education (college degrees) became more necessary for avoiding jobs that damn one to poverty, less certain in achieving that end, and far more expensive in real terms than it used to be. But take heart. As with other Civic generations, the Millennial Generation has good habits and is likely to succeed at more things than other sorts of generations. Yours can sacrifice hierarchy for efficiency, a healthy trait. Boom elites have been excellent at building exclusive hierarchies  in existing organizations -- hierarchies that create no tangible good but do so at great cost. Organizations with such hierarchies will need to divest themselves of those hierarchies in the acid test of another Great Depression or fail catastrophically.