Generation Y Work

Following on the habit of naming successive generations, the Y generation follows generation X and the baby boomers. Each has its own attitudes, outlook and morals. Generation Y has a problem in the workplace. The economy is good, jobs are available in a host of occupations, which would leave a generation X’rs jealous that they only had an option of one McJob or another to choose from. Generation Y members have benefited from the shortage of workers and are hired for jobs for which they have little skill and are poorly suited.

The generation born in the 1970’s have been coddled and rewarded for mediocre behaviour because while they were growing up, it was considered cruel to hurt anyone’s feelings by judging them on their merits. All were rewarded equally, leaving those with fewer skills, believing that they were just as gifted as the top of the class. It is wrong to crush self-esteem with unnecessary criticism, but as often happens in America, the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, and all criticism has become a sin. Therefore a generation has grown up and entered the workforce who believe that all work is beneath their worth, that they only are required to make a token effort, that they are not rewarded handsomely enough for their lackluster performance, and that even showing up for work is an imposition on their specialness. If they are not coddled as they expect to be, they leave, often with no notice or thought to what their sudden departure does to their colleagues. This tactic works for them as long as jobs are plentiful, but because they have no sense of history, they act as though their actions do not affect anyone else, not even the parents whose home they move back into.  Least of all, do they realize their work history will follow them.

This self-centred attitude, something that is common in the youth of any generation, will be more difficult for the Y’s to overcome, because they are a generation nurtured on the need for environmental cleanup, the rightness of anti-racism, the spread of technology, and other “One World” philosophies which are in direct opposition to their personal attitudes. These 20-somethings exclude themselves from this One World view through technological devices that don’t require eye contact, smell, touch or taste. They want to be paid well so that they can consume the products whose manufacture makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. They grew up with children of all races, but they wouldn’t marry one. In the workplace, they look out only for themselves and pursue their advancement with a self-belief that defies proof and borders on the fanatical. When they don’t get their way, they pout like spoiled children and blame everyone else for how unfairly they are treated. If they have rubbed their colleagues the wrong way, when they are criticized for their behaviour, they deny that it has anything to do with them.  It's not their fault, but that of their fossil of an old-school boss who doesn’t understand them. What they need to learn is that the world is not their indulgent mother, that it has no great love for them, and that, alongside the mass of humanity on this earth, they are nothing more than another grain of sand. There are others who are willing and adaptable and can easily take their place.

It has been said that the workplace needs the technological skills of Generation Y, since they are the only ones who understand the rapid advances in this field. This is an insult to any person with normal intelligence. Nobody in any situation needs to be at the mercy of a petty tyrant like this, who believes that only he has special powers and cannot be replaced. Technological skills are easy to acquire.  Children can learn them, and so can adults of any age. Generation Y makes the fatal error of believing that they are unique and have some secret knowledge which gives them power and superiority, but in truth, their special status is based on an illusion.

Generation Y, like all other generations before them, will grow out of their bubble, and it will take very little for that to happen.  A few eye-opening realities will come along for which they have no coping skills.  It could be a world economic downturn, or a little more experience of how the rest of the earth’s population survives, for them to wake up from their coddled existence. The great leveller, of course, is time, and in a few short years, they will be forced to deal with their own children, who will ridicule everything that they, as Generation Y, believed. Their arrogance will come back to bite them.