I HATE the Millenial Generation
This morning and last week Morning Edition on NPR ran employment segments about the “Millenials” who are entering the work place. The segment last week was infuriating and this one just reminded me of how pissed off I was last Wednesday morning.
Apparently these people need lots of rewards, encouragement, and general hand-holding by their supervisors. If they don’t feel their contributions are recognized and values, then they’ll leave in search of a more rewarding position.
From the NPR website:
“Companies are hiring consultants to help manage the “over-praised” Me Generation. The result? Kudos for showing up to work on time! Awards for getting a report in! Forget Employee of the Month — how about Employee of the Day! Some managers are resistant, saying the only praise they ever got was a paycheck.”
These are the same children who were raised by “Helicopter parents.” Their every whims are catered to, their self-esteem is constantly being boosted by their parents, and adversity… well, they don’t have any because their parents make sure they don’t have any.
Now I’m not saying the entirety of people born after 1980 are a bunch of self-centered whiners who need to be coddled. I’m sure there are millions of hard working early 20-somethings that are normal human beings who don’t need a call from mommy or daddy every day to make it through the day.
All the same, if I ever find myself as a hiring manager again, I’d sure go out of my way to weed out the people who sound like that reporter.
I am shocked...
I am generally shocked by the behavior I hear about from my friends in the corporate world. People seem to feel entitled to choose whether or not to show up on time and whether or not to carry out their assigned tasks, and this is becoming ACCEPTED behavior. I guess I have some sort of moral compass that prevents me from behaving like that (my family raised me well). I look at this and think about all of the hard working individuals who are looking for work, and I can’t believe people are being rewarded for doing the minimum. I think they should be fired for doing less, but apparently there are people in positions of power that need to grow spines.