Kids Today

At the office, you hear it all the time. Kids today. They don’t work as hard. They’ve got different priorities. They’re not as hungry. They’re a bunch of slackers. You know, kids today.

It’s all true. Well, pretty much all of it. Kids today don’t work as hard. They do have different priorities. Their plump faces show no signs of hunger. And many are slackers, at least when compared with their hard-charging elders.

Most of my older colleagues have a hard time accepting this. Something about kids today really gets under their skin.

These oldsters are the last generation with any direct connection to the Great Depression. They didn’t struggle through it, but their parents did. Their parents won that struggle, achieving unprecedented prosperity for themselves and their children, but they never took it for granted, never forgot the wolf at the door. Somehow they transmitted this to their kids, this sense that you had to work hard to get it and harder to keep it. Some say this is the source of today’s generation gap.

That might be true. My theory, which may only be a sub-theory of the Great Depression theory, is that when today’s oldsters were young, they led this massive rebellion against their parents. In order to change the world, they had to take it over. That was hard work, all that demonstrating and politicking and sitting in and turning on, but they had a purpose, so they soldiered on. They didn’t struggle to survive, like their parents, they struggled to change.

And they won, changing the world and making it safe for kids today. Is it any wonder they don’t struggle? I mean, what would they struggle for? Or struggle against? Kids today have it so good that even they can see it. Their world certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly good enough, so why bother?

And that’s what bothers the oldsters, I think, this innate indolence. It’s insolent.

The other day I caught myself referring to kids today, so I guess that makes me an oldster. I remember the first time I interviewed one of these kids today for a job, and was treated to a 30 minute dissertation of what the candidate needed in order to fulfill himself, as opposed to what we needed to fill the job. That irritated me. Or the reviews I’ve given to kids today that quickly flipped from our review of them to their review of us. I resisted initially, but now I’ve learned to nod my head periodically, a carefully-cultivated concerned encouraging non-threatening look frozen on my face, waiting for my chance to slip the review in edgewise. Umm, that’s great, your career goals and personal growth and all that, but do you think you could start showing up on time?

Sure, there are some kids today with a burning ambition, a fire in the belly, a need to win the game, but not that many. Most are too smart for that. They’ve learned that working hard just attracts more work. Promotions just mean more responsibility. After a certain point, more money just means they own you. You only get one life, and you’re not taking it with you, so don’t worry, be happy.

Back in the Dickensian sweatshop days, the lower classes worked six days, fifty-two weeks, no time for vacation or sick days, clocking over 3,000 hours each year on their grueling back-breaking jobs. Now they’ve graduated into dead-end Dilbertian middle-class jobs of 1,800 hours a year sitting in air conditioned comfort in gleaming mirrored office parks while surfing the internet and bemoaning the pointless emptiness of it all. What’s interesting is that today’s upper classes – the top managers, the highly-paid professionals, the small business owners and other strivers – still work sweatshop hours.

Who won that struggle?

So when I hear them complain about kids today, I have to agree with what they say, but unlike them, I can’t imagine kids today doing it any other way.