I came across this over on Quora as an answer to someone’s question and it’s so misguided that I just knew I had to respond. The question is, why are modern people so emotionally fragile. This doesn’t quite answer the question but we can see where it goes.Let’s deal with Millennials. This is the generation who cannot get jobs even if they go to college. The ones who work 12 hour days to be able to afford renting a room, if they are lucky enough to afford to live on their own. At lot of them work six days a week, often more than one job. Or they start their own businesses.
Here’s the real problem, and I agree, this isn’t all their fault, although it is the fault of their parents. Back when I was growing up, absolutely everyone had a job when they were 16 and a lot of people did before that. It taught you how to be employable and since kids were living at home, they didn’t have a lot of expenses and they didn’t need a lot of money. That’s really how it still ought to be. However, fewer and fewer kids in the last couple of decades were willing to take low-wage jobs. Their parents were going to hand over money and they didn’t have to earn their own. This is where the problem started. It was a lack of parental-motivated personal responsibility. So employers started to look elsewhere for their low-wage workers. It wasn’t hard, there were plenty of adults, people who didn’t have restrictions on how long they could work. They had young adults and old, retired people to fill the ranks and they were happy. I will agree that this is a problem, but the millennials are not without blame.
If they go to university, they graduate with $100K student debt. And still cannot get a job. I graduated college owing $1500 and I thought that was backbreaking until I found out the student loan payments would be $28/month. I paid the loan off in six months. How times have changed!
The problem is, a lot of millennials have horribly unrealistic expectations. They think coming out of college with a piece of paper ought to give them a six-figure salary and that’s not how it works. Sure, they might be educated in some things, but the overwhelming majority of them these days have never had a job in their lives. They don’t know the basics and they think they get to leapfrog over everyone else because they have that paper.
They are wrong.
Had these people actually worked a part time job through college, they wouldn’t be in the situation they’re in. They would have learned the basics they needed to learn, they would have established themselves with a company and been in a position to move up once opportunities they were qualified for arose. Where they get it all wrong is thinking that they deserve to work when they deserve nothing of the sort. They have to earn it and by the time they’re out of college with a degree and zero life experience, they need a better job than they’re qualified for. The whole thing here is qualifications and having earned your place. Modern millennials simply haven’t done that.
Are many Millennials immature and stupid? Yes. So were we at their age. It is called being normal and mature for their age.
No, it’s not. If you compare modern kids to people of the same age in generations past, they are nowhere near as mature as we were. People 30 years ago, by the time they got into their mid-20s, they were married, often had kids, had a house of their own and a stable career. Even for people who were just getting out of college with a degree, they’d put in the time and effort to make something of themselves other than “I’ve got a degree!” Big deal. Everyone does. What makes you special? Absolutely nothing.
We live in a world where so many people are being coddled by helicopter parents who just open their wallets and hand out cash like it’s going out of style. These millennials don’t know what maturity is. Watch the news. Thousands of them take to the streets for “social causes” instead of going and getting a job. That’s absurd immaturity on display.
They fought in WWII on the front lines but cannot handle purple hair.
You want to know why? Because that’s a sign of immaturity. There was a time in most “professional” employers in the country that if you had a visible tattoo, you wouldn’t be hired. If you had walked in with blue hair or a half-shaved head or a ring in your nose, they wouldn’t even interview you. You’ve already proven that you don’t fit in with their corporate image. They are doing business with people in suits who have expectations and if you can’t impress the clientele, they don’t need you. There is this bizarre belief these days that “I want it so you’d better give it to me!” and that’s not remotely true. You don’t deserve a job. You have to earn it.
Thereafter he goes into stories about immature cable customers and I don’t know that those need to be directly responded to, except to say that a lot of people need to grow the hell up and a lot of that comes from the permissive, “gimme gimme gimme” society that we have today. People are spoiled. Too fucking bad. I recently had to deal with my Internet being out pretty consistently over the course of a month. The cable company sent me two bad routers in a row and I just had to sit there and wait for the next replacement to arrive. I didn’t whine and cry, I just went and found something else to do. People really need to grow the hell up. It’s not all about you.
In the end, he says:
Hence, I conclude that most generations were emotionally fragile.
No, they weren’t. Not like this. These are people surgically attached to their phones to the point that they don’t know what to do with themselves if they lose a data connection. They are purely spoiled brats. I had to fire someone, a couple of years ago now, because she was incapable of doing her job because she was utterly addicted to Facebook. Her phone was constantly on her desk because she had to be constantly in touch with her friends. She was told to knock it off and when she wouldn’t, I wrote her up. Then, she started taking 10 minute bathroom breaks a couple of times an hour so she could run in the bathroom and get online. She wasn’t doing the job she was getting paid to do and therefore, I found someone else who would. This is more the norm these days than anyone would like to admit. She couldn’t understand why, as I was handing her the final check. She didn’t know what she’d done wrong. I have no idea what happened to her after that and I really don’t care. A job is not a right, it’s a privilege. It’s something people need to earn. Nobody looks at it like that these days.
It’s why I think we’re having so many problems. Some things aren’t their fault directly but plenty is. Maybe it’s time we went back to how it used to be. It sure worked a hell of a lot better than this.