The Age of Millennials

So, through Twitter I found a great piece about Millennials entering the workforce and the companies who are bending over backwards to accommodate these "Kids".

Now, depending on whose definition you believe, I may in fact be part of this Millennial group. I was born in 1977, which is really on the cusp as most feel that this group was born on or after 1980. I can tell you that if I AM part of this group, I relate not at all.

The thing with Millennials is that they are full of entitlement. They honestly believe that they are doing you a favour by showing up to work and well, WORKING. They DO think that because they have spent three or four years at post-secondary that they should waltz into a job, make around $30k and be immediately recognized for promotion and raises. How do I know this? I work in the media arm of a large advertising agency.

This place is CRAWLING with Millennials. They show up to work around 9:07am with their ear buds firmly in place and their Chuck Taylor's on their feet and blankly shuffle to their cubes to begin their workday (not before signing into messenger, checking their Gmail, Facebook and other social networks I'm not cool enough to know about). The girls likely have about 14 pairs of jeans worth almost $3,000 in total. They wear these jeans EVERY. DAY. The attitude is, I'm not important enough yet to see the client, so why should I bother "dressing up"? Besides, my jeans cost me $275.

They are petulant and fear real work. Other manager's and I sympathise on who exactly to motivate these people for fear of job loss doesn't seem to do it. They want sunshine, rainbows, free drinks, $5K raises, they want a step by step guide on how to perform their jobs and they want you to hold their hands while the do it.

My company though, does not subscribe to the "experts" teaching us how to "work" with this group as shown in the video. We are after all, advertisers and we do enough focus groups and studies internally or through clients to know who to work with these kids. No need to pay someone ELSE to tell us how they tick.

Of course, I'd be remiss to not point out that not every kid born between 1980-90 has this entitled attitude. Perhaps their parents taught them that second and third place DOES exist. Perhaps they had to actually type their own book reports cause Mommy (or Daddy) refused to. Perhaps this is not exactly a trend and every generation has these entitled types and we are only just calling them out now?