Are Younger Generations Lazy? Or Are Older Generations Crazy?
It’s not wise to paint any generation with a broad brush. All generations probably have some of both.
We Boomers and Gen X-ers experienced the days of frequent overtime hours with no expectation of overtime pay. Being salaried, we were implicitly or explicitly told to be grateful for the job and suck it up until we ascended to levels where we could work fewer hours. Dues had to be paid.
There was moaning about it but never with the higher ups. That stayed among the worker bees.
Boomers and Gen Z are Annoyed
Many folks who had to endure that are mighty perturbed that Millennials and Gen Z want to get full time pay while only working 40- hours a week. And they’re not concerned for one second about making that very clear to management. The scandal!
Those two generations don’t live to work. They demand time for personal interests. Work gets the work hours then they’re off. They aren’t keen on doing work during their personal time.
What’s so crazy about Boomers and Gen X being irritated by that thinking is that Boomers and Gen X created the pursuit of life balance!
Working all those hours was exhausting. There was no balance between work and home life and they were desperate for it. (The overworked still are desperate for it.) Boomers and Gen X found out that moving up the ladder didn’t result in working fewer hours. It meant more money and mor responsibility, but the same excessive hours — or more.
Is This Corporate Hazing?
Thinking that younger generations should have to pay their dues like we did and therefore also feel overworked and wiped out is like Greek life hazing. The newbies must suffer the humiliation of running naked through the quad with their underwear on their head or groveling to the upper classmen. One day years later that newbie got to foist that humiliation onto the new pledges. “I had to do it so now you have to do it, too.” What a satisfying system.
Maybe Greek life folks think it’s all in fun and that’s fair. In that case it’s not equivalent. But it’s pretty clear younger generations aren’t going to overwork themselves into a constant state of anxiety simply because generations before them did.
The Way Forward
Perhaps as Millennials and Gen Z make the rules, they’ll train younger generations to strive for — even demand — a healthy blend of personal and professional time regardless of their age or position on the org chart.
Pass down balance, not being broken
