Born in 1964, I depending on which pop culture/sociological resource is used, hail from the muscular tail of the Baby Boomers or the more ambiguous Generation X.
I have certainly reached the age where I am lamenting the use of cool punk/new wave songs to sell cars. My husband and I bitch about it constantly and we reason the sell outs have expensive college educations to front.
In reality, it is yet another reminder that if you live long enough protest will be commodified like any other human impulse. That is the fine and crafty art of capitalism, it can absorb opponents and remake them into drugged up circus animals. Not all of the anger of my youth has been repackaged into suburban faux disdain. Henry Rollins was pissed off when I was in university, he still seems that way.
Every generation has their WTF moment when they realize they have turned into their parents. It took me a while to have mine, my parents are vaguely eccentric, and vaguely unpredictable. My mother, for example, manages 65 acres on her own with a mix of delusion and determination. She doesn't want to have any kind of laminated/synthetic flooring in the house because she thinks they emit toxic fumes that might take years to have effect. The problem is she has been right about so many other things that sounded wacky, that I cannot completely discount it. My parents divorced when I was quite young in the era when single parenting was not very cool or accepted. My father still teaches, doing private tutoring at age 76. Both of them are belong proudly to the international Luddite society if there is one, they both think pop culture is crap and TV is "bad for you" because well you should be doing something productive.
I wasn't much of a careerist and drifted for years after graduating university in nothing jobs, assisted by a cranky economy until I chose nursing. Most of my childhood friends are more successful materially than I, except for my cool artist buddy, who ditched a well paying job with a pension because she had MS and decided she wanted to explore her creative side. You can do that in Canada because they have a health care system that is actually designed for sick people.
I always worked with folks younger than myself because I decided to stay on nights and adults with lives and kids often try and go to days as soon as possible. The truth: I pretty much ignored the people I worked with. Oh, we chatted and I helped them when they got busy, after all we were a team. When things were slow I would read a book or cruise the internet catching up on news.
Then one day I got the silly notion that I wanted to be a supervisor. Even at the interview I thought well who cares if I get the job? Another supervisor encouraged me to do it probably because when she was mine, I didn't pester her much.
Generation Y and I are still in the exploratory committee phase of our mutual understanding. They are different and so they should be.This article provides an interesting overview much of what rings true for me.
There is a wealth of advice on how they differ and how that impacts the management and motivation of the younger generation. Apparently, some of them even want to bring Mom and Dad to the job interview.
I have definitely noticed the need for constant praise. I happen to have a dog who think he needs his belly rubbed constantly so it isn't much different. I actually have to remind myself to dole out praise although I have not resorted to congratulating folks for showing up to work yet. When I am not praising them I am listening to them do it for themselves. Them: "Don't I just rock?" Me: " Ummmmmm, I guess, you are breathing, that is very nice." Them: " I had straight A's in school and I am going to start my MA next year, aren't I awesome.?" Me:" Yeah, we didn't get grades in school, we got piles of rocks." I am not knocking graduate degrees some questionable university gave me one, I think it was a slow year for them or there were openings for directionless malcontents when I applied. They get flustered when I call them on bullshit, as in when I suggest the whole universe does not revolve around them. They respond that I am jealous. Maybe I am, infused with regrets about chances I should have taken. If you don't praise the Gen Y crowd they get pretty pouty and whisper among themselves and sometimes email my boss to complain I am not the "nice supervisor".
Generation Y is definitely more attuned to the whole "work/life" balance, an attitude that seems blatantly anti-capitalist so I support it and they aren't big into company loyalty, another trait I admire. If the people I supervise are a typical sample, there are some future leaders, they are smart and far more goal directed than I am. Even though we struggle to comprehend one another across the generational chasm and it is the source of some conflict, we also tend to view one another as odd but relevant sub-species. I think despite my grousing and grumbling that they will do just fine and they will tell one another just how well they are doing. Every generation that ages attributes a lack of common sense and fortitude to the one that follows. Every generation that follows finds a supreme lack of flexibility and creativity embedded in those who think they are leading. We have to reach some kind of tolerance one of them, or their children, might be trying to jam a puree of spinach down my throat when I am feeble and in a nursing home. Alternatively, they might decide old folks, and there will be an awful lot of them born in my year, are just too expensive and put us out on giant icebergs to be arctic snacks. Of course, there might be a shortage of big icebergs we might be desert snacks.
We do struggle over acceptable behavior at work. That sweet girl with the very stylish hip hugger scrubs got pretty insulted when she bent over displayed the purple thong, and I offered the observation that maybe a hospital wasn't the best thong territory. " Like why", she asked me. I suggested it might undermine professionalism, although I was not against thongs per se. Her response," But I know I am a professional." Then there was the whole cell phones and ipods at the nurses work station fight. They kinda did not get that texting buddies might possibly interfere with work or that families might not want to see the RNs bopping to tunes at the desk. Part of my theory is that an astonishing number of young people I work with never had those shitty high school and university jobs that paid crap and tried to mold you into a worker bee so they have no concept about what acceptable workplace behavior entails.
They expect to be successful and to be paid for it and they expect to participate in all decision making. They are definitely the consultant generation. There isn't much political content to the challenges to authority just a sense they are required to be included in all aspects of work even if they have no practical input to give. I won't lie when I am forced to after explaining my rationale for decisions about a hundred thousand times, I often resort to telling them that I invoke my right to decide as a supervisor. Then they email my boss again complaining that I "cut them out of decision making". My boss quizzes me, I explain the story, and then she tell me to let them make "little" decisions to "make them feel" better. Ironically enough, I must be more patient than I give myself credit for because after being off for a few days I get assaulted with dramatic stories about how mean the other supervisors are. The other supervisors are not mean. When I am not around they nit pick about me and when I point that out to them they say it is different because I am liked. Generation Y folks like to like the people they work with. They are puzzled that I don't care. Excepting a few current members of the Bush administration I can work with anybody. I wouldn't have a problem working with Barney, he seems okay, unless he is being dispatched as a special torture envoy to various secret prisons.
The Generation Y folks I work with are all conservative, that may simply be an outgrowth of the fact that I live in the Bible Belt. I like to capitalize Bible Belt because I have earned that right as a prog/lib living among Baptist pontificators who think it is "leftist" to criticize America. I despise talking politics at work since I am a supervisor and it is unseemly in my mind to do so with people I am responsible for. Once in a while I show my flag. The only problem is that it can backfire in weird ways. I told them once for kicks that I was an anarchist, not true, but they all stared at one another and said," Um, what is that?"
Yeah, hard to rebel when you have a mortgage, two dogs,pootie overlords, a four wheeler, and no fixed pension. Actually, given that state of affairs it is hard no to.