#baby boomers

Recently this funny video of a Millennial being interviewed for a job has been trending around, so I picked it up from my LinkedIn feed and watched it with two expectations:  it’s going to be very amusing, it’s going to have some truth. I wasn’t disappointed and that’s what happened, because if you have worked in different environments you will immediately catch the drift.

The interview is a stereotypical gag of a busy young Millennial girl who is being interviewed by a Baby Boomer while using her smartphone. Standard questions on competences comes in on what tech skills the candidate has, but they are not your typical Microsoft Office package as the girl lists all social platforms she knows how to use.

One thing that struck me there is the gap between the two roles which represents the two sided of software each comes with: old VS new, spreadsheets VS tweets. It’s obvious the difference of tech understanding instantly pops out to highlight a current phenomena in the workplace.

The video continues with the stereotype of the easily-distracted Millennials that cannot put a way for a second the phone: it’s their totem that convey their social and communicative power and without it they are like Superman with Kryptonite. However, there’s a subtle message in this video which is not what appears to be the constant use of technology, but rather the inability for those two generations to connect and come to terms with their differences.

Please, don’t see this as a pernicious way to defame Millennials, but rather to point the fingers over those who despite their age haven’t caught up with how society interacts with the presents whether old or young. Side effects on the personal behavior can impact those who drown in technology or starve from it.

My personal experience with some Millennials struck me at different levels where young adults working in retail are lacking the social skills to communicate their knowledge. I’m writing about retail because that’s where you would see Millennials working while interacting with the public, places like the hardware store, the local restaurant, the supermarket; that’s where their early work experience starts.

Millennials might be introverted and awkward, it also comes with the age they are in; however, there is a large portion of them which has been living in a sheltered environment from their birth, overly protected by their parents and their early educational system, unable to experience the sour side of life. The result is the entitlements and high demands many wait to receive on the workplace.

This is not a trial on who is bad and who is not, but rather an instance to understand how to resolve this issue. Parents cannot expect to raise their kids without disappointing them or even without them to fail at some point in their life. It’s part of being human to let your guard down or to miss the target. What’s important is to get back on track and learn from what went wrong.

On a darker tone the last portion of the video highlights the worst part some Millennial might exhibit: pandering to imaginative external elements to justify their shortcomings. Blaming others without justification is the line of defense to use to make up for the lack of principles or knowledge and eventually personal responsibilities. 

The Millennial girl asks to speak to a HR director for assistance after facing the fact she is not qualified for the position the job interview required. Millennials don’t take well rejection because difficult situations have been fixed by their parents during their years at school -if there’s a problem call the manager or mod and dad-.

Illustrations: anneidesign.com

It was during the 90s that for the first time I heard the term Generation X a class of people made of rumbling young-adults who listened to Nirvana, made California Rolls popular, made TV-show Friends a hit, first to use internet as a daily thing of their life, but most importantly they were the last generation to land stable and secure jobs in the West. 

Generation XYZ because after the X which stood for incognito, the rest of the letters would follow anyhow but with less of a certainty onto what would define them. Television with its pay-per-view and the radical skater scene the West cost provided became a huge social influence worldwide. After the hefty 80s experience of Reaganomics with all its perks and consequence, the 90s would upset everything that came before it because that’s what they wanted to do in the first place. From the get-go, Generation X meant to be the rebellious slice of a transitioning era which wanted to forget the post- Vietnam period and the fear of the Cold War.

After the X comes the Y and this is not a set of chromosomes defining a future newborn, but rather the inevitable outcome of a generation which had to fill even bigger shoes. The Y generation is a 80s-born niche of those who are in their thirties that have been awfully identified as Millennials for practical journalistic reasons. Here we have that discrepancy which comes to separate two generational ridges: the X managed to capitalized on the Baby Boomer Legacy, while the Y couldn’t because by the time they graduated the world already changed drastically.

That Generation Y is today squeezed by the success of its previous batch and the Millennials wondering into the unknown. The remarkable event that separates the Y from the rest it the technological transformation that happened when communication went from hand-written letters to fax machines to emails. In between you can throw telex and experimental video call attempts.

Wikipedia won’t display Generation Y as an official page yet; its alphabet skips to the Z identifying the post- Millennial crowd of those born in the 21 century as the current poster child of the lettering sequence. They will be those who had already a Facebook page before they came to light, those who will have a 50/50 chance of taking their driving license because by the time they reach their late teen years cars will be fully autonomous.

My remark in this post is about the experience my own Y generation came to witness and exists in a world that changed fast and without the opportunities of the past. If the Baby Boomers became wealthy in a post World War 2 reality, surely their Gen X kids managed to grasp that last breath of chances the late 20th century had to offer.

Those born in the 80s have grown educationally and professionally across the September 11 2001 momentum, trying to overcome that depression until the 2008 financial crisis gave them the ultimate kick in the teeth. They are the ones who were told that a degree was necessary while in school, but got told they where overqualified during their job interviews. They where the ones who had to reinvent their professional status with new solutions because the economy had no clue how to deliver the many promises the markets made them.

“The age of the Iron Bowl has long gone…”- this is the new philosophy for the 21st century. The Iron Bowl is the analogy for the safe bowl of rice Chinese people know to receive for their meal time each day, meaning that nothing is certain anymore today and nothing is safe: from your work place to our salary there are no solid pillars, and everything changed to the point ‘where piece of mind’ has become a bargaining chip into your stability and future.

We are witnessing an importand change in the worldwide retail landscape. Online shopping platforms like Amazon and Aliexpress are the “west vs east” of the commercial frame, now their impact on international retail markets can be felt with slowdowns in North America as the consumers’ preferences have changed. This is happening because of poor retail growth and brick&mortar brands can no longer look the other way.
Sears is gone, no more, because one CEO after the other did not have a clue how to handle a crisis of confidence the digital age brought in the last 15 years. So even large names were not spared from extintion, much like the big dinosaurs of the past, in a wave of major changes where the core principle of the consumer managed to switch so drastically in the last 10 years.
Customers have based their shopping habits upon online reviews from others who already bought and tested items. The new approach method for buyers is to visit the mall on weekends scout their next purchase and then buying it online as soon as they got back home. Why? Because today’s shopping experience is not the lavish one of the 20th century where Baby Boomers and family could overspend their budget; plus, the global economy wasn’t as shaky as it is today. It’s sharp purchasing.
Beside that, Millennials are working wages that forbid extras like car-ownership, let alone the cottage and the boat, these were investments that drove the economy of the second-half of the 20th century. And because of that the economy has been resenting it since 2008 (or perhaps 2001), where we witnessed the global financial meltdown. Now retail wants customers back, but it isn’t happening simply because wallets are empty and the new generations don’t want to drive minivans anymore, let alone an over inflated house in the suburbs.
Retail could bounce back with a store experience to attract custumer and backed with an online presence worthy of the competitors. This translates into having consumers coming back to the physical store and enhence their shopping experience with the latest technologies such as holograms, augmented and virtual reality. Play first, pay later

Don’t shit on your kids’ music, it’s gross and lame. Most of our grandparents thought the Beatles were trash. Most of our parents thought Nine Inch Nails were talentless. Don’t be that 30 something, is all I’m saying. If your kids are listening to Nazi indoctrination yeah you may wanna step in but otherwise get some noise cancelling headphones and let it ride. It’s us, not them. We’re the problem now.

tiktok vs the trump administration round 7

Lol.

(this idea was a pre existing meme. But I remade it in better quality )