I personally am grateful for Gen Z.
***
My friend tells me she failed the probation at her new job. “Imagine having a job,” I say. “Cringe.”
I don’t mean it, of course. Adult version of me takes over. She offers support and encouragement. “It’s like being broken up with,” my friend says. “They just had so many bad things to say about me, and I had no idea.” I feel really bad for her because I know she’s smart and capable. I tell her this.
“This has nothing to do with your worth,” I say, repeating the exact same sentence I told a friend who was going through a break-up a couple of months ago. I guess it is pretty much the same, I think to myself.
“They misread the situation, or wanted someone different. They don’t know you, but I do. My opinion is more valid.”
You will be absolutely shocked to learn I’m not the best at the whole emotional support thing. I do hope, however, that these words hover somewhere in there. Then the stone cold logic of my arguments can land in the right place during a moment of clarity sometime over the next few days.
***
I’m so grateful that Gen Z came along and, like the toddlers they are, started asking “why?”
Why am I being expected to work overtime with no pay to keep a job I excel at within my working hours? Why am I not being given realistic deadlines? Why do I need a university education for an entry level job? Why am I expected to work while sick, while struggling mentally; why am I supposed to miss important family events because my employer won’t approve a day off? Why should I do this for no reward or even acknowledgement?
Why is the balance of expected commitment from both of us so out of whack?
Being met with nothing but *shrugs in capitalist* from their parents, employers, mentors, and the government, the “why” turned into a much less patient “what the actual fuck?”, and broadcast online. Before you knew it, millions of strangers joined in a communal enragement.
By the time this shift happened I was too busy having babies to think about ungodly things like going to work. I was creating life, work so invaluable that they thought putting a number on it would be insulting. The government is just too respectful, they could never. I’m assuming this is why I had to do it for free1.
But even while being preoccupied with carrying out my biological destiny or whatever, I had it in my heart to take a mental trip to my humble beginnings. Back to when I was a person who Had A Job™. I thought about the amount of commitment my employers expected from me. (And we can’t put theatre under the same umbrella, so let’s put stage management aside.)
I thought about 14 hour bar shifts, and how little I could do about having to do those hours. (Your feet don’t hurt so much when you go to bed, they hurt when you wake up. I called myself Ariel, like the one from the Andersen fairytale, where every step she took was agony. (*this is an edit. I thought it was by the Grimms. Illiterate me, thankfully I have smart readers. I’m very embarrassed etc.) Disney conveniently left that part out for the snowflake Western children. Us Eastern Europeans grew up with the original.
Which explains a few things, I guess.)
I thought about the liberties my marketing job boss took when talking to me, the ever changing job description, and the general messaging that I should be grateful they gave me a job at all. A job they hired me for for my writing, where I got to do zero writing.
The way a kitchen assistant screamed at me, a supervisor (while on his probation) calling me a “little girl”. He went on to pass the probation. The way my boss at the same job made sexual comments about me every day, while threatening to fire me constantly, with zero explanation as to why.
Your job doesn’t give a shit about you. I don’t care if your boss has kind eyes. In most cases they wouldn’t be willing to face even a minor inconvenience for you.
It’s been dawning on me that millennials have gone too far in our attempt to shake off the labels given to us by the older generation.
We’ve given an inch, the job market took a mile. Before long that became status quo, and we had to give an inch yet again. What happened after that? People under 35 are putting in on average an extra 21% of hours completely unpaid. That’s a whole ass fifth of their hours on top of the existing workweek, completely free.
What a great deal, but for whom?
***
And honestly, here’s the greatest twist ever.
Millennials are too overtherapised and busy breathing into paper bags while looking up house prices in their newly gentrified area to form a coherent and united discourse against Gen Z. Older generations try, but what do you know? It fails to carry any weight. They know, just like we do, that laziness only exists if you’re young.
I’m not that young any more, so people assume I’m working hard at whatever it is I’m doing. And if I’m not, I must be validly tired.
Tiredness does not exist when you’re young, of course.
What’s true though is that laziness in the workplace doesn’t exist. What does exist are the outrageous expectations of the wider culture. The idea that you will be giving it your all while being rewarded as if you just put in 40 hours, so, about 23.8%. That’s like, a 72% discrepancy.
Have you ever seen worse math than this?
Maybe give people a realistic workload and just don’t keep the ones that consistently fail to complete their tasks? Idk, what do I know. I’m only a god that made human life happen out of almost nothing, thanks very much. This is all way below my pay grade, anyway.
(I joke, please don’t come for me. I just want to make sure you all remember that I’m not just some unemployed airhead with wildly idealistic conceptualisations of the modern workplace. So I’m overcompensating. My hands would fall off if I tried to write enough for a balanced argument, so I’m taking the side I agree with more. I don’t have to talk about everything, just think of the word count. There are journalists and actual writers to do those things, anyway.)
***
I’ve been giving some thought to what returning to work might look like for me. It’s not like I can work in theatre with the state of things being what it is. As in, a tech box is kind of a strictly no-toddler zone.
Truthfully, when it comes to real adult jobs, there just isn’t much I can do.
“As a receptionist, how do you expect your light rigging skills to come in handy?” they would ask, with genuine curiosity. “We have a special guy who does all the lightbulbs in the office, anyway.” See, in theatre I was the special guy doing all the miscellaneous tasks. I can’t work anywhere that has other special people doing things for me. I have to be the special one >:-( Is there a job called: miscellaneous task completer?
Anyway, I could probably figure most of it out, but from what I hear, spunk and moxie and knowing all types of tape don’t count as employable skills. I’d also need someone to want me enough to put up with the no notice child sicknesses, the short workdays, and my being in a general state of befuddlement around 60% of the time.
I wonder that, even if a place like that existed, if I would fall into my usual pattern of abandoning boundaries in favour of keeping my job. I wonder if I could work for anyone at all. I had a problem with authority even before two small humans I created started following me around, believing me to be omnipotent.
I wonder if there’s anyone that might want me to write for them, because that could be nice. But like, actually write this time. But then again, why would they? There’s already the special people that do the writing for others. They’re called real writers and ChatGPT.
So, higher education? Any thoughts?
(Though if you ask me, I’d say, put a number on it, you know? Just like, try. Any number.)
Hi. We met in the "Office"? You asked me if I wanted to talk to you? Remember? I thought, Ok, I'll see what she has to say. So I subscribed. I can't say that I'll be able to keep up with you. But I'll make an effort. First off, I don't work. I'm one of those old fuck Baby Boomers. I'm 65 (...but a handsome 65!) I'm living off a pension, but it's not enough, which is why the wife is still working. I told her, if I have to work until I'm 65, so do you. She doesn't mind, because she likes her job. I like it too, because she quite often brings work home. (Thank Fuck, because she works in a liquor store.)
Anyway, I write fiction. I don't do the blog thing. Never did. I write lonnngg stories. So if you have an afternoon off, and you have an hour to kill, open up a story and take a look. I think you might like what I have to offer. I don't worry about word count, because Substack offers me the freedom to be myself. As a result, my stories tend to hover around the 15 to 20,000 word length. I do like the theatre though. I even have an idea for a play I want to write one day.
I ramble a lot, too. I also smoke dope and drink a lot of wine. Those are the only two vices I have left. I had to give everything else up...and everything else is anything you can imagine. Did I tell you I write? I use to work in a sawmill here on the Left Coast of Canada. I live just outside of Vancouver. It was the only job I ever had. I worked there for 45 years. I started when I was 19. I have no degree. I have High School though. I've been writing since I was 15. I think I'm pretty good at it. You'll have to read a story of two and let me know.
I already told you I'm married. I have two children--one of each, and probably both older than you. I am not politically correct. That's what happens when you grow up in an industrial job. I have to ask my daughter when I cross the line. (She works in an office.) Oh yeah, you can see a picture of my wife in my Archives page. It's the story of how I got one of my earrings. (Yeah, I still have them in; I have 2) She's not bad to look at, considering her age. (She still looks hot to me, and that's all that matters.)
So being retired, I had to come up with something to do. I thought I might do the "Extras" thing, just for the hell of it. I mean, I can sit in the background and drink coffee, or read a book, or do a crossword, or talk to a woman. I've done those things before. (I excel at coffee drinking.) But I decided I was going to be a writer instead. I mean, it's what I've always done, and I'm pretty good at it. Being 65, I figure I should get at least 20 years to work at it...maybe 25, but who the fuck wants to live to 90?
I'm going to tell you, if you can afford it, don't go back to work until the kids are in school. Enjoy them while you can. Stay at home and write. If you were in theatre before, write about that. Better still, write a play, toss it in the drawer and then writer another one; toss that one into the fire, and write a third one. Then go back to the first one and read it again. Then, and only then, rewrite the second one (the one you tossed into the fire), and you'll be amazed at how good it is. But don't go back to work if you don't have to. Tell everyone you are now a writer. (Because why would you work OT and not get paid for it?)
Having a job is NOT cool. I just want to say ditto to everything you said. I have a degree that I'm not using the way I want to or had planned on doing, but I'm using it. But having a Corporate Hell Job is just that. Hell. I'm completely over it and just want to do my side hustle full time. LOL