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Is it so wrong to think
that we're entitled to more?
A recent Associated Press article, making the rounds in offices
everywhere, is offering a new moniker for my age group. According to the
article, more and more employers are referring to us as the Entitlement
Generation.
Those quoted in the piece suggest we are demanding bigger salaries, more
flexible hours and greater responsibility, while showing little company
loyalty or enthusiasm toward entry-level work, because we feel
"entitled."
The article goes on to describe our generation's "quarter-life
crisis," an experience that supposedly drives us to quit jobs,
travel the world, seek charity work and do any number of things rather
than sit in a cubicle for several years under a bank of buzzing
fluorescent lights.
Doubting our careers, seeking our places in the world, wondering what
it's all about -- it certainly sounds like a midlife crisis, and there's
a good reason. Our generation has had the unfortunate privilege of
watching America's largest generation reach middle age in unison. And it
hasn't been pretty.
We have watched our baby-boomer parents suffer the midlife crises that
result in divorces, depressions, breakdowns and even the utter disregard
for one's family. We have watched our parents buy houses and cars, raise
our brothers and sisters, advance in their careers and then decide to
question -- or even abandon -- every bit of it.
The experience is nearly universal; we have watched it happen personally
or seen it happen nearby. For every one of us with a happy childhood,
there is another who resents the childhood he was given.
Our quarter-life crisis is not the realization that our parents are
messed up. We have known about this for years, sometimes since we were
very young. The quarter-life crisis is the sudden, startling realization
that, despite our experience and knowledge of where it leads, we are
following the same path as our parents.
It is not a sense of entitlement that makes us bristle at bottom-rung
corporate work. It is the idea that, after 20 years of achievement and
ladder-climbing, we will be in a position we swore we'd never hold. We
will be the absent father or the overworked mother. With every personal
compromise we make for money, we are more and more frightened at how
quickly it is all happening.
The young men and women of my generation do not feel as though we are
entitled to a higher rung on the ladder. We are questioning the ladder
itself.
It is not that we have been sheltered from the real world. We have been
exposed from a very young age. We know firsthand what the real world,
with its societal stresses and pressures, can do to people and what it
can do to families. We are questioning the real world.
By the virtue of our youth, we are entitled to change the real world.
Like our parents' generation, we are questioning everything. We are
questioning what it means to be successful. We are questioning our
careers. It may seem irresponsible and frustrating to employers when we
expect more, but we know what happens when you blindly accept the bridle
and bit. And we'd rather frustrate our bosses now than alienate our
families in 20 years.
Here, then, is my message for the baby-boomer generation, for our
parents, and for those forty- or fiftysomethings in the hiring
department who scoff at our "entitlement." Forgive us for
acting like children in our 20s. With any luck, we'll be mature at your
age.
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