There’s a war coming and it sounds like it’s going to be a bigger mess than this weekend’s Batman V Superman. It’s been brewing for years now, bubbling under the surface of conference room tables, alchemizing in discussions about fictional participation trophies and gurgling up through the brown muck that passes for “coffee” out of a Keurig machine. It’s latched on to our magazine front pages that ceaselessly cover the Kennedys and the Beatles and runs as an undercurrent to every discussion about why the environment, race relations and globalism are so fucked. The war between baby boomers and millennials is nearing, and it’s going to be a brutal one. But it’s long overdue.
If you haven’t read the controversial NY Times story about what happens when millennials run the workplace at a place like Mic, congrats! You’re probably free from the ouroboros human centipede chain of New York media content consumption and regurgitation (must be nice). Anyway, it’s worth a read because it underscores a very real issue: the way work works is changing, and some older folks are not happy about it. And lo, a war brews.
The Times story is a slurry of millennial stereotypes: they’re entitled! They eat tuna sandwiches at the meeting table! They tweet #jokes to each other! The prime millennial burned in effigy in the story is Joel Pavelski, a 27-year-old director of programming at Mic, whose dirty HR laundry is aired in the lede of the story. Pavelski lied to his bosses about needing to attend a friend’s funeral; instead he was building a treehouse as a way to relieve burnout stress from work. Then he wrote about it on Medium and everyone at the office saw the Medium post because, millennials. (Full disclosure: I used to work with Joel at the NY Post, and once briefly tried to get a job at Mic).
Is that terrible? Probably. Is it symptomatic of millennial oversharing thing or just a numbskull thing to do, idk. I do know that it’s probably not advisable to blab on the internet about why you lied about not being at work, which is why all my “Incredibly Hungover Because the Beer and Shot Specials at 169 Bar are Dangerously Cheap And I Really Needed to Drink Last Night” Medium posts are still in the drafts folder.
Moderate millennials need to be willing to denounce the extremist millennials in our ranks.
— willy 💧 (@willystaley) March 19, 2016
But the real thing people are taking issue with with this story is that there seems to be an implication by some of a “right” way to run an office, ie the way baby boomers have done it for decades, the soul-crushing midtown way, and younger people aren’t into that any more. I can speak to some level of authenticity to this: I recently quit a good office job, the kind I would have gone apeshit for when first starting out in journalism in high school, partly because I wanted to do something different, and partly because going to the office every day was starting to crush me.
Things moved too slow, we were slow on the technological uptake and I got yelled at for checking emails during meetings (it brought to mind Louis CK’s self takedown on his show, when he doesn’t understand how his daughter can multitask on her phone while watching a play — but that’s just how kids’ minds work now). Now I blog full-time again and work with other millennials (full disclosure: still not sure if I am one).
But the wave of thinking that the baby boomer generation — who oppressed minorities and gays, destroyed our environment, took the economy for a joy ride and insist on making still MORE Indiana Jones movies — are somehow upset with kids in their 20s using Twitter at work, that means it’s time to take over, gang. We as a society seek generational blame for lots of things that history will probably look back on as simple smart evolution: for instance not buying cars, because cars are bad and full of spiders. Let’s hope we don’t treat the next generation the same way.
Here’s more evidence a war is brewing:
"Low aspiration/ambition defines the baby boomers, where a handshake and a watch is all they think they're worth after decades of service."
— Akilah Hughes (@AkilahObviously) March 19, 2016
I'm tired of having to apologize for growing up with technology and being more efficient and doing twice the work for half the pay.
— Akilah Hughes (@AkilahObviously) March 19, 2016
https://twitter.com/NoahHurowitz/status/711218115665907713
I will take working with 100 duck-sized millennials over working with one horse-sized Boomer any day. God the bullshit boomers put us thru.
— Heidi N Moore (@moorehn) March 19, 2016
There was a whole thing when I was coming up about “paying your dues.” In retrospect, a way for Boomers to keep you from moving forward.
— Heidi N Moore (@moorehn) March 19, 2016
Millennials basically hacked the system by refusing to “pay dues” and just doing the job now, and honestly they deserve a lot of credit.
— Heidi N Moore (@moorehn) March 19, 2016
In conclusion, burn down your hierarchies because their secrecy and petty ego are part of the reason why the “old” journalism is dying.
— Heidi N Moore (@moorehn) March 19, 2016
But seriously it's important for old media to send investigative reporters deep into the heart of their coming obsolescence.
— John DeVore (@JohnDeVore) March 19, 2016
Also, the Greatest Generation is racist.
— Emily Nussbaum (@emilynussbaum) March 19, 2016
Millennials: The Generationest Generation
— Sam Adams (@SamuelAAdams) March 19, 2016
Too much of media think piece culture is baby boomers mocking the people left in the ashes of the world their generation destroyed…
— Lincoln Michel (@TheLincoln) March 19, 2016
Our generation is smart, political, socially engaged, hard-working, and struggling to succeed in the broken world baby boomers left for us.
— Angela Lashbrook (@lemonsand) March 19, 2016
For what it’s worth, here is how Joel, the “prevaricating treehouse builder” of the Times story, is handling the criticism:
Some personal news pic.twitter.com/fKoRmq6kMb
— Joel Pavelski (@joelcifer) March 21, 2016
Mostly, this is the takeaway of the whole thing:
Millennials are bad. Gen-Xers are bad. Baby Boomers are bad. All humans are bad.
— Gabriella Paiella (@GMPaiella) March 19, 2016
Follow Tim, who is on Team Batman in this war: @timdonnelly.
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The “millennial-friendly workplace” is just a way for companies to mask their exploitation of employees without shelling out for increased productivity : )
this seems pretty true.
also, why is it always baby boomers against millenials? the baby boom ended in 1960. my brother is 47 and has two adult sons. are they all millenials? is generation x just neutral and seen neutrally by both groups? won’t gen x run the businesses before the millenials do?