I love “Millennials” - my wife and I have raised three of them. And, just as one shouldn’t ascribe the same characteristics to an entire group of similarly-aged people, such as my group: “Baby Boomers,” neither should Millennials be painted with the same brush.
But, let’s face it, I’m gonna’ do it anyway, so you might as well strap in, and enjoy the ride. Why this particular rant, you might ask? I recently visited my dry cleaners to drop off a very large bundle of shirts and suits. I made a point to pack up, and leave my office at an hour designed to allow me to arrive at the dry cleaners comfortably ahead of its appointed closing-time, which was 6:00 p.m. Don’t get me started on the fact that they used to be open at 7:30 a.m., which enabled me to conduct my dry cleaning business as I was on my way to the office; they now do not open until 10:00 a.m., because, you know, COVID.
In any event, I arrived at the store roughly ten minutes before 6:00 p.m., and entered the (unlocked!) store with my armful of clothes, dumping them on the front counter. As the young lady wandered to the front counter from the back, she said, “I’m sorry, we’re closed.”
I performed a pretty theatrical, passive-aggressive gesture of sweeping my arm out and toward my face, indicating that I was closely examining my watch to ensure that it was not yet 6:00 p.m., the advertised closing-time. Perhaps I pointed that out to her; perhaps not. I’m pretty sure that I gathered up my clothes, muttering obscenities under my breath, marched back out to my car, and drove off into the night.
Was that the end of it? I think you know me better than that. When I was finally able to unload my growing pile of laundry, which had been allowed to properly age for a few more days in my car, I shared with the more mature woman who manages the operation my tale of woe. She commiserated with me, and said all the right customer-servicey things, such as, “unacceptable,” “inconsistent with policy,” and “should not have done that.” I don’t recall seeing the young lady in that store after that discussion.
This experience reminded me of an incident involving my two sons some years ago. My oldest son, Tim, who was probably eighteen or nineteen years old, and who had held a number of jobs for years, beginning when he was fourteen or fifteen, decided that it was high time that my middle son, Patrick, who was then sixteen or seventeen, secured gainful employment. Tim volunteered to escort Patrick around town, and wait in the car, as Patrick entered various businesses, and inquired about jobs there.
One of the establishments Patrick visited was the local Burger King. As he asked about jobs at the fast-food restaurant, a manager indicated that he would retrieve a job application form, and Patrick could complete it, and provide it to him. Patrick asked (and, my advice to you job-seekers out there is that this is not the appropriate response in this particular scenario), “How long is it?”
The manager’s response to that query appears in the headline to this piece: “If you have to ask, you may not be ‘Burger King material’.”
Ouch! I should point out that I am very proud of the professional choices that each of my three children have made, and that they are each contributing to society in meaningful ways, and display a healthy work ethic: one is a flight medic; another is an I.T. programmer; and the third works with a healthcare organization, coordinating clinical trials of proposed new medications.
Whereas members of my generation, for the most part, were instructed to go to school, secure the degree, and enter the conventional workforce, there to toil until retirement, Millennials believe that one’s work must be meaningful in some way, and personally fulfilling. It’s difficult to argue with that logic. But, I remain mystified when Millennials quit a job that they don’t find rewarding, if they have not yet secured a new job. That’s a one-way trip to your mother’s basement, in my opinion.
And, Millennials spend time and energy developing “side-hustles,” oftentimes involving the use of websites or popular apps, attempting to get paid for providing content of some sort, some of which represents the most banal or ludicrous stuff imaginable. As the old Latin proverb indicated, “De gustibus non est disputandum,” which literally means, “There's nothing to be argued about about taste,” or “There’s no accounting for taste,” if you prefer.
To those of you who suggest that I simply suffer from “early-onset curmudgeonry,” I will share with you a story from my youth, when I worked as a manager of a pizza restaurant, around 1980. Every Wednesday night, a large group of square-dancers (you heard right, square-dancers) would enter the restaurant at roughly two minutes before closing-time, clad in their brightly-colored frilly dresses (back then that attire was typically restricted to women) and checkered shirts, and proceed to order pizzas and drinks and commandeer the restaurant for the next hour or so, greatly delaying our nightly closing process, and ultimately, the staff’s ability to get the hell out of there.
Why didn’t I simply lock the front door ten minutes before closing, knowing what was looming for us? Because the restaurant was owned by a former Chicago policeman, and his wife; Frank, the ex-cop, scared the crap out of me.
I suppose on some level I empathize with the young lady at the dry cleaners, and understand her interest in just getting the hell out of there. Also, I feel badly that I got her fired. Hmm. . .she may just be, “Burger King material.”