“Parents just don’t understand,” as the ever so iconic Beastie Boys have proclaimed back in the day. They really don’t understand where we’re coming from, especially the baby boomers versus millenials. It’s hard when the older generation criticizes everything you do.
The baby boomer generation loves to compare the way the grew up to millenials and their new way of living. They also like to call millenials ungrateful and lazy. And that we’re obsessed with avocados. The latter is probably true, though. I f*cking love avocados and there are hipsters out there with avocado tattoos to prove their love for it.
But seriously baby boomers, how do you really expect me to afford college without applying for financial aid? “Back in my day, I went to college while I saved money over the summer.” Yeah, okay grandpa, that was back in the day before your generation f*cked up the economy and housing market but we’ll get started on that soon enough.
These 25 baby boomers really don’t understand the millenial generation:
1.
My neighbor was complaining about how useless and lazy millennials are after I snowblowed their driveway today. Only, it used to be their snowblower. They misused it, broke it, and I fixed it, and I’ve been doing their driveway ever since. But whatever I’m just some lazy 20-something full time student with a job and enough time to turn wrenches in the garage.
2.
I was getting my masters degree and we had a guest lecturer come in. He had been CEO of a small company for many years. He told us that he stumbled into the job right out of college because he didn’t know what to do and gave it a shot. They gave him the assistant CEO position because he had been the assistant manager at a movie theater for a summer. And then 2 years later he became the CEO. He was basically telling this entire glass of people getting their advanced degrees in the hopes to get his position that he got his job on a whim 30 years ago.
3.
Talking to my dad recently, he was going on about “participation trophies.” When I pointed out that we wouldn’t have received said participation trophies had his generation not invented them, his response was: “Yep, that’s another problem with your generation. Always blaming your faults on other people.”
4.
When I was in high school looking for a job my grandmother told me to just go to places and fill out applications; she told me it was useless using the Internet to look for a job. This was in 2008 and every place I checked for a job had an Internet-based application.
5.
My first retail job, any time I complained about customers or coworkers to my father I would get, “You just have to suck it up. It builds character, and you’ll always have something you don’t like about your job or coworkers.” A few years ago, he lost his help desk job, and nobody wanted to hire him on for an IT position when he’s just a couple years shy of retirement age and doesn’t have a degree. After a couple years of being unemployed, he realized the gig was up, and took a part time job working in a grocery store across the street from the one I had in high school.
6.
“Babies just need love, not money.” Sorry, mom, no grandkids until I have a job with a decent paycheck and less student debt.
7.
I guess I’m on the old side of the millennials, but I had numerous people tell me not to go into computer science and instead go into some other engineering field because computer scientists didn’t make good money, wasn’t a good job, not a good fit, etc. Glad I didn’t listen to any of them as I make a really good salary now. Why the heck would I take advice on entering a high tech field from people who can barely use a computer?
8.
I was once told by a baby boomer “If you want a man to stay with you, you’ll have to pop out a baby.” I told her straight up “Any man who would stay for our baby, but not for just me, isn’t a man who I’d want staying in the first place.”
9.
My mother was in real estate right around the 2000s and insisted on getting a house for me under my name, and we flip it for profit. She did it with my 2 brothers and an aunt. I was the only one who refused (we were at odds at this point as well anyway) because I didn’t want my name on anything I didn’t thoroughly research myself. She was so angry with me for not accepting her advice that she considered was a gift. When the market crashed around 2006-2007… well all the houses were repossessed, they’re all in sh*t except me, let’s just say that. She really meant well, but that was a sad time to bounce back from.
10.
My boss recently told me my generation was entitled, and began quoting various articles on how we all think we’re special and exempt from criticism etc. AS I was shoveling a dead rat out of the doorway.
11.
My mother told me to, “Just get a job. Tons of places are hiring.” Though, she has come to understand the struggle now as she spends all day applying to jobs and not getting a single call back.
12.
“You know, your generation doesn’t understand that you have to buy a house as young as possible to pay it off quickly”. No old man, we get it. We’re broke as f*ck making 1/3 of what you do in the same work place.
13.
“Don’t take a job unless it gives 4 weeks vacation out of the year” Because that’s what someone can get fresh from college.
14.
what i really don’t get is “why should uneducated people at mcdonalds deserve to make 15$ an hour” being said by the same people who scream “bring back our manufacturing jobs so that uneducated people can make a living wage!”
15.
I graduated in 2007 and had an extremely difficult time finding a job. I was juggling 2 unpaid internships and a part-time job at a movie theater while applying to anything I could find. I spent my spare time interviewing at staffing companies that never called me back and trying not to slash my wrists. My mother would toss the newspaper at me and said, “you know, I’ve never been unemployed, but I still read the WantAds every day.” She refused to acknowledge that I was actively searching for a job and kept insisting that I was lazy.
16.
“Just go to college even if you don’t know what you want to do.”
17.
Get at least a master’s degree so you can be successful. Sure, a degree helps, but coming out of school with a massive amount of debt is not the greatest thing to do. My parents owned a home when they were 25 and 23. They didn’t have to worry about having 40k in student loans.
18.
My government teacher just told me it was hard for him to sympathize with people who have to work at McDonald’s when he was able to put himself through college while working and studying full time. He said it was still possible for anyone that wanted to put in the work. I’d just got out of economics, where my teacher had told us it wasn’t possible, and made us calculate the cost of our preferred college or trade school and write up our financial aid options. Weird getting almost word for word contradiction that soon from two teachers.
19.
“Drop out of local community college and RUN, don’t walk to most expensive state school in the country. A degree from a community college isn’t worth anything.”
20.
“First thing you should do is always buy a house.” Houses are not the surefire, idiot-proof investment machine they used to be in decades past.
21.
“But just start a business if you cant find something!”
22.
My girlfriend was instructed by her Grandmother to “always make a boy pay you before having sex with him”
23.
Dad told me when I was young that interracial relationships would never work. He said that “there’s a reason the black birds are with black birds and the red birds are with the red birds. Its just nature.”
24.
“You can’t get a job in management out of college, you have to start in the mailroom.” Uuuh… To get a job in the mailroom you need five years experience. That or work for free because internship. And when we have five figure student loans to repay we can’t exactly work for free cause unpaid internships don’t put food on the table or gas in our cars…
25.
“Find a woman you can stand, and start a family with her as soon as you can. You’ll grow to love each other. That’s how me and the wife did it.” – my late 50s co-worker to me when I was 17 years old
Irvi Torremoro is an Austinite by way of Las Vegas. She's worked in various outlets in food & beverage and is now focused on writing, eating all the things, talking about Beyonce, and petting all the puppies. She runs flavorandbounty.com, a lifestyle blog about people in the service industry.
