When I was quite young Mom said I got so mad at her for something that I refused to speak to her for 3 days. Never once in that time did I budge. Such a steadfastness and my inability to be persuaded otherwise I imagine gave her a sense of both pride as well as a couple pinches of “dear god why have you burdened me with such a child”?

I would say that I still have a stubborn sense of right and wrong, although eroded somewhat by the constant barrage of conflict, and so that little girl I once was does still exist; though a little jaded and with the 20/20 vision of experience.

Yesterday at work was busy, as Sunday’s often are in the logistics of retail. You know, grown adults exhibiting the selfish greed of a young child that doesn’t know better yet, the child who runs rampant through the toy aisle grabbing at whatever they want, and gets angry when you tell them they can’t have it their way. Like children who have not yet learned the social graces that are required of adults to live congenially with each other. I’m so thankful I work where I do, in the back where we do not have to interact with the public as often.

How I wish I could be the one who stands around watching vids on my phone and chitchatting with my co-workers to combat the stress of working for the interests of others, but alas, I am not one to stand idle when there is work that needs doing. I suppose perhaps I’m too militant, but I go to work to do actual work, not to debate the next possible plot twists of Game Of Thrones, or whatever.

But I digress.

“If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

So I try. I do not always succeed, but I do try to be pleasant and understanding of the trials and tribulations of others, and I try to be accepting of the fact that not everyone shares my work ethic.

I’m a GenXer, born at the beginning and so with a certain smidge of the boomer mindset, working in an active logistics department with a lot of millennials, and maybe it is just their youthful ignorance, but they can be completely oblivious.

They also seem to require more supervision and structure.

Millennials often exhibit a mindset born out of a world of instantaneous gratification with technologies at their fingertips that allow them the luxury of an individualism that lacks a knowledge of compromise. They can so easily cut themselves off from those with whom they disagree and dive headfirst into ideas that serve only a few, and ignore the needs of the many, because it is so easy, so right there in your face.

Today it is apparently perfectly acceptable to be still living at home with your parents late into ones 20’s, saving to buy their first house, pay off their education, and save for some glorious future, be a good little consumer, and believing this makes sense, and with their parent’s full approval.

They don’t want to live with a friend and eat Kraft Dinner 5 nights a week. Oh, the horror. Some of them actually believe that this jump start in life will afford them some security so they won’t ever have to suffer, and find creative ways to make orange pasta more interesting if not nutritious, do not want to have to begin anew, again and again, reworking the model over a period of time, gaining the wisdom that comes from experience, and being disappointed repeatedly in humanity. They will miss all that fun stuff, not all are oblivious, but certainly, some are. I work with some.

They are fine people, my millennial co-workers, with strong morals and values. They have the capacity to work hard and care deeply about things, and not just shoes and phones and ideas that sometimes make my neck hairs stand on end.

And yes, here I am whining, but I’m not quite sure why I feel I always have to be the adult. That somehow they don’t have to go out and make a go of it, take chances, or suffer through, well, anything. They certainly can be rather lousy at failing, and so they often decide not to bother.

Experience has taught me that when you take away someones ability to make mistakes, you as well take from them their ability to learn from those mistakes.

Ah, youth, they naively think their needs are unique and don’t seem to get that sometimes we should do certain things because to not do them would affect the many far more than it affects the few, far more than it affects them now.

They don’t think ahead, or maybe when they are, all they see is themselves? I’m not sure.

I believe that one should be allowed to fall when you’re young, so you learn how to bounce back, so that you get the chance to find your meaning in life, your purpose. For it is only through those pitfalls, and blind alleyways, the financial crisis’, and of course the potential towards scurvy from lack of nutrients, that character is born, and therefore I suppose they are well fed, at the very least, so theoretically they should be able to pull their own weight.

You know, when they’re ready.

In the meantime I’ll be over here adulting and suffer through the pain in my right arse cheek because I was stubbornly working away and could think of no way to say “get your arse to work and stop chitchatting” without sounding like some screech monkey, and so continued to pull this over there, and lift that, and well you know, work. Millennials do have a fantastic work ethic generally, except when it comes to actual work, then you have to direct them to where said work is taking place.

To be fair, of course I’m not painting all of them with this same brush, but there does appear a contingent of them that are willfully oblivious, hence why I now have a shooting pain running down from my right buttocks down the back of my leg, and thus decided I needed to just let them do the work, at least for today, without me.

And so this rambling rant is at an end, back to regular programming.