Posted on 06/27/2005 6:36:38 AM PDT by GPBurdell
By MARTHA IRVINE, AP National WriterSun Jun 26, 4:43 PM ET
Evan Wayne thought he was prepared for anything during a recent interview for a job in radio sales. Then the interviewer hit the 24-year-old Chicagoan with this: "So, we call you guys the 'Entitlement Generation,'" the baby boomer executive said, expressing an oft-heard view of today's young work force. "You think you're entitled to everything."
Such labeling is, perhaps, a rite of passage for every crop of twentysomethings. In their day, baby boomers were rabble-rousing hippies, while Gen Xers were apathetic slackers.
Now, deserved or not, this latest generation is being pegged, too — as one with shockingly high expectations for salary, job flexibility and duties but little willingness to take on grunt work or remain loyal to a company.
"We're seeing an epidemic of people who are having a hard time making the transition to work — kids who had too much success early in life and who've become accustomed to instant gratification," says Dr. Mel Levine, a pediatrics professor at the University of North Carolina Medical School and author of a book on the topic called "Ready or Not, Here Life Comes."
While Levine also notes that today's twentysomethings are long on idealism and altruism, "many of the individuals we see are heavily committed to something we call 'fun.'"
He partly faults coddling parents and colleges for doing little to prepare students for the realities of adulthood and setting the course for what many disillusioned twentysomethings are increasingly calling their "quarter-life crisis."
Meanwhile, employers from corporate executives to restaurateurs and retailers are frustrated.
"It seems they want and expect everything that the 20- or 30-year veteran has the first week they're there," says Mike Amos, a Salt Lake City-based franchise consultant for Perkins Restaurants.
Just about any twentysomething will tell you they know someone like this, and may even have some of those high expectations themselves.
Wayne had this response for his interviewer at the radio station: "Maybe we WERE spoiled by your generation. But I think the word 'entitled' isn't necessarily the word," he said. "Do we think we're deserving if we're going to go out there and bust our ass for you? Yes."
He ended up getting the job — and, as he starts this month, is vowing to work hard.
Some experts who study young people think having some expectations, and setting limits with bosses, isn't necessarily negative.
"It's true they're not eager to bury themselves in a cubicle and take orders from bosses for the next 40 years, and why should they?" asks Jeffrey Arnett, a University of Maryland psychologist who's written a book on "emerging adulthood," the period between age 18 and 25. "They have a healthy skepticism of the commitment their employers have to them and the commitment they owe to their employers."
Many young people also want to avoid becoming just another cog who works for a faceless giant.
Anthony DeBetta, a 23-year-old New Yorker, works with other twentysomethings at a small marketing firm — and says the company's size makes him feel like he can make a difference.
"We have a vested interest in the growth of this firm," he says.
Elsewhere, Liz Ryan speculates that a more relaxed work environment at the company she runs — no set hours and "a lot of latitude in how our work gets done" — helps inspire her younger employees.
"Maybe twentysomethings have figured out something that boomers like me took two decades to piece together: namely, that there's more to life than by-the-book traditional career success," says Ryan, the 45-year-old CEO of a Colorado-based company called WorldWIT, an on and offline networking organization for professional women.
As much as some employers would like to resist the trend, a growing number are searching for ways to retain twentysomething employees — and to figure out what makes them tick.
"The manager who says I don't have time for that is going to be stuck on the endless turnover treadmill," says Eric Chester, a Colorado-based consultant who works with corporations to understand what he calls "kidployees," ages 16 to 24.
At Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, for instance, administrators have developed an internship with mentoring and more training for young nurses that has curbed turnover by more than 50 percent and increased job satisfaction.
Amos at Perkins Restaurants says small changes also have helped — loosening standards on piercings or allowing cooks to play music in the kitchen.
And Muvico, a company with movie theaters in a few Southern states, gives sporting goods and music gift certificates to young staffers who go beyond minimum duties.
"If you just expect them to stand behind a register and smile, they're not going to do that unless you tell them why that's important and then recognize them for it," says John Spano, Muvico's human resources director.
Still others are focusing on getting twentysomethings more prepared.
Neil Heyse, an instructor at Pennsylvania's Villanova University, has started a company called MyGuidewire to provide career coaching for young people.
"It's a hot issue and I think it's getting hotter all the time," Heyse says of work readiness. "There's a great amount of anxiety beneath the surface."
___
On the Net:
Chester's site: http://www.generationwhy.com
Heyse's site: http://www.myguidewire.com/
___
Martha Irvine is a national writer specializing in coverage of people in their 20s and younger. She can be reached at mirvine(at)ap.org
In return, I get to retire in 2032, the day SS goes bankrupt.
So, yeah, I have my own money, and my own plans. Because I work my tail off.
Born 1962.
I was on the 49th floor of WTC 2. It was NOT fun.
Translation: "Pay me because I breathe."
More like $300k, actually.
And I never expect to see a DIME in return.
I'm a boomer.
So get off your lazy but and VOTE!
Yeah, it's called income. *I'm* entitled to *my* income. Me, not a bunch of geezers who decided before I was even born that they didn't have to save for retirement because, hey!, they could just get the government to take *my* money from me and give it to them. But I don't blame the boomers as much as I blame the geezers who *started* this welfare state. I mean really, the boomers haven't even started retiring yet and we're already trillions in debt thanks to SS. How could that be the boomers fault or the fault of younger folks? It's not. It will be their fault however once they start living off the taxpayers just like their parents and grandparents have been doing for all these years. Really, I resent *anyone* who thinks he has a right to live off the fruits of someone else's labor. And without even an ouce of shame? *That's* what's really pathetic about this entire mess.
i'm a Gen Xer. Went out on my own at 27 y/o and would never work for someone again unless I was paid big big dollars.
I see no problem with young people not feeling a sense of loysalty to a company if there is no mutual feeling.
The old ways are dead. Its kill or be killed.
BS. I started with nothing in my own business and did it out of my parents' basement. Three years later, I own my office, have a good clientele, and am rocking and rolling. It takes blood tears toil and sweat.
I would NEVER work for someone again!
My first job out of law school was for a baby boomer WASP from CT. He was an arrogant liberal jerk. He looked at me like just another wop, but F'em, I quit, started my own practice, and never looked back.
I get into argumemts withg my boomer dad all the time. I want to be left alone and left for dead if I fail. I don't want anyone to pay for my care, no one to pay for my welfare, I want to be left the F%^^ alone to make a decent legal living not having to subsidize old peoples' drug habit.
I don't want New T Gingrich or Clinton deciding what I can and can not watch. Just leave me alone!
Boomers are typically weenies who are gutless wonders.
They are truly a cynical bunch who are ruining our country through a variety of venues.
And, for the record, I've voted in 4 elections now, and the only one I *slightly* regret is voting for Perot in '92, since it allowed x42 into the White House.
You think you will have paid in more?
Guess again - I got to start paying in 1974. Been paying 15% of my income ever since.
Please, give it back.
And stop whining about how you contributed 10 years, at your minimum-wage job.
I really have no more patience for it.
More beer.
Well, after working from 7-7, seven days a week, for the past two months, I think I am entitled to SOMETHING, other than grief from my boss.
What? 15% of my wages? Damn right I'm entitled to them - I earned them after all.
How have you been?
I work for myself and really resent the lazy entitlement types who are nowhere to be found 7 at night or on the weekend while I try to scratch out a living.
I went to a wedding and got into an argument with some liberal B%^^& from Brown U. who told me I was greedy and only out for myself and to think of myself as part of some global community.
I told her the Bronx NY and my monthly bills are my global community. I was actually scared that people like this vote and really want to punish productive people.
The boomers and older generation are just feeling foolish at how scammed they were by this whole ponzie scheme and resent that we figured it out very early on. I worked for a Boomer who was a liberal arrogant WASP'y jerk Iwanted to bring down to the Bronx for a few lessons.
Theelderly are sadly mind controled and hopeless in this whole debate. We, on the other hand, have big fat bulls eyes on our chests.
Late wave boomers won't see it either. I have been working since 1976 and won't see a dime of SSA -- SSA does NOT factor into my retirement planning. If it is still around, I will use it as a windfall to buy hats or something.
But the point of the article is that Entitlement Generation kids had that stupid "self esteem" thing going -- awards for everyone! -- and now have to actually prove themselves and they are collapsing.
If I have the chance, I will speed this along. I had to work a lot of crap jobs to get where I am -- it helped build my character. If these poo-buck kids hold their hands out to me they will get them slapped -- HARD.
Hey, good for you. At what point did I knock it? It's just not for me... is that alright by you?
Knock what?
Owning one's own business.
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