Maybe Gen-Z Isn't Missing the Plot

Capitalism did us dirty and we're frightened to admit it.

Photo by Tony Saiko on Unsplash

The other day I watched a video of a recent college graduate who filmed her getting fired and taking her managers to task for treating employees as disposable cogs. And while I agreed with her sentiment, the delivery made me cringe. The filming. The vernacular. The dramatics.

Years ago, a friend, much younger than me, asked me a question that set my heart on pause. I was in Spain snapping photos of me in Pamplona and Seville and she wondered why I had to document everything. Why did I have to live my life through a camera lens? Did I really feel what it was like to be in the place I’d read about so many years ago as a teenager in Long Island thumbing through a copy of The Sun Also Rises? Or did I live to perform for others? Had life lost its flavor if we didn’t share it with strangers online and feel the sheen of their admiration without realizing the cold air of cruelty is delivered swiftly and in equal favor?

It’s strange how I spent so much of my adult life online and now I recoil from it. Now, I’ve become that infuriating woman who wonders why the kids have to put it all out there for viewing.

Trust me, the irony is not lost on me. Next, I’ll be waving my cane around wondering why these whipper-snappers are yelling so loud and why are there footprints stomping on my lawn, ruining all the flowers? Why is the music so terrible, etc., etc.

[But really, the music is abominable. I’ve swathed myself in the time warp only Apple Music could provide with the hip hop of my teenage years, the rock and roll and grunge of my college years and returning to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath as if greeting an old friend.]

And in that time warp I recalled a woman on the verge. A woman who was excited for all the possibility. A woman who had a fancy job straight out of college with a signing bonus that helped me buy that awful granny couch for my Riverdale apartment. And then that woman became bleached and worse for wear because working, buying, consuming, preening quickly loses its flavor and then I’d spend years trying to earn more money to buy objects that never filled a whole that remained forever bottomless.

When I resigned from my last full-time job in 2013, a job that was slowly (and literally) killing me, I thought: these people are fucking crazy. You don’t need to be smart to succeed—you need to be submissive. Malleable. The gobbler of shit and harvester of eyeballs a la Succession’s Tom Wambsgans in the season finale. You don’t need to be kind to succeed. You just need to shut up, work the long hours, and suck it up, buttercup.

But did we ever ask ourselves why we always had to suck it up. Why is work something we have to endure instead of enjoy? Why is it that my generation (read: X) holds our tolerance for pain as a badge of honor? Yes, we were ignored and asked if we wanted a real reason to cry when we dared to cry. And perhaps us being ignored spawned a generation of people (read: Z) who were held too close because we hated how we always had to figure it out and go it alone.

Perhaps they saw what we saw in our parents and said fuck that chump change. I deserve better.

When I read the comments under the girl who filmed her firing, it occurred to me that many of us are using the delivery to rationalize dismissing the message. Maybe Gen-Z has a point. Maybe they’re not missing the plot but rather faltering on its execution. Now, I’m not an idiot. I’ve been working in marketing for decades. I know how a message is conveyed is often just as important as the message. But.

While we’re saying this generation is soft in corporate have we considered the fact that corporate perhaps is too hard? Why are we allowing a system to exist that expects its workers to go above and beyond without payment or appreciation or a thank you that isn’t a post on social media posturing publicly for peers, work absurd hours, consider random people an extension of their family when that family has no problem firing us if quarterly earnings take a nose-dive? Why is subjugation and shame part and parcel in us becoming adults? I wonder this now as I have fewer years ahead than I have behind me.

In my career, I’ve been thanked a handful of times for going above and beyond, over delivering. Over working. Peers of mine recommended that I give more for the same amount of money because that will set me apart. As what? A sucker. A fool. A person who can be used by the season to profit and so readily discard me when my usefulness fades. It’s one-way corporate entitlement. We expect the world of our cogs while treating them like…disposable cogs.

It’s unfortunate that the message the kids are spouting is getting lost because of the delivery. Because the message is important. Working long hours is absurd and unhealthy. Expecting overwork, over-delivery is absurd. I see this more and more as a consultant. Now I refuse to go beyond scope because it’s rarely ever paid for and rarely, if ever, appreciated. I find I want to work with fewer people because people care more about profit than sustainability. Money is the glue that binds us and being stuck and grimy and tethered can make us terribly unkind. The kind of unkind where you have no problem sitting across from someone on a screen and telling them they’ve lost their job because it’s a business decision.

The first time I fired someone I threw up in the bathroom. The second time I did it I said I never want to do this again. Find someone else to carry your sickle.

I’m severe and alienating. I was brought up in a generation (read: X) where emotion didn’t enter into business (or anything for that matter), but perhaps that binary is just as cringe as the younger generation’s penchant to document everything on social media. We can all be cringe in varying ways. The only difference lies in how we vilify others for it.

And what’s so wrong with saying a simple thank you. Telling someone you appreciate their hard work. It’s not coddling—it’s common courtesy, which much of corporate life sorely lacks. And why not change a system that seems to work for a rarefied few? Why not be more humane in how we work? Maybe we can give the kids some grace to find their way to the message or maybe we can meet them halfway and offer words of our own.

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