More on the “Millennials”
Recalling my post from a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about the up-and-coming generation of “millennials” with my sister over the Thanksgiving holiday. Both she and I are still under 40, but she already had a horror story to tell from her experience as a public-school educator. Here it is, not verbatim but in the closest paraphrase I can manage.
At my sister’s school, the teachers work in teams — not in the classroom, but to handle administrative duties and to better track the performance of the students they share. Each team has its own leader, a sort of first- among- equals who distributes the work. One newly minted teacher, a “millennial” fresh out of college, was assigned to a group led by a veteran teacher. The veteran teacher related this conversation to my sister:
Veteran: “I need you to take care of Project X.”
Novice: “Uh, you don’t tell me what to do. You ask me what to do, and then I’ll decide whether I’m going to do it or not.”
Veteran: [Rolls eyes.] “Okaaaay. Would you please take care of Project X . . .”
After a year, the veteran teacher got involved with an outside project that ate into her time, so she offered the novice the chance to lead their team. The novice accepted, which meant that she was now the team’s liaison with the school’s principal. Which led to the following conversation:
Principal: “I need you to take care of Project X.”
Novice: “You don’t tell me what to do. You ask me what to do, and then I’ll decide whether I’m going to do it or not.”
Principal: “Excuse me?”
Novice: “It’s a generational thing. We don’t like to be told what to do. You ask me what to do, and then I’ll decide whether to do it.”
Principal: “I’m the principal of this school. That means I’m your boss. And I’m telling you what to do. You can either do it, or you can look for another job.”
Novice: [Stunned silence.]
While I’m sympathetic to the millennials’ desire to achieve work-life balance and to avoid enslavement to an organizational hierarchy, I suspect that many, many of them are running into these sorts of reality-based brick walls in their working lives now.
The comments on my earlier post tend to agree, but then again they may all be from old fogies like me. So, an appeal to the millennials out there: is this characterization accurate, or is it too much of a caricature?
Category: The working life
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Tim, you’re turning into Morley Safer before our very eyes! Reminds me of that famous anecdote of George S. Kaufman directing a new play. An actor in the cast favored “the Method” practiced by Brando et al., and when told to do something by Kaufman, asked the veteran playwright and director, “What’s my motivation?” To which Kaufman replied, “Your job.” And now, I have to get back to watching my Joe Franklin videotapes. Do you think vaudeville is really dead?