Millennials are struggling at work because their parents 'gave them medals for coming last'

https://twitter.com/jimpjorps/status/748894248662077440

BOOMER: here is a participation trophy
MILLENNIAL: oh
BOOMER: fuck you for taking it

voted "Simon Sinek's parents should have drowned him in the bath"

It's a great article, especially the bit where social media makes people stuuuupid but hey you guys this guy's one video had 56 million likes, and also the bit where the presumably British journalist just accepts unquestioningly the idea that our British parents, using a 'strategy', handed out 'medals' for taking part

if i've said it once i've said it a million times, all i want in this world is to get paid to write bullshit about generational differences

who the fuck is this choad

"Dad, you mean all those medals in my trophy case--they're for coming in last place?"

"They told us it was the right thing to do. We didn't realize it would turn into...this."

more hot, hot Sinek action here, if you're in the mood to be infuriated https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

I've definitely asked for a promotion only for the tit, and I'm Gen X

What is he trying to say about six-month relationships?

“If you have a new boyfriend every six months, would you really have the joy of love in a relationship?" Having never managed to stick with any one guy for even that long - completely proving his point - I can’t really answer. "

"For six months you’ll have it.

So you will have the joy of love in a relationship?

You won’t experience deep love if you change boyfriends every six months. The same goes for jobs,” he says.

I guess not.

I've definitely asked for a promotion only for the tit, and I'm Gen X

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 8 February 2017 14:41 (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This

But also kids suck in the workplace this must be acknowledged but also this may not be entirely related to their generation as opposed to them being twenty

voted "Simon Sinek's parents should have drowned him in the bath"

― Dick Hole Son (Noodle Vague)

co-sign

"They only want the tit"

dont want tropy want tit

Fucking hell this smug twat and his smug fucking wrong face

kids would learn more if we gave out judgment trophies

"Lowest batting average in league"
"Biggest choke job in playoffs"
"Most traveling violations in one game"

The "Jesus Christ, Billy, We Must Have Run This Drill Fifty Times at Practice" Award.

the problem is clearly that as babies they got tit just for showing up

this is probably accurate, imo

In the TED video I skipped randomly ahead and he was explaining how people bought into an entire Apple ecosystem but not Gateway or Dell and how Dell's MP3s flopped - it was about leadership and branding and totally not that from the intro of OS X to the iPhone, Apple products were a thousand times less frustrating and annoying to use than those of their competitors.

except for itunes

Chances of this guy (and other 'Kids have not been made to feel bad enough for losing' guys) being an abuser?

The fuck

What makes me pose that question is like, pretty obviously the mass handing out of participation awards is a fiction. But in so far as it did happen, it's not exactly a stupid idea - rewarding effort put in and sportsmanship etc even if you didn't actually win. The rationale is there and p good and these guys just don't seem to see it at all which is a red flag, no? It seems to be all about this prime directive that kids who lose must be made to feel bad, ostensibly because they'll then stop losing, but really ...

Well you don't have to worry about not winning the long jump buck because youre still a mile away from landing

second to last option is otm honestly

nb by 'guys' I'm talking about the many public speakers, ted talkers etc (yet who don't have much qualifications in childcare) who go around pushing this line professionally, make it a key thing. Aware the idea floats around in general convo and not talking about people who'd share this on fb without thinking

Well I mean he sounds like a selfish authoritarian-leaning asshole and a lot of abusers are also selfish authoritarian-leaning assholes, but Idk if I would go all the way there from this. But I do agree that not normalizing being bullied and not ceding ground to people who are like "TOUGHEN UP, KID. NO ONE IS GOING TO CARE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS SO GET OVER IT" is the right thing to do imo. I've experienced it too much in life and now in my workplace that the winner is the person who can hit hardest and/or doesn't care how much damage they do on the way. That's not how decisions should be made.

depending on which article you read I was born either in the first few months of Being A Millennial or the tail end of Gen X, but when I read things like this

“Millennials say they want feedback at work but what they really want is praise and to be told they’re doing well. When you give them negative feedback, they cry or quit.”

it is clear, fuck yeah I'm the first millennial

on the other hand, clearly no other generation has been insecure, self-interested, unsure what to do with their lives, and kind of clueless until their 30s 40s retirement death

are we really going with 'generation z' for today's youth

millennials respond to the same principles detailed by dale carnegie in 1936 news at 11

Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say "You're wrong."

the silent generation are such spoiled children - they won't even listen to you if you tell them they're wrong

Begin in a friendly way.

in my day we could just be jerks and we'd get what we wanted

Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.

yack yack yack these silent generationers just want to talk all the time

Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.

they need to be babied bc they were all told that they were special

Appeal to the nobler motives.

they need to feel like they're making a difference in the world

Begin with praise and honest appreciation.

they all received too many participation trophies as children

Praise every improvement.

god what whiny snowflakes

Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.

in my day we could beat our employees and it would only improve efficiency

as a card-carrying holder of a last-place trophy, i say: take it from my cold dead hands.

My first-grade soccer team all received participation trophies. Even at the age of 7, we were all aware it was a sham.

talk about participation trophies i had numerous first place and second place team trophies from youth sports leagues bc i was probably the worst or second worst player in the entire league so i was frequently on teams w/ the best players (to even the team out). i spent most of my time on the bench but i got those sweet triple the size of the participation trophy trophies.

statistically one year i had the highest % of getting on base from getting hit by the ball bc my reflexes were so slow i could never get out of the way of an errant pitch. i hated playing baseball bc all it meant to me was getting hit by pitches and standing in right field praying they didn't hit the ball to me.

why take all this out on millennials when the perpetrator is clearly Big Trophy

i got trophies for winning, which is why i am so very good at work

As a child, i got trophies for winning, and gold stars for accomplishing tasks, but from a young age I saw through them as tawdry trinkets that were meant to distract me from the meaningless drudgery that is work in adulthood.

sarahell, you sound like you were a smart kid

i was a smart kid, and am now an underachieving mediocre adult.

heck yeah

c'est la vie

I was definitely under the impression that being an astronaut or president or whatever was not only possible, but I would be an abject failure if I didn't pick one of these pinnacle careers and succeed at it

there are people in space, but i am here on my ass

<3 my ppl

mh - that is a very millenial attitude. my generation wasn't going to be astronauts or presidents, we were going to have shittier lives than our parents and that's even taking into account our commitment to just saying no to drugs

Trumpism is just all the shitty things I assumed the future would be as a teenager finally coming to pass.

xp as i've repeatedly mentioned i did go to a smart kid school and a bunch of my peers really are doing pretty crazy stuff, so maybe it held partially true

When I was growing up we got participation ribbons - there was no question that was a lark at the time

a cautionary tale: when i was a kid i always got "most improved" trophies in sports. my dad, being an inept parent, always made a point of telling me that i got that trophy because i sucked when i started the season and i sucked when i finished. and look how worthless of an adult i turned out to be.

idk i heard you're pretty grebt

but he's "late" great

nah i'm actually pretty worthless

also i always give all of my students praise and passing grades no matter how bad they suck at physics and chemistry because fuck the meritocracy

I'm all right, but I'll never live up to my potential

i'm worse than all of you, FACT

glad darragh appreciated my meme-appropriating soft parody

tlg has good music opinions. sophistication and refinement besuiting a scholar

My substantial self-regard was never amplified by any participation trophies, I can assure you.

there was a brief period at my high school where we got a letter grade for effort and a number grade for actual results/being correct, where A1 was the best of both, so it immediately became a competition with my friends who could get a C1 or even a D1. the more our failing school tried to codify any of its systems and the more they officiously pretended they were doing something other than wasting our time, the more viciously we sabotaged their efforts. lots of people who deal with children professionally are imo very bad at dealing with them, esp children who are not on board with whatever activity is being peddled, and in that context participation trophies can be just another piece of bullshit that seems dishonest & disrespectful. idk if that's really a generation-wide phenomena tho

I remember some of my parents' books which I read as a kid had bookplates in the front saying that they'd been presented with the book for an exemplary attendance record at school, but that's obviously a very different thing from an award just for turning up.

Response to this by Abi Wilkinson in The Guardian today

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/09/millennials-lazy-snowflakes-work-young-people

Think she's right, but would be even better if her paper weren't still doing unpaid internships.

xp my grandma had one for going to sunday school. seems like there's some implicit message that eternal salvation rested on dutiful attendance, but then, that probably is part of it. I think I'm going full circle now and think that turning up can often be good in itself and thus is to be encouraged, and that mb just being there is the only meaningful thing

that's definitely my approach to work

on the other hand, people who dutifully slog in while ill and make everyone else ill too are the worst (glares across the office), stop training them to expect awards

on first skim, Guardian article largely otm

lol @ teaching kids winning is anything other than deferred losing tbh

I work when I feel like it

(i.e. when I want the tit)

Helpful

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ

That is a genuine difference in the workplace experiences of millennials, of course – we’re statistically far more likely to be employed on zero-hours, casual or freelance terms. Sinek’s suggestion that we bounce from job to job because we’re impatient and overly demanding made me chuckle, given that most people I know who change jobs frequently don’t do so out of choice.

“If you have a new boyfriend every six months, would you really have the joy of love in a relationship?” he asks. “For six months you’ll have it. You won’t experience deep love if you change boyfriends every six months. The same goes for jobs.” I can’t help thinking that the analogy would be more accurate if the boyfriend in question were emotionally abusive, isolated you from your friends, demanded your attention at all hours of the day and then ended up being the one to dump you anyway.

rmde this guy's armchair sociology. dude is lucky to have a career where he can make vague generational statements and that qualifies as "work".

i love how it is the fault of parents and not, hey, maybe employers are the entitled ones who think workers should be fine with being exploited in that post-2008 way?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

they can’t waste another month of their lives if they’re not changing the world, but it takes time

Could it be that millennials are struggling at work because they are employers give them badly structured jobs, where they are expected to elevate their jobs above their personal lives, plus they are poorly managed and are given insufficient resources to successfully do their jobs? I mean, it's conceivable to me those might be more relevant to their struggles than the stupid trophies they got a couple of decades ago.

why explain behaviors in terms of proximate realities when you can appeal to myths of natal destinies

Maybe millennials aren't struggling at jobs. What exactly is the evidence for this assertion?

A veritable dumpsterload of thinkpieces, Mordy!

all the millennials I encounter at work are pretty productive

when you've only got three jobs you can't afford to lose any of them

yeah i don't know any millennials struggling at jobs. Like besides the fact that it's a bizarre generalization, maybe it's not even accurate. If anything I'd guess millennials are doing pretty well at modern corporate office jobs since they've been socialized to enter this economy, beaten down by the economy to accept what they can get, and are extremely tech savvy which is the primary skill needed to be a success in the current job market.

there was some sitcom on cbs with mclovin and joel mchale and it is about lazy millenials or something, it basically made me want to burn down my tv

also i always give all of my students praise and passing grades no matter how bad they suck at physics and chemistry because fuck the meritocracy

― the late great, Wednesday, February 8, 2017 7:05 PM (six days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

HI SAME also i love you man

hi five!!

If senior management / budget holders would let me employ 20-somethings (who are often fucking great) for more than 3-6 months at a time I'm sure they'd have, you know, more commitment and all that.

what did senior mgmt say when you told them that Nick?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

openly wanting the tit FTW

FTT

Millennials everywhere live for the tit

participation tit

there was some sitcom on cbs with mclovin and joel mchale and it is about lazy millenials or something, it basically made me want to burn down my tv

― if young satchmo don't trumpet i'm gon shoot you (m bison), Tuesday, February 14, 2017 11:28 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's unbelievably bad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMij2R-XL9E

dear god that show looks awful. as if the writers googled "millenials" and weren't allowed to use any jokes outside of the first page of search results

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9Ja47HU0AAaTOw.jpg

making dance relevant

http://shittynewyorkercartooncaptions.tumblr.com/post/157616365375

haha

Any workplace that makes overtures toward improving coworker relationships through the magic of choreography is a workplace that's going to be receiving a resignation letter from moi toot sweet.

This is also why they don't appreciate ABBA iirc.

https://twitter.com/JosieBeckerFC/status/854059301588971523

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9o6Z3BVwAA6TRf.jpg:large