People at the tail end of GenX probably have more in common with early Millennials than they do those who were born in the 60s, and those born in the early 1980s couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to grow up 10 years later.
These older Millennials share the stereotype that isn’t them at all – and why it really gets their goat.
1. It’s not apples to apples.
The Works Secretary where I work almost flipped her s**t when I asked her why they still force old school financial thinking on us when it is clearly not working.
A lot of boomers going into pension have low levels of life satisfaction, how do they expect us to enjoy any at all if we are expected to deny ourselves while in working age by putting as much as 20% of our TGP into our pension funds.
I can’t afford to go on vacations to nice places anymore, the diesel cost alone is sky high (I live in a country where we don’t fly everywhere).
My parents are going on pension in July. They’ll move 1300km (about 800 miles) from where I am. Just getting there and back again will cost me about $270 US in gas money, which is about a 5th of what I take home at the end of the month. I barely save that a month after all my deductions.
When my parents were my age they had two kids, a large house, a caravan and a boat. I have a tent that I inherited.
We are not in the same boat.
2. This just made me laugh.
“yOu CaN’t UsE a RoTaRy PhOnE!?!?”
And you can’t use a f*ckin telegraph. Technology changes ya quack.
3. It doesn’t make sense.
That people don’t own a house because they’re “lazy”.
I have taken the time to explain the loss of buying power, stagnant wages, automation, contract employees, lack of job security, cost of living in other areas, etc. play way more into it.
4. They DO have manners.
It really pisses me off how older generations constantly perpetuate the idea that millennials have no manners and are just inherently s**tty and rude. I have worked in retail, a call center, and social services for my entire working life, so I have communicated with a lot of different people from all age groups and all walks of life.
Without a doubt, there is an absolute and distinct difference in “manners” between millennials and folks from older generations. Of course I can’t paint everyone with a broad brush, but if I had to list the 100 most entitled, bats**t crazy, unbelievably rude people I have ever spoken to, maybe only 10 of them would be millennials.
5. Times have changed.
I h**e that argument “I only made this much money when I was younger” like people don’t understand inflation at all.
I was complaining about minimum wage a few years ago and my mom said “well I only made two dollars an hour at my first job!” and then I had to point out to her that 2 bucks back then is $15/hr now.
6. Kind of hurts your head…and your heart.
“You must go to college and get a degree. You don’t want to be flipping burgers or changing the oil in some rich guy’s car.”
does that, incurs a lot of debt
“These irresponsible millennials and their elitist liberal educations! If they’d been smart, they’d go to community college and transfer/go to trade school. They won’t just take a job, any job to pay the bills. They could flip burgers. Why should we pay for their mistakes?”
7. Just do the math.
I work at a law firm. One of the senior attorneys tried to tell me that young people today shouldn’t be complaining about wages because when he got his first job as an attorney he only made $15k a year. That was in the early 1960’s.
Today, that salary is equivalent to… $132k. That’s over 2.5 times what I make. He was able to buy a house and support a wife and two children on his salary, where I and my husband both work and still aren’t able to afford the down payment on a house.
But heaven forbid we have a problem with it.
8. You can’t have it both ways.
THIS!!
Boomers: Stupid lazy millennials. Going to school and going into debt. Stop being entitled. Work any job!! Flip burgers/ Do retail work if it pays the bills.
Also Boomers: Burger flippers/Retail work are jobs for High School aged people! They deserve slave wages and if they don’t like it go to school and get a better job.
9. No time to fight the man.
That we don’t work hard. We’re the most overworked and underpaid generation, I have a bachelor’s and master’s and $30k of debt and I worked TWO jobs while in school and couldn’t afford to pay for it. I’ve been busting my a** for a decade making $10-$13 an hour, working over 40 hours a week. No benefits.
And the younger generation can suck my d*ck for claiming we aren’t radical enough, for the love of God we are simply trying to survive.
10. No easy solution.
Being blamed for not buying things. Like, Millennials are k**ling X product line. Welp, the Boomers who won’t retire are clinging to the top level jobs, so we don’t have the opportunities they did to move up and earn more money, so we have to be choosy about the things we spend our money on.
Not to mention, most of us are trying to be mindful of our consumerism as a whole, not buying tons of stuff for the sake of having tons of stuff.
11. True.
We are what the previous generation made us and we’ve been shaped by the world we were raised in and then we are attacked for who we’ve (been perceived to) become as a result.
It’s like getting angry at the puddle of milk because you threw the carton on the floor.
12. They’re adults now, too.
The lack of respect we get really.
Older generations getting upset that we are starting to get into politics at the National level.
Y’all realize we are in our mid-late 30’s now right? And we straddle the cultural divide. We grew up without the internet and cell phones. Sure, the more well off amongst us had a computer and internet maybe by the mid 90’s but the younger generation can’t grasp how different it was.
We spent our formative years with a budding technology and a lot of us figured it out and embraced it. So, why shouldn’t we be the ones who are helping to move it forward? We see both ends, the magic of it because of how new it was and how ever changing, and we also know how to fix things.
We started with command lines and UNIX, Atari’s and Nintendo’s, chat rooms, IRC, some of the first online multiplayer game’s (thank you half life and quake), but we also grew up being able to go outside with friends all day without anyone worrying about us. We were the last generation to get that experience.
13. You can’t convince them.
I just shoveled like 20 of my elderly neighbors driveways this morning after snowpocalypse.
By Wednesday, while chatting they’ll talk about those lazy millennials like they’re still 20 year olds. Bro, I’m 38 and got 4 kids and own the biggest house of this block. Am millennial. Can not convince them of this, ever.
I know that I’m at the older end of Millennial, maybe in a micro-generation like Xennial or “Oregon Trail Generation”. But most lists out me as a millennial, with it starting in 81. Generations are kind of bullsh%t wishy-washy stuff anyways.
Plus right as I was getting into adulting (graduated college, party and focus on job a few years, then start transitioning into family life around 10-12 years ago).
That’s right at the time when the “Millennials k**ling X” meme was starting up, as email fwd’s right as I was of age to start doing those things. So, I feel like I am lumped in there since when the criticisms started, a lot of it was blasted right at my age group at the time.
They just have kept blasting the same age just-out-of-college age group as Millennials for over a decade now, lol.
14. Telling it like he sees it.
That we’re entitled. Having worked with the general public for over a decade, I can assure you the overwhelming majority of entitled and rude behaviour comes from the over 50s crowd.
Edit: also they keep telling us to be more financially responsible but when we are they’re like NO, NOT LIKE THAT.
Can’t wait to tell my judgmental extended family that I’m having a backyard wedding because I don’t have 30k just lying around – my parents are already pissed about it.
15. I mean. Just sayin.
“Participation trophies”–these were for our BOOMER PARENTS, not for us! And now WE are blamed by THEM for being entitled because we got them!
I’ve gotten into a shouting match with an older guy over them before.
“I was 10 your generation was the one handing them out dips**t.
16. A fundamental difference.
I’m mid 30s and have had a boomer try to use that to invalidate all of my arguments. “Yeah well at least my generation never ate soap” mine didn’t either, and if some of them had, that wouldn’t say anything about me.
I don’t dislike all baby boomers. My late father was one and he was great! The guy from the conversation was trying to claim the fact that he was a boomer made him better than everyone else in the discussion (not in so many words, of course).
I attacked his points, he attacked “my” generation.
17. That they don’t have manners.
I h**e that millennials get pinned as being addicted to their phones. Like, always behind a screen and not interacting with the real world.
I for one try really hard to have good phone etiquette and what I’ve noticed is, boomers can be really bad at this. Some of the older people in my office and family are the worst offenders when it comes to texting at the table or just checking out on social media.
18. Kids these days.
Technically it’s like 39 year olds to 22 year olds.
That range needs to be split in two. I’m 35 and don’t know wtf the 26 year olds I work with are talking about half the time.
19. People have the wrong age in mind.
That we don’t take our jobs seriously. I had to sit my peer (55+) down and tell him that the millennials he was bitching about were the same age as the “very qualified and mission focused” person he’s been working with for the past decade.
We’re* upper management.
*me and colleague in story specifically, not a generalization on millennials, to clarify
20. Get with the program.
When people call teens and early 20s millennials. That was like 10-15 years ago.
I’ve seen old people refer to generation x members down to junior high students as “millennials”, it just means “person under 50 who I don’t like”, apparently.
21. They’re doing their best.
The stereotype that a lot of millennials are struggling with money because they’re “lazy and entitled” is ridiculous.
Look at the average wage vs. the cost of rent, health care, and higher education now, vs. what it was a few decades ago. Boomers had it far easier than we did but act like our generation’s struggles just boil down to a lack of hard work.
Also, the “participation trophy” meme, aside from being largely bulls**t anyway, raises the question: whose generation was giving out the participation trophies? Why would you blame the kids who received them?
22. It’s really not that hard.
This. It’s so aggravating that people use “millennial” as a slur for any spoiled naive youth. I’m a 39 year-old elder-millennial with back pain. The youngest millennials are in their mid-twenties.
It’s pedantic but it drives me up the wall how lazy people seem to assume anyone younger than they are is a “Millennial.” I’m sure my Gen-X brother doesn’t enjoy being called a “Boomer.”
23. Working from home is a joke.
Like many, I am working from home. I’ll get a call from my mom “hey you are not working now, go do something for me”. Thanks, working from home is waaaay shi**er than going to “real” work, at least for me.
I do fit the stereotype of hating talking on the phone 🙂
24. It’s a new dawn.
I, for one, am tired of hearing about the things we’ve “k**led”.
Tastes change all the time, this is not new.
25. We had to teach ourselves.
When we are looked down upon for needing to use YouTube, etc. for learning tasks (e.g. changing a tyre) that our parents were taught by our grandparents but the former never took the time to teach us.
Looking down on someone for anything that they haven’t yet been taught but are trying to learn is just about the stupidest thing I’ve heard.
It’s not their fault that no one had taught them the thing yet, and they are going out of their way to teach themselves. What is wrong with that?
26. The man has a point.
It’s actually interesting, imo. We’ve got to have one of the most discriminating tastes of any generation in a long time.
We just don’t settle for s**t we’re not happy with if there are other options that suit our tastes better. And what does that mean?
Sorry cable, streaming is better. Sorry garbage chain restaurants, smaller niche restaurants are better. Sorry napkin industry, I’ve got a roll of paper towels.
Sorry Harley Davidson, I’ve never seen nor do I connect with Easy Rider. Sorry cruise industry…gross.
27. They’re not doing nothing all day.
I’m getting really tired of hearing about us lying around expecting handouts and not working. Especially when it’s a situation where the person saying it is standing in a room with a lot of millennials, all of whom have jobs, which is every single time I’ve heard this said in real life.
Like, who here is lying around doing nothing? Whose your example? Oh it’s your neighbour’s best friend’s cousins son, he doesn’t have a job and lies on the couch all day. Okay.
28. Preach!
We have an unprecedented level of choice and information. In previous generations, what you purchased was limited to what was available in your local area. Now we can search the world, find exactly what we want and have it delivered tomorrow, so why settle?
We’re not picky, other generations were just settling for whatever sh%t was put in front of them cause they had fewer options available. We were raised and became a adults during a time where consumers had more options. Funnily enough my wife and I have switched both of our parents to Roku/Chromecast and streaming services and not cable.
Seeing our Hulu/Sling/Netflix/Disney+ package for ~$80/m vs their cable packages for $220/m was a simple choice. Especially seeing as how the bulk of the channels on cable are filled with BS that you never watch.
29. Their time is coming.
as an american, its basically that we’re inheriting a system that nobody trusts us to run. all the people who represent us are 2-3 times older than us, the older generations are refusing or unable to retire which is preventing us from actually entering the job market.
30. The truth of the matter.
We can’t afford houses because apparently we spend too much on avocado toast.
No, in the 80s and 90s houses were about 3 to 4 times the average annual income. Now it’s close to 10 (at least in my part of the world).
31. This drives me insane and I’m not even a Millennial.
The use of the term “millennial” to refer to the general “young person.”
32. They’re not generic.
When someone makes mention of some “challenge” teenagers are doing like eating tide pods and people are like “Ugg, millennials.”
Uhm, no. Just because 4-5 people did something stupid and then the news decided to take it and run with it and make it sound way more wide spread than it is, doesn’t mean you get to generalize a whole generation.
Secondly, millennials are practically the age of the parents of the tik tok generation. It’s not a generic term for any young person doing something you don’t like.
As a late GenXer (Xennial for life) I can relate.
What’s the stereotype about your generation that you can’t stand? Share it with us in the comments!
