Entitlement has become a dirty word these days, especially when you pit a Baby Boomer with a Gen Y.
When I asked my audience recently what words first comes to mind to describe Gen Y (born between 1980 and 2000), a Baby Boomer (born between 1946 and 1954) shouted out “entitled!” “I’ve worked hard every single day since I graduated high school,” she said angrily. “And these damn kids expect to get everything handed to them today.”
Just then, a phone rang. It was the angry Baby Boomer’s. Without missing a beat, she picked it up and started talking. She didn’t turn it off. She didn’t apologize. She didn’t even tell the caller, “Sorry, I can’t talk now.” She just started carrying on a conversation, before striding out of the room.
In her absence and silence, a young man in the last row raised his hand. “Can I speak freely?” he asked politely. “Absolutely,” I assured him.
“While I agree me and my friends have had a pretty good life,” he said, “I certainly don’t feel very entitled. I’ve got over $20,000 in school debt and I can’t find a job. My generation (Gen Y) is about to inherit a country whose infrastructure is failing, its financial system is rattled, Social Security is on the brink of insolvency, and even basic health care is unaffordable.
"I’m 29 and still living at home to save money and can barely make ends meet. I can’t get a decent job because so many Baby Boomers can’t stop working. When Boomers are finally ready or forced to retire, my generation will be forced to pay more taxes to bail out Social Security and Medicare. I watched the town halls last year. It seems to me a lot of those people felt pretty entitled.”
“My generation doesn’t feel entitled to anything. We just want a fair chance to earn our keep and make the world a better and safer place to live. We’re not the generation looking for a hand-out. What’s wrong with that?”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this he-said-she-said disagreement … and it won’t be the last. In fact, many older generations might blow it off as a pretty common sentiment historically bestowed upon the succeeding generations by their predecessors. What’s different this time is that, for the first time in recent history, the pot might be calling the kettle black — a succeeding generation may not be inheriting a world and workplace better than when their predecessors become the landlords of the future. With nearly 10,000 Baby Boomers each day becoming eligible for Social Security and Medicare, the biggest entitlement payoffs in history are just a year or so away.
In many respects, the departing tenants of the workplace — the Baby Boomers — are leaving their working quarters and communities for the past four decades in ruins. Despite a few decades of excesses, they still feel entitled to a hefty return on their security deposit plus interest.
Just about then, our phone-talking-Baby-Boomer returned to her seat. “I had to take that call,” explaining her actions. “It was important,” she said as if that made her rudeness okay.
A few workshop participants turned to the young man and smiled. I nodded, acknowledging his point too. It left us asking, “Who really is the 'entitlement' generation?”
Email
ShareThis