Understanding Millennials

Daren Todd

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That sure explains a lot :D So, to correct this, the kids need to be knocked back to the stone age, take away the participation medals, and apply boot to booty :D:D:D

My kids are millennia. So I could go on for days, about some of the fights we have had, and some of the conversations we have had. We tried not to do most of those mistakes in the videos. But certain things the kids see from there friends, so our kids would start throwing that stuff around. Like suzy's parents bought her a car and are paying all the bills, so "we" needed to do the same thing.

Johnny is getting a free ride at home, so I get the same thing!!!! And like I say, I could go on for days :rolleyes:

Needless to say, there were some disappointed kids at our house when they didn't get handed something, got knocked back to the stone age because of attitude, and actually had to work for and earn there privileges :cool: Yes, I was that a##hole that would leave for work with all the power cables, and connection cables for all devices in the house if a kid was grounded, or suspended from school for something, or too sick to go to school, or work :cool:
 

Josef

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Take them to a marine recruiter and they will find themselves fairly quick, be able to buy a car, pay their bills, all that.
 

Tooljunkie

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Many different views regarding this. Its difficult to implement change in my household,my wife always thought taking away things was wrong. "How do you like me now?"

Harsh reality, which describes my life. Just wanted my kids to experience doing without. Til a couple days ago when i (in no uncertain terms)explained to my son how things were going to be.

Curious what the next generation will bring us...
 

Daren Todd

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Take them to a marine recruiter and they will find themselves fairly quick, be able to buy a car, pay their bills, all that.
Army worked wonders for knocking the punk out of my son :D I handed him a choice around 6 years ago. We had just let him move back in after kicking him out for a year over drugs. Ran out of places to couch surf. Stipulation was absolutely no drugs, and he had to get is act together if he was to move back in. Found drug paraphenalia two weeks later.

Walked into the house, tossed it into his lap. Told him he either talks to a recruiter and sign up for the military first thing in the morning, or pack up and get out within the hour ;)

He shipped to Georgia a month later for boot camp. And had some proud parents when he graduated :D
 

Yooper

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First part of his speech made a lot of sense. But he lost me when he played the 'victim' card and said it was up to us and corporations to understand them and make it right. No, it's up to them to understand the world and fix their own problems, just like every other generation had to. Life isn't always easy, but it is what you make of it.
 

m32825

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D2Cat: thanks for posting this, watched it with the family and it resulted in some good conversation.

Yooper: I'm on the same page. The individual always has a choice on how they respond to a situation. Some of those millennials will develop better work/people skills than their peers and they will be in demand... same as it ever was. On the other hand, companies that can figure out how to work more effectively with millennials may stand to benefit (but they're going to make their decision on a cost/benefit analysis).

-- Carl
 

pendoreille

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Take them to a marine recruiter and they will find themselves fairly quick, be able to buy a car, pay their bills, all that.
I think we need to bring back the draft. If we do not need the military build up then community service. I fired my grandboy painting my house. Walked away when I was explaining how I wanted stuff done and started texting and chuckling. once okay....twice tried to explain what was wrong with that and the third time I paid his gas money to get home. That was last July. It hurt....he is just starting to talk to me now.
 

sheepfarmer

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It is an interesting question that gets more complicated if you are faced with coping with a large number of tnese millenials, or the kids raised by helicopter parents. I tend to think like yooper, and taught accordingly when faced with 110 students who were old enough to be called adults. Many were emotionally mature since the ages ranged from 20 to 50. But the dynamics of a whole group that do everything together from 8am to 5 gets a little weird (this is professional school with fixed curriculum), and they build little things into major bruhahas by discussing it endlessly. The climate in your classroom can change dramatically if they convince themselves they have been treated badly, and messes up the experience for the mature students as well. So teaching becomes more like herd health or crowd control. In the end I was happiest if I managed exams very carefully. I used the whole grading scale which was a tough experience for kids used to getting only A's or B's, but was careful to throw out questions that too many students missed under the assumption that they were not well written or tne material was not well taught. That helped a lot. I could teach challenging material and the good students got it, but the classroom, both lecture and lab, was not full of sour complaining students. I made class rules according to college policies and stuck to them. 1-4 on average might fail the course, which meant they had to repeat it, which cost them time and money, and some people in the college thought no one should fail, but usually the ones I failed were also doing poorly in other classes.

So the challenge for a company of any sort is to manage this population when there are too many to fire them all!
 

Daren Todd

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We've had to change our hiring practices at work do to so many of the younger generation being hired and not working out. They either won't show up on time, disappear after getting a pay check, till they run out of money, show up drunk/ stoned, or walking jerry springer episodes.

Boss reduced a grown man to tears because he told the person they needed to show up to work on time and ready for there shift. The person was showing up late, in shorts and flip flops, punching in, then going to the break room, making and eating breakfast, read the paper, then finally get dressed and out on the floor an hour later. Person actually had the balls to call the HR department on my boss, and basically tattle on themselves :p:D HR department asked the person the same thing. Why aren't you showing up for your shift on time and ready to work????
 

D2Cat

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Back yonder when Reagan was president, the air traffic controllers went on strike. About 1981, I think it was, and 10,000-11,000 ended up without jobs.

I had a friend who was a trainer for the Air Traffic Controllers in the K.C. area. I remember him telling me he disagreed with what the strikers were doing.

He said it should be like in gym class. Line everyone up and have them count off 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4 through the entire group. Then the first year fire all #1's, second year fire all #2's, third year all #3's, etc.

Then hire folks who understand what their responsibility is and willing to do it. He said it wouldn't talk long to have a work force willing to do the job.

Somehow the millennials need some of the same direction.

You can see how they got the handle of "snowflakes", they melt at every challenge.
 

MadMax31

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As a Gen X'er, I have almost zero patience with the new crop of "employees" that are forced upon us to learn our trade.

At Trane, we had sessions on how to deal with various age groups of employees. It broke down mostly like this:

Baby Boomer: This is your job.

Gen X: This is your job, do it.

Millennial: This is your job, you need to do it every day and it's important that you do it, everyday. You are unique, so is your job. Please enjoy your job.

I dont have the patience for the constant coddling required. Maybe Im getting older and just want to blame the Younglings....
 

skeets

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Cat allow me to explain about the ATC. Having been a union rep for more years than I care to think about, I know a little bit about what happend with them. They were under a different union and they had union president that had visions of grandeur, like maybe becoming a Hoffa kind of guy.
Now when you sign on the dotted line you take an oath that you WILL NOT STRIKE, under penalty of dismissal and that as plain as the nose on your face! At any rate this guy was firm in his belief that the government couldnt do a thing because they were a critical job classification and told his people they were safe and they wouldnt dare fire them...
WRONG,, anyone can be replaced!
So in essence every one that walked out was in direct violation of the contract they signed with the government.
They lost everything pensions, right to be rehired everything!!! Now granted there were items that did in fact need to be addressed by the powers that be, this was not the way to do it! And it was due to one man and his ilks
 

sheepfarmer

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My favorite way of explaining it to them, when they said "this isn't fair...about something" was "Life is not fair, I don't disagree with you, and I can't make it fair, but my job is to make the course equitable. Everyone has the same chance to succeed or fail."
 

Daren Todd

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As a Gen X'er, I have almost zero patience with the new crop of "employees" that are forced upon us to learn our trade.

At Trane, we had sessions on how to deal with various age groups of employees. It broke down mostly like this:

Baby Boomer: This is your job.

Gen X: This is your job, do it.

Millennial: This is your job, you need to do it every day and it's important that you do it, everyday. You are unique, so is your job. Please enjoy your job.

I dont have the patience for the constant coddling required. Maybe Im getting older and just want to blame the Younglings....
Part of my job is going to other locations within the company to get the shop and service up to company standards. Inevitably I have to usually recommend getting rid of certain employees that aren't cutting it, or in some cases they are the root cause of the issue. Usually it's someone from the millennial generation. Work ethic sucks, they don't understand/ comprehend being reliable, or rob the company blind. I have no patience for crap. If I have to do my job and yours, then I have no reason to keep you employed.
 

CaveCreekRay

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There is a vast difference in Millennials that sets them apart from other generations: Social Media.

They are like the "Borg" on Star Trek. The "collective" society online has each others back and support each other emotionally. Unmotivated kids who don't like the "work hard and reap the benefits" message they get from their parents are supported online by others who think they should have all the benefits and trappings of a modern technological life without actually working for it. Many of these kids have replaced their family structure with the social media "family" and the parents who loved and supported them are left wondering what happened.

"FakeBook" is a great representation of what is going on in their heads. Its the "keeping up with the Jones'" of the 21st Century. They post about what grand lives they live, taking vacations, buying new cars, buying homes but, they fail to mention their parents took them on that vacation, gifted them the down for the new car, or bought the home for them and rented it back to them. Its largely farce. But its so incredibly important to them to build this BS front to show their friends and to compete socially. In fact, the parents represent the Truth of Reality, and this further drives the kids away from their parents because its emotionally expensive for the kids. The parents can only be a part of their kids lives if they buy onto the farce and accept "responsibility" for why their kid is in an unrewarding life way behind the power curve. Oh, and don't even THINK about cutting off support for your kids. That will get the parents voted off the island, and out of their kids lives, in a heartbeat.

Yet while many have scores of online "friends" who can barely exert the effort to comment other than clicking a "LIKE" button, when it comes time to move or do something that used to be normal involving help for part of a day by average friends of prior generations, these online Millennial "friends" are nowhere to be found. Their whole social structure is a farce. The pressure to compete and the deep down knowledge that their lifestyle portrayed online is largely made up creates a huge amount of anxiety in Millennials. Recoiling into the ignorance of the "hive" has retarded their maturation and delayed their lives, often by decades.

I coined a saying over 20 years ago: "Time lost in youth is time lost forever." From the vantage point of youth, time looks like it will last forever. From the other end, we know it is fleeting.

Many of these Millennials kids are waking up in their late 20's to early 30's deep in college debt with a degree that is wholly unmarketable in today's job market. They never "launched" their lives as did previous generations and they are only now starting to do what kids have for decades past in their early 20's: Stand on their own two feet. A whole decade has passed and their Barista job is not covering their bills enough to put a roof over their head or wheels under their butt. But, they still load more crap online and occupy their time Tweeting out the most mundane events.

There is a dark side to social media and I think in a decade we will look back and see the carnage this seemingly "harmless" bit of technology has wrought.

Happy New Year! :)
 
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