A day in the life of a Millennial Boss

DISCLAIMER: I UNDERSTAND THIS DOES NOT REPRESENT ALL MILLENNIALS, THIS IS MERELY MY RECENT EXPERIENCES WITH A SELECT FEW THAT I AM SHARING FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT.

 Millennial is the name given to the generation born between 1981 and 1999 (give or take depending on the source). I have given birth to a millennial and love several others near and dear to my heart. I also have several millennials who have worked for me. I’ve decided to start keeping track of my Memorable Millennial Moments (otherwise known as, is this real life?)

 I could go on for days about my millennial observations but today I’m just going to focus on some actual questions that came up in a meeting with one of my marketing teams (half of which are millennials). 

There is a popular business motivational book we bought each team member to discuss by chapter in our weekly marketing staff meetings. One of my millennials said he had not read any of it yet because he wanted to know when we were going to have designated reading time throughout the work day or how he should “keep track of his overtime” if he reads it at home? On the up side, at least he didn’t ask if the movie was out yet, so I guess that was a W. 

What happened to the days when these extra chances to acquire knowledge were exciting and a free book was a welcomed gift?

 My dear millennials also had a hard time making it to work on time and saw their start time as a mere suggestion and not an actual START time. Even when they did manage to make it on time they needed to get a latte, have a snack, yoga, text, take a selfie, meditate, tweet, check in on Facebook and Snapchat before they even sat down at their desk. Because of this we implemented time clock software on their computers to log in and out of so that I didn't have to change my title to Overpaid Babysitter (No, I’m not a micromanager, I even allowed a 10-minute grace period, of which they happily used 9.5 minutes of). As we rolled out this new program one of my millennials had a very serious, burning concern, and the rest of his fellow millennials co-signed the heck out of it. The very real concern was this. “Well we can’t really clock out on our computer at the end of the day because then we would technically not be getting paid to lock the door on our way out”. I was fairly certain at that point that the next question was going to be whether they get paid from the second they leave their front door to drive to work as well as their commute home.

 Yes, this is our reality people, a world full of snowflakes. What happened to wanting to learn and grow and overachieve? This is exactly why we should not give out participation trophies. When we are telling our kids they can be whatever they want to be, perhaps we should throw in a disclaimer that internet sensations, gamers and 'twitter famous' are not exactly what we had in mind. 

 At the conclusion of our marketing meeting we played a game to demonstrate the power of communication and 'asking the right questions'. I taped a name of a famous person to the back of each marketing employee. They did not know who was on their own back and had to turn around and let the group see their back. Then they were to go around the room asking ONLY yes or no questions until they could figure out who they were. I noticed the older 'non-millennial' employees asked very good questions and took lots of notes to find the answer. Not a single one of my millennials wrote down anything at all and all 4 of them wanted to give up after their first three questions and said, “They just couldn’t come up with any more questions” and even argued about whether someone else’s yes or no answer to another employee was “completely accurate” (um, yes,sorry millennial, Michelle Obama would be “known in politics”). I was amazed at how quickly they each wanted to give up, they even asked ME to come up with some questions FOR THEM because after 3 very basic questions they just “absolutely couldn't come up with any more”. Okkkkk..so let me get this straight, even after I help you out with several questions and you have it narrowed down to you’re a very famous black retired male athlete that played basketball and has his own Nike shoe, you then complain “This is too hard I will never get this because I don’t watch basketball” . Really? Cause I’m pretty sure you know who Michael Jordan is. SIGH!

 My attempt at this learning game that was supposed to be fun, yet teach them something, fell totally on deaf ears. They didn’t care enough to even finish the game let alone win it. SMH…Guess we’ll hand out those participation trophies now.

 Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go to the store, because as I discovered when going to make myself dinner last night, the millennial I birthed (who FINALLY has her own apartment with her bff including a pool view that costs more than my mortgage) stopped by my house while I was at work yesterday to “borrow my milk and butter” since they were “cooking dinner at their place for friends” (boxed mac & cheese). Apparently a grocery store is also a new undiscovered millennial concept.

 Ahhhh, snowflakes... and friends, I fear we may be caught in a blizzard.