‘Entitled’ Gen Z is the most difficult generation in the workplace: poll

It's just who they are. Other generations will have to adjust.

I’m alright with Gen Z. This most difficult type to work with are the obese fraus.

They're an absolute disaster and it's kind of hilarious seeing as how smug their parents were about them.

Lil narcissists

It’s true the world is fucked

You could say most of this about any group of office workers in 2023.

Loyalty to the company: After forty years of cutbacks and outsourcing, why would anyone be loyal to a company that's never loyal to them?

Productivity: The only prize for hard work...is being given more work to do. Why work fast?

Motivation: Shareholders get a dividend and managers get a bonus when things go well. Regular drones get squat, except maybe a pizza party as thanks for all their hard work.

Dishonest: This is rich, coming from the peddlers of such gems as "The new insurance is as good as the old plan," and "Remote work will be permanent," and "We'll get you an office after your 90-day review," and "This pay freeze is only temporary!"

Entitled: Again, this coming from management that expects you to answer emails at 2am, work 60 hours and be paid for 40, and be loyal to a firm that's outsourcing your role as we speak.

Are they even in the workplace? I thought so many weren't even working

If you take Gen Z starting mid to late 1990s and ending approximately 2010, the oldest gen Zers are mid to late 20s, the youngest are still teenagers.

How the hell can you make sweeping generalizations about the work ethic of a particular age group when a substantial number of those people aren't even in the work force yet.

As the late, great Estelle Costanza once said, it sounds pretty damn stupid to me.

They’re not necessarily entitled. They’re just not putting up with the shit previous generations did. And I hope they keep on not putting up with it.

R9: And by not putting up with it, what does that mean? They'll live off their parents forever?

R8, it’s based on numbers. We know the amount of births. A huge number have entered the workforce now. Millennials are still the largest generation though.

R8 They’re all locking themselves in the bathrooms and treating their bodies like amusement parks!

R10 No, grandpa. It means they'll take the job, go to work, and tell their bosses what they're actually thinking. They won't puss out like their elders did, and keep it all bottled up for forty years because "The workplace is no place for discontent."

See where good manners have gotten you?

R13 is unemployed.

Oh look, I found the delusional Gen Z at R13! Yeah, good luck with that!

R13 is typing from mommy's basement

Nah, I'm too old to be Gen Z.

But I had to listen to you people spew the same shit when my generation was entering the workforce. You said we were the laziest you'd ever seen.

Meanwhile, you're the ones who fucked-over the economy, raided pension funds, and turned the concept of a "good job for life" into a joyless wasteland. Today's young people are only surviving in the hellscape you created for us.

You took away pensions, job tenure, unions, mentorship, and the culture of genuine teamwork. Don't bitch to us when we only look out for ourselves. You taught us well.

I'm Gen X and wonder why any other generation would expect more from Gen Z? They are well and truly fucked. Housing prices are insane, medical prices are insane, food prices are insane - and there is no relief in sight. The only reason I have a roof over my head is because I was able to buy in when housing was still reasonable. I am petrified of what will happen should I ever lose my house. One-bedroom rentals in my areas are more than double my current mortgage for a 1900 sq. ft. house. I'm sure some Gen Z are the product of helicopter parents or were raised by devices. But many more see the ruse for what it is. Maybe the rest of us are insane for working so hard for greedy, psychopathic overlords who are squeezing every last bit of life force from us.

R18 When your overlords give you someone else you can look down on, it will distract you from throwing off your own chains.

"I may be economically fucked, but at least I'm not as lazy as the new guy over there, so I'm a goddamned king of the universe!!!"

I don't mind when my department hires a Zoomer. History has taught me that they have a shelf life of anywhere between 3 - 6 months, and then they quit their job because it's "too hard", "too toxic a work environment" (even when they work from home), "not paying six figures" (even though they just graduated college and have zero work experience in any type of job); "too much anxiety". I have yet to meet a Zoomer in the past five years who actually lasted at any job more than 6 months.

This shit is fabricated, lack of tech skills

Gen Zs entitlement means higher wages for the rest of us wageslaves

The exact same thing was said about millennials. And I mean the EXACT same thing.

#1 on this list is a training issue. Employers need to get use to training new employees, if they want them to be effective.

They want different things. adjustments need to be made. Of course, give them ten years and they will be following the money path and all of these non-negotiables will be disregarded:

It's a rite of passage. Every generation criticizes the next generation's: Music, Fashion, Work ethic.

R17, your points are well taken; however, you're blaming the entirety of a couple generations worth of changes on everyone when the reality is that everything you state ("fucked-over the economy, raided pension funds, and turned the concept of a "good job for life" into a joyless wasteland", "You took away pensions, job tenure, unions, mentorship, and the culture of genuine teamwork") was the result of electing Republicans.

Gen Z (and everyone), the answer is simple: elect Democrats and you'll regain everything that the Republicans have taken away for the last 50+ years. On point, look at Michigan, which elected Democrats in a clean sweep last year: so-called "right to work" laws were repealed, helping unions regain some of the clout that Republicans wiped away; abortion laws were enshrined and protected, and public pensions — those that government can control — were strengthened.

Or you can vote for Republicans and watch them take your Social Security, Medicare, and what few job protections you still enjoy; sit back helplessly as they make abortion completely illegal, even in the cases of rape and incest; wail when Republicans strip you of the right to marry the person you love; and the piece-de-resistance: doom your generation to a life of poverty as they hand tax cuts to the wealthiest as reward for outsourcing every damn job that isn't driving for Uber, delivering their groceries, or cleaning their toilets, and then feel the kick in the gut as they reward employers for bringing illegal immigrants in to do those few remaining jobs. Oh, and by the way, there will never be any form of student loan debt restructuring or forgiveness under Republicans, ever, so go grind that $15 an hour job to repay the tens of thousands of dollars of un-restructurable and overpriced debt, which if you don't pay by the time you retire, will be deducted from your Social Security.... oh wait, you won't have that, so it's off to debtors' prison for you!

The trouble is the Under-40s want to be Seventeen 4-ever: mommy, daddy, couch, big screen TV tuned to reality trash, tippy-tapping on their Smartphones, bikes, scooters, no kids, no responsibilities, job-hopping... And the parents allow it because if they keep their kids toddlers then they themselves won't grow old. They all want time to stand still.

[R23] And Boomers were 100% correct when they said that. And I mean 100% CORRECT.

R27 And who is voting republican? mainly Boomers and Gen X, who are both really stupid politically

R28 And don't even get us started on this new rock and roll music!

If they would just stop talking so much! I actually don't want to hear about any of your peripheral 'feelings' to the direct question I asked you.

R30, there is no doubt that some, if not most, Boomers are responsible for getting this I-got-mine / austerity-for-thee ball rolling, but not all Boomers wanted this; Democratic Boomers still support the social safety net, Social Security and Medicare, unions, and progress. That falls to the greed-is-good crowd that became Republicans with Reagan and stuck with it through Trump's insurrection. And Gen X followed suit because it benefited them after they got theirs.

The country is pretty evenly split, but if we could get liberals and progressives to consistently vote (like they did for Biden), we could have nice things. But hate is a powerful emotion and greed is a close second, so it's mostly conservatives and Republicans who are the most reliable voters (see MTG's district).

Good for Gen Z. Take all the old guard down, along with their antiquated corporate employment structures.

People said the same thing about Gen X and millennials. Some people have no self-awareness, I'm sure people who are 30 years older than you probably attacked your generation, too

I’m Gen X. I second what R34 just said.

Gen Z (and Millenials too) are my only hope for moving our country in the 21st century. I can’t stand corporate America and the whole culture. Love these young people!

[...]

I kind of liked them until I read this. Now I want to go rolling coal in a leaded gas truck until the entire east coast is underwater.

R23 & R29 why don’t you just deploy defcon “ LITERALLY” ?

Gen Z is the future. They aren’t perfect (which generation is?). They are wise to despise corporate culture but as others said, that will change.

Almost forgot to say, r6 gave me an orgasm.

The "acid test" is self-employment. Can't wait to see how their unique approach to work plays out in that arena. All the people skill and all the grit and sweat it takes to run a business successfully is an anathema to their sensibilities. Not only are they likely incapable of running and maintaining a business, they'll be happy to run yours into the the ground for you should you choose to hire them.

Honestly I think this is just a reaction to the fact that they’re the first generation not to be complete bootlickers and have some class awareness. Keep torturing your bosses kids I’m proud of you!

Nah, they're just socially retarded.

[quote]I have yet to meet a Zoomer in the past five years who actually lasted at any job more than 6 months.

This is also my experience. 6 months almost on the dot.

[quote] they’re the first generation not to be complete bootlickers and have some class awareness.

No they are not and this type of WRONG hyperbole does not help their case.

R45 Who did it better? Do tell.

Boomers went all "Big Chill" in the 1980s, trading in free love and revolution for leased BMWs and pork belly futures. They felt guilty for selling out, but buried that guilt under hypocrisy and greed.

Gen X sold out to MTV, Fruitopia, and corporate-clone bullshit artists like Bill Clinton and Steve Jobs who promised the best of both worlds but delivered mediocrity and lies. They felt nothing.

R46 I dunno, sweetie. I guess we'll just have to wait and see in which awful way Gen Z will sell out in the future!

Gen Z is a bunch of socially retarded whiners who posit their laziness and entitlement as “sticking it to the man.” So, same old, same old. It’s laughable how some of you think it’s noble to be a nuisance who makes everything harder for your colleagues.

We saw it coming

It is to laugh, the caption of the middle item on the chart on the NY Post article must have been made bo t Gen Z'er> "Easily Distrached"

And it's Gen X's fault. These are their damn kids.

^ And the reason Gen Xers are such shitty parents is because Boomers were even shittier parents.

R49 More hot cow shit from Rich Lowry, he of the "Men Shouldn't Subsidize Maternal Care for Sluts" mindset.

That prick has a lifetime of health insurance in his pocket, courtesy of the corporate masters who own his publications, but listen to him sneer at those deadbeat youngsters whose employers aren't so generous. HOW DARE THEY apply for last-ditch health insurance?!?!

^ And Boomers were the shittier parents because their Greatest Generation and Silent Generation parents were too fucked up from post-war and Great Depression PTSD.

There. We're all fucked.

[quote]Housing prices are insane, medical prices are insane, food prices are insane - and there is no relief in sight.

And this is your excuse for Gen Zers being shiftless footdraggers at work?

It's not as if they know about current events or even vote!

Goddamn Millennials… ruining everything.

Do u think that people who enter the workforce with a good work ethic will rise up the ranks quickly...it would seem like a fair system.

No, R57. There are too many people, too many generations in the workplace right now. It's a log jam and it's starting to feel very crowded.

[quote]r58 There are too many people, too many generations in the workplace right now.

And the goddamn nepo babies take all the jobs. Every! Last! One!

[quote] I guess we'll just have to wait and see in which awful way Gen Z will sell out in the future!

I have 15 years to live. Won’t care.

R57 Nowadays, people with a good work ethic have three outcomes:

1) They burn themselves out by working harder than everyone around them for no real payoff

2) They grow embittered at being the only one who gives a damn, and they quit and/or throttle back

3) Their lazy/ambitious boss notices their work ethic and ruthlessly exploits it, bleeding them dry and then discarding them like Peter Thiel with a fresh hustler in his lab

I'm hiring more and more older people. Can't stand the younger generations. They suck at life. Good thing they can live with their parents so I don't have to feel any guilt about not giving them jobs. Win win!

Some of them suck, some don't. But all proceeding generations are to blame. We let the corporate oligarchs take over and they are leading us to the Idiocracy. Frankly, many (most?) of us are as greedy and morally compromised as them. People suck.

Plenty of blame to go around. I live in rural USA, I hire people all the time. I hire illegals, pay them well and all is good. My local natives, usually either drug casualties or war casualties hate working and hate being told what to do. Both young and old. I have tried again and again with them. They are bad workers they steal my tools don’t show up, don’t want to pay attention to event the simplest task. The dope and booze which I’m not necessarily against will come out on the first day at work. Illegals are awesome they appreciate being paid well and want to do a good job. Crappy workers are always looking for a job while good workers are kept busy. It’s not tied to a particular generation.

Gen Z is fine. Millennial women with their decorated water bottles are the worst - they're also the biggest group of anti-vaxxers at my workplace. They're not necessarily conservatives but they're all into "wellness" as they pump tablespoon after tablespoon of syrup into their aforementioned water bottles because they "just can't" with plain water.

I work with two Gen Zers. They are dull as dishwater, physically hideous, relatively stupid, and think of themselves the most dynamic attractive smartest people on the planet. Then when they realize that nobody has any interest in their stupid twitch stream, they pout. They are also OBSESSED with aging. One of them has been getting lip fillers and Botox since she was 25

The Gen Zers I work with are not untalented or unfriendly, but they do treat the office as a social space and feel free to talk openly and at a high volume about things like their digestive processes and menstruation, which I think is inappropriate (and also the fault of management for not setting clear expectations about what is acceptable at work).

Another thing I notice is an over reliance on the word "literally," which they use as an intensifier, and a poor grasp of what was considered basic grammar back when I was in school. Things like not knowing how to use a semi-colon, misplacing apostrophes, saying "if I was you" instead of "if I were you," etc. And most of these employees graduated from big name colleges.

By the time Gen-Zers get to be the age of the Boomers, they will be just as "conservative." Whom do you think were the hippies, the " Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll," don't trust anyone over 30 generation?

[quote] Things like not knowing how to use a semi-colon, misplacing apostrophes, saying "if I was you" instead of "if I were you," etc. And most of these employees graduated from big name colleges.

Grammar upholds an oppressive system

We don't hire Gen Z's anymore after too many bad experiences with them. We'll hire Xers and older millenials but that's it.

This whole old versus young tug of war of hate is pretty tired and bleak. I think if this country has any chance, there's got to be less elderly vs. youth and more of the middle adult generations (Gen X, Millennials) coming together to get shit done and fixed. Otherwise there is no chance in hell.

Gen-Xer here and hate to say it, but I see a fair measure of laziness and entitlement in my own generation, especially those with kids. Just every excuse not to be at work and engaged while there. The single people so often end up holding the bag. I suppose that's a different thread, though.

As a boomer (b 1958), I have some opinions that reflect my own experience, so this isn't a blanket statement. If boomers are at fault for anything it's insisting that their kids were all so special. Even that generation is aging I guess (the youngest boomer is 59). I mean my own nieces and nephews grew up in the 80s and 90s, whatever that makes them.

All I know is that I cannot tell you how many times the parents (usually mothers) of job candidates in their 20s call and ask how the process is going and pushing me to hire their kids. So they're probably late 40s/early 50s I'd guess so I don't know what Gen they are. I will say that the younger people I work with are prone to overdramatizing when they feel unwell -- there are a lot of sick calls and they're usually from the younger ones. Then of course, we boomers are told that we're not providing enough pay or motivation for these young people. Pay is out of my control and motivation is simply do a good day's work while you pay your dues. But even the concept of paying your dues is old-fashioned. And don't get me started on Covid, when they were shaken to their core and practically demanding that I prove daily that I was doing all I could so that they wouldn't catch it and that I somehow had to guarantee that they wouldn't die.

Too many kids were sent to college by boomer and boomer-and-a-half parents, so now the kids are loaded with debt. It would have been child abuse back then to see if your kid would be better off being a plumber or electrician. I'm sorry these kids are stuck in this awful perfect storm, but the constant whining about what their parents' generation is doing to them earns them no sympathy and very little respect.

R73, if that's a rant, it's the best one I've heard in a long time.

I do not have enough spoons for this thread.

One Monday in March last year, Mayes was so fed up with the “instant panic” that she gave herself permission to just do the bare minimum for work that day.

“It led me to have one of the least stressful (as well as productive) Mondays I’d had in a while, so I wanted to investigate why,” she said. “[It] was extremely liberating, because I’d been conditioned by hustle culture/toxic productivity culture to believe that my worth is directly tied to my productivity and output.”

Mayes believes alleviating that pressure and choosing to cut herself some slack was a much-needed change of mindset going into the beginning of the week, which in turn allowed her to be productive again. “I’ve been doing it ever since,” she said.

----------------------

Just wait till Pete approves this for Air Traffic Controllers

I can't even keep track of which generation is flinging more mud at whom.

[quote]Grammar upholds an oppressive system

Every Gen Z and Millennial retard I know likes to tout this garbage.

"Good grammar is racist!"

What a "alot" of chowderheads.

[quote] but the constant whining about what their parents' generation is doing to them earns them no sympathy and very little respect.

I'm pretty sure the elder generations have been constantly whining about the younger generations here for at least a decade now. It's highly disingenuous to act like this is one-sided assault on you.

[quote] All I know is that I cannot tell you how many times the parents (usually mothers) of job candidates in their 20s call and ask how the process is going and pushing me to hire their kids.

If you're at your age and you're still having to deal with customer service with fraus you have bigger problems than anything anybody in their 20s has to worry about yet

R80, the poster is not referring to "customer service," and you know it. He is in a management/hiring role. His post makes that clear.

A lot of times they. Just. Can’t.

I’m a Boomer. And I love Gen Z. I follow a bunch of them on Twitter and they are amazing.

I’m Gen X and I hired my first Gen Z employee last year and he’s been fantastic. And most of my nieces and nephews are Gen Z and despite their difficult upbringings most of them are hardworking and polite. I don’t know where this Gen Z hatred is being manufactured, but it seems even more divorced from the actual generation than the stereotypes about millennials. At least the stereotypes about my generation seemed to be based in reality. (Which bites btw)

ElderLez, I'd be interested to know the kind of workplace you're talking about. I work in a professional services arena (office, not remote), and I see some of the younger employees struggling with the structure and conventions of a more formal workplace--basic things like getting to work on time, drafting literate business correspondence, and understanding basic etiquette, such as not calling people you've just met by their first names. Also a surprising inability to troubleshoot problems independently, to the point of needing instruction on rudimentary tasks. (And don't get me started on diction, little-girl voice, and vocal fry.)

That's what I'm seeing. Maybe in more creative areas, it's better.

He is remote, but it is complex work; regulations, budgets, etc. and it involves working with academic researchers, oftentimes at their most stressed.

I have certainly experienced all of the performance issues you have enumerated over the years with various staff; both of my own generation and millennials. The boomers I’ve worked with haven’t had any of those issues, but I’ve seen some struggle with new technologies.

I do think that with every generation there’s a subset of people who get out of school never having held down a job and those people are a pain to train in to adulthood.

ElderLez, R85 here. I wish I had the skills to work for you! You sound like a superb employer. And hats off to your young employee who can deal with academicians. Doesn't sound easy.

There has always been a subset of every generation who were entitled, flaky, lazy and whiney. The difference between those previous generations and Gen Z was that they never got articles printed in national newspapers and magazines telling them how right on they are.

It's really the only difference. One group is getting praise and the other groups got (rightful) criticism.

"They keep you fighting a culture war to distract you from fighting a class war."

A similar dynamic is behind these old-against-young arguments propagated by the corporate media. If you're bitching about work style and avocado toast, you won't have time to bitch about pay differentials or benefits.

Avocado toast is DELICIOUS. I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to the millennials for that item.

I’m sure many of my employees would tell you how annoying I am R86.

R88 I agree with you. I also think we forget how it was to be young and just not know what we didn’t know. And since it wasn’t all over social media then, we aren’t so easily reminded. But let me tell you I used to use pink font for work correspondence. (Go ahead and judge, I am judging myself as I type) and I am so thankful to an older colleague who very tactfully told me to cut it out.

(Pink is not a font obviously - further kicking myself)

I thank fuck everyday that social media was just beginning when I was a teenager. I did some embarrassing shit that was called out at the time and then forgotten.

It's not a generational thing, it's an age thing. Young people are immature and unreliable. They grow out of it or they become homeless.

Thanks R74 & R81. I appreciate your support.