Patronising young people at work

[Starland2]

I work in the public sector. We have a lot of graduates. They are all intelligent lovely people but they have such strange approaches to work sometimes. For example I have a job in quite a niche specialism. I love my job and am very experienced. When the younger members of the team find out about what I do they often want to talk about it in great detail and I am happy to do so. A strange thing that keeps happening is that they will then come across people in a similar role in a different organisation. They then “helpfully “ email me and the contact and suggest we meet and chat so I can learn about how they do the job. More often than not I know the contact as it’s a smallish network.

The thing I find strange is why would I need these meetings? I know how to do my job! I think they think they are being helpful but it’s just odd and a bit patronising. You wouldn’t tell a teacher to meet with another teacher to talk about how they do their job!

I think they think it makes them look connected and helpful!?

A lot colleagues often go on about how young the graduates are in front of them. I never do this as it can get annoying for them. At the same time I want them to understand that older colleagues do have more experience!

@Thickasmincepie

When I first started teaching, I was always a bit cynical of new and shiny ideas and used to be a bit reserved. But I did used to get a bit tired of older staff members complaining about how they'd seen it all before.

Of course, now I'm that older member of staff and yes, it's been round and debunked and round again.

It's hard to get the balance, isn't it? I work in a university and despair of constant ill-thought out initiatives, but I also despair at some of my colleagues who have the attitude that they tried a new thing once in 1992 and they didn't like it thank you very much so they won't engage with any attempt to improve anything no matter how clearly beneficial. DH is a secondary teacher and feels the same frustration with both ends of the spectrum. I guess the problem is that pointless changes erode the goodwill for genuinely useful ones.

[quote Starland2]@ineedsun yes. maybe, I am willing to accept that it’s good intentioned but it’s actually a bit dumb. There is no need for me to be connected to their suggestions. I know how to do my job so why do I need to be connected with someone doing the same ? This is why I find their attitude patronising. It’s like telling an author to do a creative writing class. I wish they would engage their brains before emailing and setting up meetings![/quote]
That’s so sad, yes some of it may be a waste of time but to have the attitude that you’ve done this for years and therefore have nothing to learn from these people is really limiting.

I’ve worked in education and health and networking and connections are great ways to improve things for students / patients. Those people who just insist on doing things the way they’ve always done them is what can maintain poor practice.

Jeez I’ve just read most of this thread now and gave up because it’s so depressing. If this had been about older workers not doing their job well, being arrogant and refusing to learn. People would have been kicking off because of the ageism.

Young graduates come with skills and learning needs, but then again so do people who’ve worked in a job for thirty or forty years.

Learning to fit in at work is hard enough as it is without someone being an arsehole. Literally all you need to do is say ‘thanks for the email, next time you meet someone you think it would be good to connect with will you check with me first? I tend to know most people in the field and it will probably seem odd that you’re introducing us, but if you email me the name first I can tell you if we already know eachother’

I'm shocked by how snarky & dismissive people have been on here.

I wish more people would start by assuming it could be useful to the OP. She states 'more often than not I know them' so I read that as quite often she doesn't know them.

It may mean useful insights from people in your field. Why not be open to the chance it's useful instead of dismissive?

Obviously there's a chance it's a waste of time and I think the suggestion to nicely explain that in a small field you often know people so it's best to check is a simple (and pretty obvious) solution rather than bitching about it online.

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow because it is inappropriate and patronising.

Yes there are always things you can learn in your job. But those insights tend to come from people who listen and understand how things are done. Not people who have been there for 2 seconds and blunder in with suggestions without actually understanding the job you do.
I do a technical admin jib that has legislation attached to it. I get suggestions from patronising young people of how I could improve things. Yes their ideas on the surface make sense, but the legislation doesn't allow it. Do me the respect of asking why something is done certain way, before patronising me.
And it is always done patronisingly. Because I am an older working-class woman who they obviously think knows fuck all, while they are highly educated young bright things.

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow

I'm shocked by how snarky & dismissive people have been on here.

I wish more people would start by assuming it could be useful to the OP. She states 'more often than not I know them' so I read that as quite often she doesn't know them.

It may mean useful insights from people in your field. Why not be open to the chance it's useful instead of dismissive?

Obviously there's a chance it's a waste of time and I think the suggestion to nicely explain that in a small field you often know people so it's best to check is a simple (and pretty obvious) solution rather than bitching about it online.

But even if she doesn't know them it's a really rude, inappropriate and bizarre thing to do. If they sent this other person's details to OP then that might still be a bit patronising, but it would be basically fine. But introducing two people when you're not actually a mutual contact is socially odd behaviour, it gives the OP an obligation she didn't ask for or ok (if she doesn't follow up on their email she looks rude), and it gives an odd impression to people outside the organization which might be embarrassing for OP.

@RoyalFamilyFan I guess I just don't get it because it's not something I have happen to me. I find grads bright and engaged, full of questions and very open to understand if their suggestions are duds. Occasionally their suggestions are brilliant.

I don't see them as patronising as I don't sense they are assuming they're superior. Maybe once or twice but I take that as a personality thing, not a cohort thing.

I'm guessing the world's politicians feel pretty much like this every time Greta Thunberg opens her mouth. They live to point out why the system means her ideas won't work & if it was as easy as that we'd be doing it already. She's often branded as naive and lacking real world experience and she's full of a belief in her moral superiority.

Doesn't make her wrong though.

@HardbackWriter I'm not saying what they are doing is right, just that it's an odd faux pas from people new to the world of work rather than patronising and rude.
It's the tone of 'ugh, young people today' that I'm struggling to empathise with.

@Ineedsun I think you want to see me as worse than reality. I am not mean to these graduates. In reality I don’t have time to over worry about their faux pas. It’s just such a strange new behaviour to me I was curious to see if others had experienced it. As I have said I like the graduates and have attended and learnt a lot from training they have done.

I am open to suggestions and have shared policies with the graduates and welcomed their input. This is not about me dismissing any skill they have. This is about a particular approach they seem to have to work which I find odd. I will try and give another example. It’s like meeting a driving instructor and chatting about their work. Then going away and finding another instructor to introduce them to. Yes they might have something in common and could learn something from each other but probably nothing that useful. Plus they don’t have time to just meet and talk with other people who do they same job as them. My job is like that. There is a particular way of doing things that go with the job. Also if you were rubbish at the job you definitely wouldn’t survive in the field for 20 years!

Of course everyone needs space to learn and make mistakes. However I hope this habit of making patronising links and pointless meetings goes away!

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow of course I think I can learn from others in my field. This is why I am a member of a network of people who do the same job. I attend training, read research etc..

It’s ok if I am confident enough in my field to know when a meeting is a waste of time. It doesn’t make me arrogant.

My thoughts too

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow it is not all young people as has been said on this thread. It is a certain kind of highly educated privileged young man. It is not just a personality thing, it is an upbringing thing. Basically young men who have went to top private schools and universities and told continually they are the cream of the crop. If you don't work in a workplace that recruits these people, you probably don't come across it.

For me it’s young men and women. They are from a particular privileged background usually and also high achievers. I think they just like the insight that long term experience gives you. I guess they can’t help that but they need to stop assuming others need basic help! Also my job is quite an unglamorous field, I think it’s a novelty to them!

@RoyalFamilyFan I'm a management consultant & went to a uni full of sloaney public school kids who thought they had been born to rule. Annoyingly a couple of my tutor group are currently involved in running the country so they probably think they were proved right 😂

so yes, I definitely recognise the self important, entitled mindset of a certain type of man. But I don't see that as a 'young person' thing. I find they get more patronising and self important as they age. Sigh.

I read the OP as more a point about the current generation of grads, that was where I didn't share her view. I'm pretty optimistic about the current generation, I find them a mass of contradictions - arrogant and insecure, optimistic and doom laden, overly obsessed with how they are perceived and not giving a shit, often all at the same time.

But they are inheriting a mess globally so I hope we don't damp down their forthright enthusiasm and relentless questioning of how things are done.

I can understand that applied to your area of expertise and in a less world saving situation it's bloody irritating though!

My PA asked to go on a couple of courses, in our field, which I of course happily sent her on. She came back and promptly started to tell me how to do my job (entirely wrongly. It's the law. We can't afford to get that stuff wrong). It has been excruciating. Every. Damn. Day.
I'm trying hard not to roll my eyes.
It's hurting my brain!!

[quote WeisheitNurInWahrheit]**@TheAntiGardener* @Tabbacus*

I’m not sure how much of it is school & how much is the commodification of education with the huge increase of tuition fees. Students & their parents consider themselves to be paying academics to dance attendance on them; they have no concept of self-directed learning; there is massive pressure to mark far more (& ever-more) generously; extensions are demanded on flimsy pretexts at the last minute & [almost] invariably granted; students think nothing of emailing academics who are on sick leave & who they’ve been repeatedly reminded not to contact…

Removing the cap was disastrous too, because it’s having such a horrendous impact on student experience & is going to completely break the sector if something isn’t done about it. Doesn’t matter to, say, Exeter if the student they give a place to with predicted CCD & actual DDE drops out within weeks because they can’t cope on a[n overcrowded] course geared for students with AAB grades. They’ve got the money. Students who would have flourished at “new” universities are getting vacuumed up by the Russell Group & either miserably scraping through, dropping out, or, vanishingly rarely, it all clicks & they have a splendid time (hurrah!) which is of course great, but the odds are not awesome for that. (And again, with the destruction of a whole education sector…) Anyway, point with that bit was not simply to allow me a therapeutic rant, but rather, students who don’t see the bigger picture - as in, some of their peer group would have done much better at other institutions - get a sense of… success simply from surviving? If you think “my course was so hard loads of people dropped out & there were some people who could barely scrape by but I got a First ” rather than “my university has neither shame nor scruples & overstuffed my course with people unqualified to be on it who, understandably, then struggled” it’s going to bump your self-confidence & your faith in your abilities to cope/rise to challenges/generally succeed.

That said, [a lot of] private schools - especially boys’ public schools - genuinely do seem to teach a kind of unabashed & unswerving self-confidence. It - genuinely, truly, honestly - led to men getting more firsts in the subject I read than women (particularly women educated at state schools): & a dissertation was introduced purely to try to ameliorate this somewhat. My God the absolute confusion when they discover that nonsense does not, in fact, always work.

It does seem that there is increasingly a general trend for I didn’t know this so clearly nobody can have - a striking example being all the people bobbing up on social media during the BLM protests to inform us all that black British history isn’t just about the Windrush; & to complain that it’s not taught in school. Leaving aside the fact that to cover the history that would keep everyone happy pretty much the rest of the curriculum would have to be abandoned; in lots of the conversations, anyone who pointed out that they’d studied black British history; &/or that they teach or taught it; &/or that it’s part of the curriculum their child follows was either ignored or shouted down. And absolutely nobody wants to engage with the idea that they were taught it but simply don’t remember it. Does everyone really remember all the topics they covered in history from Infants onwards? I do, but I courtesy of ASD apparently have an unusual memory. I wonder if it’s a side-effect of being in an age of information overload - it’s unthinkable to admit to being behind on a trend or having missed the new thing; & that’s now shifting into something both wider-reaching & more self-absorbed.[/quote]
Oh gosh, yes. We have this problem with issues around slavery at the moment in my country, and some other public controversies, which younger people for some reason think are new and unexplored topics which we all need to rend our shirts about. Yet when you question them they do not know the basics around these questions that happened within the last 10 years, much less the last 50.

They freak out that others are not freaking out, and the fact that we have known about these things for 30 years so it would be odd to be freaking out after all that time doesn't seem to compute.

And absolutely nobody wants to engage with the idea that they were taught it but simply don’t remember it.

But we didn't learn about slavery at school. 95% of what I know about it, I've learned during the past couple of years as an adult. Part of the result of BLM was people taking more notice and making a point of learning about these things.

Well I'm pretty ancient, and we DID learn about slavery at school, and lots of other things that young people know nothing about.

I am older and learned about slavery at school.
I saw a meme shared on social media that had a drawing from a textbook advising slavers how to pack as many slaves into ships as possible. Lots of young adults were commenting saying how terrible this has been hidden. I first saw it over 40 years ago at school.

Roots was on TV over 40 years ago!

Yes and Roots was massive viewing. Most people watched it and it kick-started the interest in tracing family trees.

We also learned about slavery at school (late 80s/early 90s). I also remember the slave ship drawings.

I do see more of a reluctance and resistance amongst parents these days for their children to be exposed to difficult history. I wonder if that is part of the reason young adults do seem to know less about shocking events than we did as kids years ago?

@caoraich

Urgh I can relate to this and I don't even know if it's just LinkedIn culture.

I'm a doctor, have been a consultant for a few years now. I not infrequently have very junior doctors and students attempting to introduce me to my colleagues. I recently had one try to tell me about a paper they'd read which suggested I should be using a different treatment. I had written the paper.

It only ever happens with males (I'm female) - sometimes I wonder if rather than misplaced enthusiasm of youth it's just old fashioned sexism

I had a male surgical SHO try to explain to me, a nephrology consultant, what an acute kidney injury was. Very slowly, like I was a bit dim. This is the equivalent of telling a cardiologist what a heart attack is.

I’m afraid I and the female registrar I was with fell about laughing at him. Not very professional, but he looked suitably embarrassed and hopefully learned his lesson.

[quote Starland2]@Ineedsun I think you want to see me as worse than reality. I am not mean to these graduates. In reality I don’t have time to over worry about their faux pas. It’s just such a strange new behaviour to me I was curious to see if others had experienced it. As I have said I like the graduates and have attended and learnt a lot from training they have done.

I am open to suggestions and have shared policies with the graduates and welcomed their input. This is not about me dismissing any skill they have. This is about a particular approach they seem to have to work which I find odd. I will try and give another example. It’s like meeting a driving instructor and chatting about their work. Then going away and finding another instructor to introduce them to. Yes they might have something in common and could learn something from each other but probably nothing that useful. Plus they don’t have time to just meet and talk with other people who do they same job as them. My job is like that. There is a particular way of doing things that go with the job. Also if you were rubbish at the job you definitely wouldn’t survive in the field for 20 years!

Of course everyone needs space to learn and make mistakes. However I hope this habit of making patronising links and pointless meetings goes away![/quote]
In fairness my comments weren’t solely directed at you, but at general comments from some on this thread