To find managing gen z a massive headache

[Managinggenzoclock]

I’m a millennial and I manage a team of people. Some of them are gen z. It may be individual personalities but these are the things winding me up.. please excuse this rant. Is it just me? I manage people from late teens to early 60s. The younger group are by far the hardest work.

• Very interested in career progression and pay (not a bad thing but see below)
• at the same time not being willing to ever (I’m not talking often) work more hours or support a colleague
• not willing to recognise that anyone knows more than them, even those with decades more experience
• resisting hierarchical management structures
• making lots of mistakes (including repeated over and over) but not have the humility of inexperience/ youth which would make this much less annoying
• trying to patronisingly ‘educate’ people on contentious issues in inappropriate ways.

I think maybe I’m being too nice.

Plenty of women continue to work part time after their kids are in school so they have more time for life admin and other tasks. Some people would rather have less money and more time.

It would of course be wrong to work part time hours while on a full time contract, but people can apply for part time jobs, or make requests of their employers. If the job can't be done part time, you can say no. Not everyone gets their part time request granted and that's OK too.

You're generalising about one generation as if other generations didn't cause a recession quite recently (in economic terms) by doing that very thing. It's ridiculous. And anyone who is STILL advocating hitting kids when it's known now how damaging it is doesn't deserve the respect of being taken seriously. They're dinosaurs and stupid ones at that.

And you don't need to start reminding everyone about your right to your opinion just because someone countered you with their own. Nobody said you weren't entitled to your opinion. Jeez, who are the snowflakes again?

It’s ok I don’t actually set much store by the stereotypes, just making the point that if someone is of the generation that raised the one they’re complaining about then what’s that all about?

I do feel a bit sorry for gen z’s they make their mistakes in a very public way. If you insist on being on twitter and insta and tiktok stupid shit you do/say is recorded forever, it must feel pretty overwhelming sometimes.

I wonder if thats why some of them are so annoying to older generations. If I, as a xennial had tried to lecture people on their moral failings I’m fairly sure I’d be told pretty swiftly to stfu and stop being annoying. Now you can start a rant on twitter and you will get loads of people agreeing with you. Perhaps it gives you the impression that you are much more interesting (and correct) than you actually are.

Remember you’re only seeing the ones actually on SM. The grads I work with use it about as much as I do, and it certainly doesn’t have an impact on work at all

Well clearly we are not going to agree. I did state that NO generation got it right, that ALL generations made mistakes, so not generalising about one or any other. However, this post was about Gen Z and so clearly that's what we were discussing. All the way through my post I tried to make it clear that no one generation was completely 100% correct. There have been recessions in the past, suffered by all generations, not just this recession nor just one generation was responsible for them. Its a shame that you think that anyone who disagrees with you are stupid dinosaurs and you seem very angry because just sometimes our life experience is a little wider (but not necessarily the best) than you give credit to. Therefore, I won't be responding to any more of your posts because you are clearly incapable of having a discussion without being rude which is unfortunate, and that is not my way. I've never called anyone a snowflake nor silly nor a dinosaur. I don't understand why you have to resort to name calling? However, I hope you have a great day and a lovely weekend.

Well, that's all very nice. I was merely pointing out the line where you did make "sweeping, dismissive statements about older generations" as a pp pointed out, which you seemed to have forgotten.

Damn right I think that people who hit children are stupid dinosaurs and if you don't, I really wouldn't advertise the fact, nor complain about "name calling". Flaming Nora.

You really don't like having your opinions countered with other ones, do you? Why do you think having your views criticised is the same as being told you can't hold them?

Who are the snowflakes again?

There’s a lot of truth in that. I also think that stirring up intergenerational animosity is a quite intentional tactic to avoid blaming the people actually responsible for breaking that contract.

Anyone who dares to mention SPAG on here gets called a cunt so it's hardly surprising.

Very well said. I find this extremely worrying.

Agree with this too.

I actually find these wild and sweeping generalisations about a generation gobsmackingly stupid. Yes, people born in the same country during the same decade have many common experiences. But you're talking about hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, from a huge range of backgrounds! How can anyone possibly believe we're all alike?

Behind a paywall

Good on them.

I always say there aren’t many jobs that can’t be done in 30 hours a week if you work smart and have efficient processes. Look at the many, many part time parents who cram what is effectively a full time job into part time hours.

I support moving to the 4-day week by the way.

There’s more to life than work and if everyone worked less and exercised more the NHS would certainly see the benefit!

I work in a mixed age environment.

I'm Gen X and I love boomers. I just love them. They tell you what they think, what's wrong and what's a good idea, and they don't care whether you take their advice or not. They will give you a nod when something goes well and shrug their shoulders and sigh when it doesn't, saying things like "Well, I did say it might do that, Torunette."

Millennials are a nightmare. Half of them act as though they drink way too much coffee, which they probably do, and they seem to burn out quickly (probably because they are so hyper) and then want to chuck it all in and move onto something else. The other half seem to be very fatigued by life, as though it's all fallen very short of what they expected. Life is to be "tolerated" in the same way one might tolerate a particularly hideous rug in your living room. A lot of them remind me of Eeyore.

I don't come across a lot of Gen Z; my field is probably too old for them at the moment.

Gen X, my own generation, is the weird generation though. All of us are strange and not particularly similar to each other at all, probably because we were ignored by the boomers when we were young, and dominated by the boomers in the workplace in our twenties and thirties, so we just went off and developed our own strange habits and interests. We are the Un-Generation.

Every single generation pours scorn on the latest generation, and has done since the beginning of time. You can look back over news archives for the last 300 years and see young people routinely described as lazy and entitled. Someone said the same about you when you started work.

I’m Gen X and am determined not to do the same. It’s as ageing as describing modern music as a racket and walking into a room where you kids are watching telly and asking what that rubbish is. I’m not going there. I won’t be that cliche.

I employed one who did two weeks work and then disappeared for 8 weeks. I tried every method to contact her with no success. The only reason I didn’t contact police to check her welfare was because her personal social media showed that she was alive and (very) well.
After the 8 weeks she reappeared and said ‘sorry about that, I’ve been really busy but I’m back now’
Unbelievable.
Needless to say she did not remain in my business!

I totally agree ! Not to mention a huge sense of entitlement….. there I said it 🤷🏼‍♀️

Exactly, logical debate seems to have died a death. Arguments are ad hominem, there is no attempt to understand, it’s usually a regurgitation of dubious facts, a belief that they are 100% right and that everyone who ever existed should have lived according to their rules.

Yes we were all a bit of a twat at that age but this will follow them forever on social media. Their kids are going to be horrified, I just hope it causes the following generation to dial it down a bit!

a belief that they are 100% right and that everyone who ever existed should have lived according to their rules.

It's a minority of their generation (I hope) but yes, what went wrong with their education that they have no grasp whatsoever of the idea that people thought differently in the past, and still do in many other parts of the world, and we aren't going to rewrite all fiction and history books so they comply with current mores?

Also, I don't work in publishing or read a lot of contemporary fiction, but am I right in my perception that writers of fiction are facing criticism for intenting characters who aren't exactly like them? Fiction is doomed in that case.

this really makes me laugh in all honesty you’re just ageing. there are pieces of literature dating back to pliny the elder (ancient greece) accusing younger generations of being entitled and work shy. while people are young they want to make the world a better place and for people to be treated more fairly, but by the time that change comes about you have become the oppressor. the majority of gen z are much more left wing and so obviously are going to be against being taken advantage of and even the idea of employment. sit them down and discuss it in an equal way if you find their headstrong nature to be disadvantaging your team.

Yes they probably did, well not you personally but gen X. I've been working for the last 54 years, many years managing staff and all generations have had their moments. I'm sure I was as bad, people older than me also had their issues.

Yeah us Gen X’rs get left alone.

I think it’s because we just don’t like anyone, so just ignore them all and get on with our own thing 🤣🤣

@Torunette

Gen X, my own generation, is the weird generation though. All of us are strange and not particularly similar to each other at all, probably because we were ignored by the boomers when we were young, and dominated by the boomers in the workplace in our twenties and thirties, so we just went off and developed our own strange habits and interests. We are the Un-Generation.

I am early to mid-50s. Am I Gen X? I feel neglected in that my generation was not given a title and yeah, went off and become weird in my own world.

"I support moving to the 4-day week by the way. There’s more to life than work and if everyone worked less and exercised more the NHS would certainly see the benefit!"

They wouldn't see the benefit from Gen Z because many seem to have a long list of mental health issues that stops them doing anything they don't fancy doing