By Ana Veciana-Suarez
Miami Herald
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) From jobs to personal relationships, millennials share some of their favorite bits of advice from baby boomer friends and family.
Miami Herald
If you doubt there’s a generational divide, consider an AskReddit thread that features millennials sharing the worst advice, and comments, they’ve ever fielded from baby boomers, namely their parents.
The heartfelt words of wisdom were likely met with a grimace, namely because they seemed so … well, so outdated. Advice, after all, doesn’t always translate well across the decades.
Certain subjects seemed to stand out in the missed-connection area simply because technology has changed the world so much.
Here are a few examples worth a laugh, with jobs being a favorite sore spot.
ZOOMBAFOO82
When I was hunting for my first job my dad drove me around to every store and made me go in and ask the manager for a job. Every single one told me to go and get an application. That was miserable because then my dad made me get two each time, because one was for practice. My final application I had to do in pencil, then go back over it with ink after my dad approved it. I had to do this for every store. All the while my dad blamed me for not just automagically having a job at the end of that first day.
RAICHUALOVESONG22
When I was struggling to find a job, my dad insisted that the only way it was going to happen is if I go out and “pound the pavement” and demanded I try do it. I tried on several occasions and never made it past the front desk because literally no one wants you to do that. But when I scoured the internet for jobs and created a simple system of scheduling and following up, I got a temp position that led to a full time job at a good company.
LAEIRYN
“You won’t know real happiness until you have children.”
IMACLUBPROHERE
Talking to my dad recently, he was going on about “participation trophies.” When I pointed out that we wouldn’t have received said participation trophies had his generation not invented them, his response was: “Yep, that’s another problem with your generation. Always blaming your faults on other people.”
AVATARWAANG
Not exactly advice, but this feels like the perfect place:
I take out my phone to send a quick text at a family junction, and my elderly relative looks up from her 3-hour Candy Crush session to loudly complain about how millennials are always on their phones and don’t know how to live without technology, but what she’s doing is important, or just checking real quick.
Basically, to them, anything we do in our phones is just playing with it, anything they do is important business.
GRUNT9101
The whole pick yourself up by your bootstraps schpiel. The “I started with nothing and now I’m successful.”
Great, I wish I started with nothing. I’m starting with 40,000 dollars in student loan debt and a degree everyone in my life told me to get but no one wants, which forces me to work a job that in your day paid enough starting to support a family of four and a house and a car, but for me can barely cover rent. Yeah i wish I was lucky enough to start with nothing.
SQUIDSPEAKERR
“Go outside, get some fresh air! Your mental illness is just in your head! Laugh and smile more, you’ll be fine .”
-From a family member. 4 years of therapy in and I still struggle daily.
SPECIALSAUCEREMIX
“Find a woman you can stand, and start a family with her as soon as you can. You’ll grow to love each other. That’s how me and the wife did it.” -my late 50s co-worker to me when I was 17 years old.
