When I was 19ish I remember telephoning my employer of the time one morning around when I was due to start work for the day and informing them that as I had just crossed the Queensland border, it was highly unlikely that I would be making it to work.
by David Hovenden
When I was about nineteen I remember telephoning my then employer one morning around when I was due to start work for the day and informing them that as I had just crossed the Queensland border, it was highly unlikely that I would be making it to work. Friends of mine (also working for the same high profile budget retail chain) later reported to me that for the next week or so they were continually questioned by the personnel manager, who apparently hadn’t believed my story. Truth is, I had embellished the story – I was actually only as far up the NSW north coast as the sleepy fishing village of Hat Head.
However, this was a time before mobile phones and I was out of a job, out of contact and having a fabulous time. The subsequent lecturing I received from my parents made little impact on my reckless young brain when I did finally stop living in tents and moved into their digs at Port Macquarie for a while. I eventually migrated back to Sydney, got myself into university and got back into line . . . eventually.
The reason I’m sharing this with you is that it once again seems that I’ve dropped out with a very large percentage of the population. Type in “Generation Y” into Google and you get 157,000 hits. There’s no end of articles even on our own website dedicated to engaging the Millennium Generation and their questioning ‘Why?’ driven ways. My problem is I really just don’t buy the importance placed on generational gaps. Sure, they’re different to us, sure they’re largely disinterested in having a corporate career, but are they really all that different to the rest of Xers and baby boomers? Could it not just be that they’re young? Could it not be that life’s responsibilities haven’t got on top of them yet?
Anyone who was lucky enough to see the BBC’s absolutely hilarious series ‘Grumpy Old Men’, will surely understand the point I make. The series chronicled the free love generation of the 1960s’ slow and steady demise into the series’namesakes. The point ultimately being that as we get older we follow the role models before us and don’t seem to understand the generations below us.
If I were to ring up my boss tomorrow morning and try the stunt of my youth, there would be a few more consequences than a stern dressing down from my parents and a bit of a cash flow crisis. I’d default on my mortgage, I’d default on my car, my kids would probably starve, my wife would almost certainly divorce me and I’d probably struggle to spend a lot of consecutive nights sleeping rough on the ground. It’s debatable as to whether my parents would provide me shelter. I reckon if you give Generation Y another 15 years, they’ll be probably about as difficult to engage as me.
Finally, even though my career as a retail worker had suffered a substantial set back, ironically the very same retail chain employed me once again four or five years later. Corporate memories, and databases, were much shorter back then apparently.
