It’s not this particular generation that’s a pain in the ass to work with. It’s all young people.

The two most cyclical headlines in the world:

“Binge Drinking Increasing on College Campuses”

“Corporate Bosses Find New Generation Difficult to Work With”

As has been documented here at Writing Boots, World War II generation bosses hated bossing Baby Boomers. Baby Boomer bosses hated working with Gen Xers. Gen X ers hated dealing with Millennials.

And now?

“Gen Z Is at Top of Bosses’ Firing List Because They Think They’re the Most Difficult Generation to Work With,” was the YahooFinance headline yesterday.

“Perhaps one day soon,” concludes the Gen Z author of the piece, Gen Alpha will take over as the least-liked by us Gen Z bosses.” Oh, bet on it, Chloe.

Meanwhile, here’s a timely reprise of a 2015 Boots piece on this subject, back when it was Millennials’ turn in the barrel.

***

A corporate executive friend tells me the HR director at his company seems to think that every problem, disagreement or source of discomfort in the company ultimately boils down to entitled, self-loving “Millennials.”

Now, this said …

… Millennials are better described, and more constructively thought of, as YPWoMs. That’s, Young People Without Mortgages.

YPWoMs are now, always have been, and always will be, a giant pain in every corporation’s ass. Why? Because they possess two obnoxious attributes simultaneously:

1. They are young.

2. And they don’t have mortgages.

Because they are young, and have just arrived from 22 formative years where their imaginations were encouraged, where they were told that feelings mattered, that God mattered, that human beings mattered, that morality mattered, that truth mattered, that beauty mattered, that ideas mattered and that they mattered. And they’re, like, having a hard time adjusting to the corporate world, where none of that shit seems to matter.

And because they don’t yet have mortgages, they have less compunction about crying out in their sharp pain—to their bosses, to their bosses’ bosses, and even straight to the CEO, if he or she is daring enough to have a Twitter handle. And certainly they don’t hesitate to bellyache to the gray-faced, balding HR director, who they equate roughly with their schlub-ass high school guidance counselor.

Here’s to the Young People Without Mortgages—of this age, and of every age—who harass flabby HR dicks with their moralistic, simplistic, unrealistic insistence that the workplace should cohere with everything their parents, their teachers and their preachers and their guidance counselors taught them, knowing full well what kind of world they were heading into.

And here’s to the HR dicks, who make themselves such satisfying heavy bags to hit.

***

Postscript: I’m going to turn 54 this weekend. By now, I know the fear of looking in the eyes of a generation of young people that has expectations that I know that I, as a middle-aged accidental steward of the establishment cannot meet, however well-meaning I may be—and however well-mannered they may be.

The moment I don’t have the courage to face that fear, or the energy to attempt to explain why things are the way they are and listen to fresh (even if naive) ideas about how to make them better—is the moment I should step aside and let the kids have at it.

Because the future is theirs, not mine. And the future my generation left them is going to require skills and priorities and values different from ours. So I’ll pass on what wisdom I can and pass on whatever humble things I’ve built in the best shape possible for whatever uses may be made of them. And I’ll get out of the way as gracefully as I know how.

Will you?