Dear Boomers: Please Retire. Love, Gen Y

 I came across this interesting  blog post the other day: 15 Reasons College Students Need to Invest in Their Careers. It got me thinking a lot about the plight of the entry-level professional. All of the statistics that J.T. O’Donnell talks about are really interesting, but the most fascinating one to me is this:

“70M+. The number of Baby Boomers (people in their 50s-60’s) in America who are ‘retirement-ready, but under-funded’ and thus will stay in the job market, holding back the entry of new grads to the workplace.”

The reason I find this noteworthy isn’t because I think it’s terribly shocking. It’s no secret that this recession has hit Boomers really hard. Their 401ks, which they have contributed to their entire working lives, are much lower than they had hoped they would be – no thanks to the stock market – thus forcing them to remain in the workforce beyond normal expectations.

The challenge this presents to the next generation of professionals is that with fewer people exiting the workforce, there are fewer positions opening up. The repercussions of which are seen in another statistic presented in J.T.’s post:

“25 years old. The average age before a college grad can finally afford to move out of their parent’s house and live on their own. (They are called Boomerang Kids and K.I.P.P.E.R.S – Kids In Parents Pockets Eating Retirement Savings.)”

Okay, let’s recap: recent grads are not finding jobs because their parents generation is retiring later in life but part of the reason the Boomers are retiring later is because they’ve lost part of their retirement savings and are still supporting their out of work kids… Sounds a bit cyclical, eh?

So what’s an economically unstable society to do? I certainly don’t know. I’m not an economist, nor can I predict the upcoming trends in employment. What I do know is that this is a VERY frustrating time for Millennials. It’s not easy swallowing your pride and moving back in with mom and dad, especially when you can’t, for the life of you, find a job.

Here are my words of encouragement, Gen Y: You’re not alone and the good news is that this won’t last forever. In the meantime, don’t give up the job search, no matter how disheartening it becomes, and take steps to improve your resume, even if it means working for free for a while because your situation can only improve from there, right?

And for the love of Pete, don’t blame your joblessness on your parents! (At least not while they’re still providing the food and shelter…)

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Subway Ruined My Sandwich. Or Why You Should Fire Worthless Employees…

So I went to Subway yesterday for a veggie sub. Relatively simple assembly, I’d say: bread, cheese, veggies and dressing…Pretty hard to screw that up, right? Wrong. Not only did the woman behind the counter mess up my sandwich, she was also rude, had abysmal communication skills, and actually checked her cell phone to see who was calling before she got around to ringing me up.

As I ate my self-doctored sandwich, after a disgusting mayo extraction that probably shed the fat equivalent of a Big Mac off my lunch, I came to the conclusion that the Subway employee didn’t deserve her job.

In the past year and a half, I’ve seen people very close to me lose their jobs, or even remain unemployed for months after graduation, all with their hopes of finding another opportunity soon dwindling each day. The more I think about how deserving these people are of a good job, the more frustrating it is to see people everywhere who do not deserve their jobs.

Maybe this Subway employee doesn’t realize how precious employment is right now, or maybe she doesn’t care. Who knows? What I do know is that in this economy, there are people who would kill to have a job and the Subway employee’s attitude is reflective of a huge problem in the workplace that most of us have experienced: people not pulling their weight and contributing to the overall goal of the company.

I’m not suggesting that my college educated friends and family start looking for jobs in the fast food industry. Rather employers across the board should take a close inventory of their employees to determine who really deserves to be employed. With only 45% of Americans reporting satisfaction with their jobs, there are bound to be plenty of people who aren’t doing their jobs to the best of their abilities due to said dissatisfaction.

This recession sucks. Mostly because the way I see it is that there are a lot of VERY worthy people out there looking for a good job, while people like the girl at Subway, or the co-worker who spends a good 3 ½ hours each day on personal phone calls and watching YouTube videos, are sitting pretty with their bi-weekly paychecks and complete disregard for the success of the company.

As an entry-level employee, I clearly have no control over who keeps their job or gets a new one, and frankly, probably shouldn’t even have an opinion about which of my coworkers really deserves to be there. And short of tattling on the incompetent Subway employee (not that I’ve completely ruled it out…), I really have no voice there either. So I’m counting on you, managers & executives. Do us all a favor and take a close look at those you employ because the chance that there is someone amazing just waiting for the chance to replace a less than stellar worker is pretty high.

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