kids these days

I've heard several people near my age make negative observations about younger generations.  I'm talking about the typical, "Kids these days just don't have to go through what we did," to, "Those lazy Millennials don't know how to hold down a job."  I don't understand when I hear this.  A mere decade or two ago people were saying this about this individual and his or her generation, but now he or she is willing to forget that and do the same to a younger generation?

I may have shared this before, but one incident from my teenage years that has stuck with me was an interaction I had with someone when I was working in a grocery store.  One of the jobs that needed to be done some nights was to vacuum up the carpet in the main entryway, and that night this was one of my responsibilities.  A guy who was probably in his fifties walked by and asked if I ever vacuumed at home.  I acknowledged that I sometimes did, and he responded that he thought I was lying.  He had three or four kids and none of them ever vacuumed at home.  Then he made some comment about kids today being lazy and walked out with a demeanor that indicated he had made the point he intended to make.

Obviously, this guy was not representative of fifty-something-year-old guys.  He was obviously bothered about something else that was happening in his life (or had already happened) and found this an easy situation to—well, I'm still not sure how to properly finish that sentence.  I had more than my share of faults, and it was true that I was not keen on doing chores, but vacuuming is about the easiest of the chores there are to complete.  I couldn't believe that he singled me out on that one specifically.  If you're going to call me lazy call me out for a chore that there's a solid chance that I don't actually do.

I actually didn't take it too personally.  I had a solid reputation around the store as a hard worker so I didn't need this guy's validation.  I did get irritated that he would judge my entire generation so quickly, however.  What bothered me the most was that he did not see that what he said was more an indictment on his ability to parent than it was on my generation.  I personally worked with both hard workers and sluggards in my age range in that store already, so I knew both existed.  Even then I figured that, if this guy's experience with teenagers had been exclusively bad, his problem was probably with the man in the mirror.

If I am ever tempted to make generalizations about people in another generation as I age, either older or younger, I always remember that guy walking out of the grocery store attempting to give a seventeen-year-old kid what-for.  Is what I have to say about kids these days (or maybe about septuagenarians these days) going to sound like that man's words?  If so, is that an opinion worth holding, let alone sharing?

I will sometimes point out something about my kids' childhoods that makes theirs easier than mine.  I will with regularity note that I don't get music/humor/movies that is popular (or was popular) in specific decades.  I will often have a hard time connecting with people from specific generations.  However, I will not make sweeping statements about people of a certain age.  I will not do it now, in twenty years, or in fifty years.  This is something that I am committing to now, and it is a standard that I expect to hold myself to forever.  As such, I will always be a little uncomfortable when I hear others making those statements in my company.