“Get a clue, boomer!”
The steady march from ignorant child, to clueless teen, to confused adult, to irrelevant geriatric continues ever on. None of us can escape it 
.
Oh, dear! I haven’t transitioned to MP3s yet! I hope it does not hurt.
My 40th HS reunion is next month.
Doubt I’ll go to it. I had like… two friends, maybe? Very clickish and sport-obsessed Catholic school. I didn’t fit in, and really don’t want to see those people again.
At least I got to ruin the economy first.
As is mine by a few years - a fact that weirdly delights me… except for the ‘making me ancient’ part.
The sign of aging is that I need the fucking thing at all!
It is a highlight of my wife’s week.
So far, I’m at the, “Ibuprofen and antacid tablets have permanently moved from the medicine cabinet to the bedside” stage.
I fondly remember the days when knew exactly why I had sore muscles.
Ooooo, good one.
My neck was killing me yesterday. I have no idea why. Seems much better today.
“I must have injured myself sleeping.”
I once pulled the muscle in my left shoulder while putting icyhot on the pulled muscle in my right shoulder.
I shouldn’t laugh, but this was hilarious, sad and scary, all at the same time. I’m sorry it happened to you and now I know yet another unpleasant fate that awaits me!
Oh, it’s funny. Everybody got a laugh out of it.
The worst thing is, it totally makes sense. Good incentive to keep up my stretching routines!
That’s kind of how I feel about work. It’s hard to explain, but it feels like this veneer of bullshit and corporate theater over everything that makes it impossible to figure out what’s real.
Like last year I was at a business school alumni function. I met an undergrad who is working on some startup trying to build low-cost data centers in energy-rich countries or some such BS. I also met a few who were “exiting” some BS “asset management” venture where I expressed amazement at their ability to raise so much capital at such a young age (who’s underwriting you? Goldman? Blackrock? Ohhh…Bank of Dad. Gotcha). In my day, it was considered a “good job” when I graduated with an analyst job at Deloitte in Manhattan.
And even at my old firm the young 20-something analysts talk with that affected “I’m really engaged to hear about your journey!” Uh…why the fuck are you talking like that? We aren’t pitching a client.
Fortunately, while these young kids were talking my ear off in their GenZ corporo-influencer-speak, some Morgan Stanley Wealth Management guy around my age came over and was like “Hey do you guys want to drink some Scotch and check out some expensive classic cars across town?”
“Ummm YES!”
One of the most telling signs for that BS you are describing is in my experience when they claim they are not a corporation but a family. When I hear that I look for the exit.
One IMO very accurate expression in Spanish is los amigos se escogen, la familia te toca. You choose your friends, you are stuck with your family. OK, tocar in this sense is not easy to translate, but that is my best attempt. I don’t want to be stuck with a corporation. Never have been. I don’t want to have to pretend that I enjoy being exploited. Fortunately for me, I don’t have to. Being old has some perks. This, for me, is one. I can say no. I’m out of this monkey business.
Not sure if this is an old people thing or not, but the last few years I find myself getting choked up during a movie to the point I really can’t talk without exposing it.
Over here, you often hear “we treat you like family,” which always makes me think that they have a VERY different experience of family than I do.
I’ve mostly worked for large corporations in tech or finance in NYC. They don’t really give a “treat you like family” vibe. “Treat you like family” I tend to think of as more of a small to medium sized midwestern company in like transportation or manufacturing school supplies or something where half the owner’s family IS the company.
Also that’s something I’ve heard in corporate culture my entire career, so I don’t see it as a marker of age or anything.
I suppose what makes me feel “old” or at least from a different time than 20-somethings coming into the workforce is that I think young people are getting all the shitty experiences of work without all the positives we had. Sure, work always sucks and we would rather do something else. But for my generation, getting a corporate job in the city (Boston originally, then NYC) meant being able to move out of my parents home and be on my own. Work provide a place to meet other people at different points in their career. A fair number of my friends actually met their future wives at work. It was a lot more “face to face” in my 20s and 30s so I feel like I spent a lot more time traveling around meeting clients and coworkers. It just seemed like a fuller richer life experience.
The best example I can think of is George Clooney in Up in The Air before Anna Kendrick comes along and turns everything remote with her Zoom calls.
There was certainly a time in the office when i looked around and thought, “i don’t want his job” or “i could see myself in his job”. (Most of the senior people were men at that time.)
I suppose that’s harder for young workers today. I still love working from home.