Spoiled and Entitled: Millennials as a Whole, or Just a Bad Egg?

Dear NBC/Today Show intern,

Thanks for helping to give Gen Y a bad name — now on national television (skip to 4:30, then approximately 10:45).

Sincerely,

Angela Stefano

***

Newsflash, Gen Y-ers: older generations (and, judging from this video, some with some serious clout in the entertainment/news industry) think we’re spoiled, self-absorbed, entitled little brats. And, with real-work-world evidence and a UNH study backing them up, they might be right.

Our superiors and potential future bosses, instead of finding eager young minds ready to do whatever it takes to make their way into their industry of choice, are encountering interns who want it all, but haven’t done — and don’t think they should have to do — the work to get it all.

The cliche movie-style intern who gets the coffee and makes the copies? Not us, says Gen Y.

Call me crazy, or tell me I’m in a minority, but I’d heard “no thank you” (or even worse, nothing at all) so many times when I was applying for internships, I was just happy to have something, anything, paid or unpaid, coffee-fetching included (which I only ever had to do once or twice). Those menial, not-so-fun parts of the job? They were totally worth it because I got to write every day, whenever I wanted, as much as I wanted, for publication.

Supposedly, however, this entitlement complex stems from the “self-esteem movement,” wherein we were always told as children how wonderful we were, how great a job we were doing, and how we deserved only the best. All that coddling that educators complain has resulted in “helicopter parents” and kids not prepared to live on their own is apparently affecting us in the work world, too.

But there’s a difference between having self-esteem and being a self-righteous jerk. The former knows they deserve and can achieve the best, and they’ll work for it; the latter thinks they deserve the best, and will settle for nothing less, because they’ve simply been given it their entire life. If you’re always told how awesome you are, but you’ve never been given a chance to prove it, you’re going to sound like a tool.

That’s not to say that it’s a bad thing to get an internship or a job via your connections or who you know, as long as you’re the best person for the job. But once you have the position, you should have to — no, you should want to — prove that you’re the best person for the job, that you didn’t just get it because of who you know or how much you paid for the opportunity. Someone else can get you a job, but only you can keep it.

And there are a lot of Gen Y-ers out there ready and willing — and wanting — to prove that we’ve got what it takes to be the boss. We know we’re awesome not because we’ve always been told it, but because we’ve fetched coffee and made copies, and when those brief, shining opportunities came along, we took them and ran with them and impressed the big wigs.

We know it’s all part of climbing the ladder, so that some day we’ll be the ones complaining about spoiled kids not wanting to get us our coffee.

***

Dear Kathie Lee and Hoda,

I will totally look up phone numbers for you any time. And I promise that there are more people my age who would jump at the chance than there are those who would turn their up noses at it. Don’t let one bad one ruin your opinions of the rest of us.

Sincerely,

Angela Stefano