Years ago (okay, okay - 2005, so it was decades, dammit), when Bingley and I originally got into blogging, one of our more memorable innerwebs contretemps started thanks to my disgusted bemusement at the sense of entitlement displayed by younger people entering the job market.
At the time (circa 2011), we still had the New York Times being delivered to the house. In the paper that day, on an Op-Ed page titled The Plight of the Young and Jobless, appeared a letter which had major dad sputtering as he read it and sent me to the 'puter to pound out the online version of an epic eye roll, which I published on our blog.
...As a 22-year-old college graduate seeking employment in the seemingly nonexistent entry-level job market, I can’t help but notice the profound disrespect inherent in the expectation by some that young people like me should spend two to three years “gaining experience” (filing, copying and answering the phones) in unpaid or underpaid internships at either nonprofit or for-profit enterprises.
A slow economy is no justification for placing financial and emotional pressures on young people, many of whom cannot afford to spend several years with little or no compensation...
The private liberal arts college the author graduated from in 2011 was running about $52K a year, so, conservatively, this person had about $225K in 2011 dollars education under their belt as a graduate.
I do hope they have done well in the interim years.
Nothing has improved. If anything, it's gotten worse if the moaning of friends who own businesses with a predominantly more youthful workforce means anything.
There seems to be a good deal of coddling necessary to get certain members of the generation at hand to come to work. To engage with work while at work. To continue coming to work.
To me and my friends, it's a weird mindset, and, mind you, it's not at all every kid. But that paintbrush stroke is wide and true for goodly enough number of them. Anecdotes are a dime a dozen, not just from us Boomers but also from much younger people like our Ebola dealing with 20-year-old airmen who do not get the concept of responsibility, schedules, and rational decision-making.
WARNING LABELS ON TIDE PODS - DON'T EAT SIG SAUER PISTOL SIGHT BATTERIES
But I hadn't thought of the letter in a while (or the fact that the author wrote Bingley in high dudgeon about the post - we assume found while Googling the 'whiny screed' as one of our esteemed readers called it) (got a good snicker out of that, too) until I came across this Babylon Bee video yesterday and had to watch.
Oh, HELLO.
I guess they've noticed, too. It was hard not to, with the videos we were all dying over - oh, like the one where the poor young lady is wailing that she has no life because of W-O-R-K at her first, post-grad 9-5 job.
Sadly, she soon had the opposite problem.
Hopefully, she found something.
But you all get the drift; maybe you have even had to deal with a few either disillusioned, unmotivated, or over-entitled youths at work or at Starbucks yourself.
So, anyway, there I was this morning, minding my own business, and I had almost forgotten the Bee video when a Xweet popped up, and I was dropped in generational conflict hell all over again.
With eyeballs rolled back to the base of my skull, making it worse.
Progressives. Is there anything they aren't ashamed to damn near demand?
Progressive Hill staff are asking for a 32-hour workweek
— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) January 16, 2025
"We write today to encourage you to consider adopting a proposal that would improve worker satisfaction, increase staff retention in Congress, and model a more sustainable approach to work on a national level." pic.twitter.com/t1LmmcycNp
They do work hard to make it more palatable in the best fashion they know - pack that sucker full of buzzwords, like 'sustainable,' 'worker satisfaction,' and how successful implementation for them (winkwinknudgenudge) could be used as the template for oppressed working stiffs around the whole wide world!
So handsome. As always, progressives are leading the way to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of their fellow man.
As the second Donald Trump presidential term dawns, some progressive Capitol Hill staffers are floating a bold new proposal: working less.
The Congressional Progressive Staff Association proposed establishing a rotating 32-hour workweek on the Hill in a letter to top House and Senate leaders Thursday, saying reduced hours could “improve worker satisfaction, increase staff retention in Congress, and model a more sustainable approach to work on a national level.”
Under the proposal, congressional staffers would still work long hours when their boss is around. But when Congress is in session, district office staffers would be entitled to an abbreviated, 20-percent-lighter schedule, and when it is not, D.C.-based staff would have a lighter week.
“We do not want a 32-hour workweek to just be another special benefit for Congressional staff,” the group said in its letter. “We hope that by adopting this policy, Members of Congress can help to advance the discussion around a more sustainable workweek as a national priority and model how it can work for private and public employers across the country and the world.”
You GO, guys...or whatever pronouns apply.
I don't know if you noticed, but in all the earnest, well-intentioned, save-the-world, thoroughly reasonable arguments presented by the progressive staffers *taps chin*, there's no mention of being paid for 32 hours during their lighter workweek vice their normal salaries.
Oh, hello.
They must have forgotten.
The 20-somethings who answer the phones on Capitol Hill are having a tough time with their work-life balance.
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) January 16, 2025
The Congressional Progressive Staff Association is calling on lawmakers to drop their 40-hour work week. Instead, they said they would be much happier working 32-hours a…
...The 20-somethings who answer the phones on Capitol Hill are having a tough time with their work-life balance.
The Congressional Progressive Staff Association is calling on lawmakers to drop their 40-hour work week.
Instead, they said they would be much happier working 32-hours a week -- without any reduction in pay.
It’s always something with this generation. Their mandatory mental health days are driving the rest of us slap crazy.
The salaries for Capitol Hill staffers ranges from more than $57,000 for a staff assistant to $187,000 for a chief of staff, according to the Congressional Research Service...
The collective 'WAAH!'...
...An abbreviated workweek, the group argued, would lead to longer tenures for staffers who “routinely work long hours at a level of rigor that regularly leads to burnout.”
“The intensive nature of these roles often causes staffers to seek new positions earlier than they would in a more predictable and sustainable work environment,” the letter reads. “This is a poor outcome for both the office and the staffer.”
...isn't receiving the respect, sympathy, or empathy I'm sure the staffers feel it deserves. I mean, you can tell they spent a lot of time putting that letter - that whiny screed - together, and what do they get for their stunning and brave proposals?
GO AWAY, KID - YA BOTHER ME
I, for one, completely support progressive staffers undermining their representative's ability to be influential and effective.
— Mike Morrison 🦬 (@MikeKMorrison) January 16, 2025
In fact, 32 hours is too much! 20 hours or you strike! https://t.co/N5o96eAWqh
Not much support coming from mostly normal Democrats, either.
...For some Democrats, the cusp of Trump’s inauguration was the wrong time to pitch working less. Said Tim Hogan, a Democratic communications consultant and former Hill staffer: “lol read the room guys.”
Added Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) on X: “Why not be bold and ask for a 0-hour workweek? I wonder how blue-collar Americans would feel about white-collar workers demanding a 32-hour workweek."
I'm starting to think I should check the Babylon Bee before I check anything else in the morning. They'll usually have it first.
So maybe these staffers feel the unsettling effects of an incoming Trump administration, too.
Being so young, impressionable, and clueless, they don't know what it means, just that their lives could be changing, and they want to 'be proactive' and 'effect their own change/be the change they want to see' (Did I do that right?). They've known nothing but four years of progressives running wild, which to them is aka 'business as usual.'
Even a spoiled house cat can tell when the weather outside is fixin' to storm.
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