Generations talking past each other

At B & N yesterday afternoon.  Young woman, a little past college age, there with a group of friends, crowded together around a small table, all of them women, all of them college age or, like her, maybe a little older.  Lots of movement back and forth between the table and the counter as lattes, frapacinos, coffees, and desserts are ordered and then fetched.  This particular young woman stays put, though, because she’s in a conversation with a man at a table across the way.

Not that kind of conversation.

He’s a guy in his fifties, there with his wife.  Old enough to be her father, but not acting fatherly towards her.  Friend of her father, I’m guessing, someone who’s known her from way back and feels he can speak to her frankly, with I changed your diaper authority.  Smooth bald crown, jutting chin, sweatshirt with some college’s coat of arms.  I don’t like him.

“So,” the man’s saying, “What’s the new job?”

“Recruiter,” she says.

“Recruiter?” It’s as if she said she was a wheelwright or Chinese herbalist or a circus ringmaster.  His tone practically accuses her of making up a job to pull his leg.

"I’m a recruiter,” she says again, with a note of apology, as if she’s had to explain this before, “Not with the military!  I’m working for”  She names a financial services company.  “I recruit people for their tech department.”

“What does that involve?” the man asks imperatively.  Apparently there’s a right and a wrong answer to this question, at least in his mind.  I’m thinking, What are you, interviewing her?  You’ve got a better job you’re going to offer her?

“I go out and find people to write the programs they use to figure out their trades.”

“Programmers,” he says, like a science teacher providing a particularly slow student with the technical term for the red stuff that flows through people’s veins.

She giggles nervously.  “Yes.  We call them technologists though.”

“They’re called programmers,” he says.  “People who write programs are called programmers.  Or coders.  If they write code they’re called coders.”

At this point I wanted to jump in and tell him to stop raining on her parade.  Just congratulate her and shut up.  Sounds like a good job, a rare find in this economy, with what must be a good sized and growing company if they need that many “technologists” and someone in-house to help hire and keep track of them.  And I’m guessing those couple of years that separate her from her college graduation day were filled with some stretches of unemployment.  This is good news, be happy for her, and shut up.

Of course I don’t say any of that because it’s none of my business and if I put my oar in I’d be just like this guy, another middle-aged man treating her like a child.  She’s old enough to tell him to buzz off herself and she isn’t doing it either because she’s too polite or she knows him well enough she’s used to his bullying or she just doesn’t think it’s worth the trouble.

But another guy, another middle-aged man, this one without my reluctance to butt in, at the home plate of the diamond our four collective tables form, turns to her and says, “Did you major in that in school?”

“No, I majored in psychology.”

“Psychology?”

“Psychology and philosophy,” she says brightly, “It was a dual major.”

“You sure put that degree to use then.”

If there were any justice in the world last night’s evening news would have included a story about a couple of middle-aged men who were chased out into a Barnes and Noble parking lot by a gang of twentysomething women and pantsed.

I’m glad there isn’t that kind of justice because I might have been included in the young women’s rampage on general principles.

Here we are, we aging Boomers, trying to “save” Social Security for ourselves by taking away those young women’s future benefits and forcing them to work into their old ages.

Guys like this make me wonder why they aren’t doing that to us.

Comments

[Tom W.]

The observant Mannion at his best....

[Shayera]

Holy smokes. What a condescending couple of idiots.
I love reading these glimpses of life that you write about.

[Ken Houghton]

Can he really be dumb enough not to see that she is precisely using her dual majors?

Speaking for those of us who deal with recruiters on a regular basis (far too regular, in my case), finding the right match among a bunch of applicants who all give roughly the same answer to roughly the same questions is almost entirely a mix of psychological evaluation and philosophical perspective.

Otherwise, all you get is a "coder," not someone who can work on the team diligently enough to add value and not get bored.

Calvin Trilling was wrong about the current generation being smarter than the previous one--as the man shows, it's that they didn't see the value that could be provided by "coders" as anything different from machines. The failure was of perspective, and clearly it continues.

[tedra]

ARGH. My theory is that (some) middle-aged men pull that crap on young women because women their own age have finally gotten over the feeling that we ought to be nice to bullies.

[JH Shannon]

I hear from my fellow boomers that our future is at risk because young people are lazy, don't care about the important things, have no focus, can't think ~ you get the picture. The scene that Lance describes is actually a wonderful example of why I am very optimistic about the future. The young woman is demonstrating exactly why that optimism is well founded. Her academic focus is a creative choice that she obviously enjoyed ~ in the liberal arts, no less. She translated that success in a very important way ~ she invested in a position that may not have existed five years ago ~ an experience that will she will build on and will be critical to her future. She managed those conversations with grace and confidence ~ especially when it appears that both individuals presumed that she fit the above description.

In my experience there are many more like her out there. So, whatever risks the future holds ~ some vague notion that our rising generations are lacking should not be one of them.

[Dan Leo]

What a coupla dickwads...if it's some small consolation I'm sure this is just what this young woman and her friends were saying about these clowns as soon as they were out of earshot...

[Rana]

Sounds to me that they have little understanding of what she does or why it's important and therefore belittle it in order to make themselves feel better. If they don't understand it, it can't be a Real Job.

Of course, they also sound like the types who, if she was working a Real Job, would then insist on telling her how she should be doing that job, even if they've never worked in such a position in their lives. Either that, or they'd be asking for free medical advice, insurance deals, etc., or complaining about how the people who do jobs like that are all selfish jerks.

In other words, she can't win.

[Jennifer]

I'm old enough to be lumped in with the men and yet I still relate to the woman on the receiving end of that conversation. The men would have talked to any female that way.

I agree with Dan... total dickwads. Smug, unaware dickwads.

[Marilyn]

As for Social Security, it's not really for the obtuse male boomers - it's for the women who have made 20% or more less than them over a lifetime, who interrupted their careers for kids and couldn't get back in the work force, and all the other women these young ones will be one day.