Mike's Thoughts Part 2: Attack of the Jerks
“Participation Trophies and Rewarding Mediocrity” OH MY GOD, STOP!
There’s a growing trend when it comes to denouncing the younger generations, whether they be Gen Xers, Millennials, the in-betweeners known as “Xenials” or the youngest generation, Generation Z. Here, I’ll sum it up:
You guys don’t know what hard work is. You were given participation trophies for everything you did so you think that mediocrity is something you should be rewarded for. Back in my day, we had to walk to school, UPHILL 15 MILES WITH NO SHOES!
So the last sentence isn’t part of the general discussion, however it might as well be because it’s all equally ridiculous! Nothing makes you sound like an old man, shaking his fist at the “damn kids and their rock n roll” than this sort of sentiment. First off, it’s completely unquantifiable. There’s no way for anyone to say that an entire generation is lazy or coddled or spoiled, we’re talking about millions of people here. On top of that, there are plenty of lazy older people. There are plenty of people in their 50s and 60s who don’t know what hard work is. And here’s the hard truth of the matter: no matter what generation it is, no matter who it is, what music is trendy, what television shows are popular or what new technology the kids are obsessed with, the older generation is ALWAYS going to look down on them and criticize them. That’s how it works. Don’t you remember your parents saying things about too much television or too many video games will “rot your brain?” Do you really want to be that guy who follows in the footsteps of your parents/grandparents to be crotchety/ornery for no reason other than “disrespectful kids not working hard enough?” Come on, grandpa. We’ll see if we can find a re-run of Love Boat for you to watch.
“DAMN KIDS AND THEIR ROCK MUSIC”
you already said that
”Oh…well…get off my lawn then!”
I’m no expert in the matter of generational dynamics, or measuring how hard or entitled an entire age group of people are, but I can speak from experience and observation. I have a 20 year old step daughter. She was working 2 jobs and going to community college full time for over a year. She now is going to a regular 4 year college AND she’s on the cheerleading team, all while using (gasp) social media! Trust and believe that she got “participation trophies” in her time cheerleading and playing other sports. They were meaningless to her. The ones that mattered were the ones that she put in a ton of work for, the ones where her and her teammates accomplished something worthwhile. As a kid who grew up in the 80s and 90s I got a metric ton of participation trophies, too. They collected dust. The ones that took prominent display in my bedroom were the ones that MEANT something. And let’s take a dump on the participation trophy concept right now. You know who started it? Not the kids. We didn’t give a rat’s butt about them! We just wanted that end of season pizza party!
This is an accurate depiction of those post-soccer-season Pizza Hut get togethers, complete with Jimmy the Pizza Hut employee getting handsy with Skipper. GET BACK TO WORK JIMMY!
It was our parents who made the fuss about “every kid, every team getting a trophy.” The same generation that craps on Millennials for getting participation trophies in the first place! That’s like giving a kid McDonalds all the time and blaming them for being fat, wait, they did that, too didn’t they? Son of a…
Here’s another thing about those participation trophies: not every kid was super into being alpha-jock about sports. They were there to play because their friends from school were playing, too. Those trophies were often a memento of that time with your friends, having fun, drinking juice boxes, sitting on a Little League bench in the dugout and pretending you were a Major Leaguer. So what if you sucked? You got a dope, little hand-held trophy to remember that awesome summer and for those kids, that might have been enough for them. But instead, you got parents going all Cobra Kai John Kreese on them.
Johnny learned a valuable lesson that day: John Kreese is a juicebag and a scary racist.
As parents and members of the older generation, it’s our role to teach our kids and the younger set what’s important in life. Dwelling on small stuff and getting angry because “everyone gets a trophy” is wasted energy. None of us were rewarded for mediocrity, get that thought out of your head right now. We knew within ourselves what our accomplishments were. Some trophy store souvenir wasn’t going to make us think we were champions when we weren’t. To think that giving a child even the smallest amount of joy in their life made them soft because “they didn’t earn it” is cruel. That’s the kind of behavior that creates emotionally stunted adults! Adulthood is harsh enough as it is, blaming your struggles on a 20 dollar shelf ornament is beyond ridiculous.
But look around you: where are those trophy stores now? Closed. You did such a good job convincing us that we didn’t need trophies, when we grew up, we didn’t want them any more! All those entrepreneurs lost their businesses because you were convinced that a cute little novelty somehow turned an entire generation into crybabies. It’s laughably insane to think that there are people out there who actually THINK this somehow effected work ethic.
In a shocking display of irony, here’s the trophy people get for bemoaning participation trophies. It’s in the mail if you haven’t received it yet :)
Which brings me to the brunt of the older generations’ rage and the internet’s new clickbait darling… and that’s Millennials. They’re the ones who were ruined by participation trophies and think mediocrity is something to celebrate! How dare they have nice things!
Let me state that I worked with and supervised many of them for years as a retail manager. I saw dozens of hardworking, dedicated, committed, caring kids bust their butts for crap pay. The District Managers and Regional Managers were always the older generation who would criticize the work ethic and when these kids would DARE demand a decent wage it would always come with a speech about “hard work” and “think of the team” as we were making retail establishments millions of dollars, seeing little to no return. Wonder why Blockbuster and Hollywood Video went out of business? Well…part of it had to do with Blockbuster not working with Netflix and essentially laughing them out of the room when they predicted streaming movies would be the future, but the other part was the quality of the franchises went to crap. They didn’t keep up with a livable wage for managers and employees. You pay crap? You get crappy employees. When the work suffers, the brand suffers. It’s not difficult to figure this out. It’s happening to Gamestop right now as we speak. They’re falling apart because they never gave a damn about keeping good, hardworking people around. No one loves video games THAT much to deal with barely-above-poverty level pay. Oh, and you know what District Managers love giving to their underpaid, hardworking store managers? Effing trophies. Instead of raises…trophies. But we’re done talking about those things, moving on.
The only thing I miss about working in retail is the awesome people I met along the way. Seeing new employees learn the skills, kick butt at every task they’re given and having a camaraderie of being in “the suck” together often made just barely scraping by worth it. It reminded me of the military in many aspects: your pay sucked, your job was often not worth it, you would rather be ANYWHERE than where you were, but at least you had a dope crew around you. And now, years later, seeing all of these employees that you hand-picked, trained and worked with, move on to doing amazing things in other avenues is the best. One of my people is now a professional chef! She never complained about working, always picked up extra shifts, listened to everything I taught her, she would even mimic words I used when selling to customers (“anything in particular I can help you find?” except she said it par-TICK-A-lar. It was hilariously adorable. She was the best.). One of my assistant managers, who actually followed me from my old store to my new one, was a vital piece of keeping my sanity at that job. He is now a DOD contractor making money he actually deserves. And that’s only some of them! Damn…that warms my heart. I miss all those guys.
I think what I love most about my generation of Xenials/Millennials is that aforementioned camaraderie. We knew we were getting hosed by the older generation as they stacked the deck and made every financial rule to help themselves, subsequently putting us into crippling debt and unable to afford decent housing, but we had each other. It would suck equally for all of us. As we found new jobs, new careers, new ways of gaining income that no generation before us thought of, we found our own peace. Maybe the older generation will see that, or not. Maybe they’ll just get mad because we want everyone to feel included. Whatevs.
“Mike, what does this have to do with geeky/nerdy things?” I’m glad you asked, nameless-voice-of-the-audience! My point in writing all of this is just a reminder: we all work hard for the things we love. You may not see it because maybe your priorities are different. It doesn’t make that persons quest any less important or valid than yours. This world will not be a great place if we look for all the differences and reasons to be angry at one another. Try to see the hustle or creativity in someone else. Tell them how cool you think it is that they’re following their own path. Be cool. Don’t be a juicebag. And get off my lawn.