Jobless, homeless, maidenless, whichever way you cut it, Millennials are less than the generation that spawned them. It seems every day the financial precarity of younger generations are headline news, with calls for people to stop eating avocados or having Netflix. As someone who doesn’t eat fruit or watch made-for-TV movies, these vices were never mine to abandon and yet somehow I am still, relatively, poor. Luckily for those of us struggling in the socioeconomic disaster zone of the early 21st century, we have older generations to dish out advice in the comments section of said news articles. The advice of Baby Boomers is often laughable, out of touch, ignorant, myopic, archaic, irrelevant and useless – but what if I actually followed it?
Recruiting Baby Boomers to assist with the social experiment was easy. Most of them had their whole lives subsidised by their children, and now spent their empty retirements sat around the house getting scammed on Facebook. I put an advert in the local paper and had two recruits join me, Teddy-Jo and Gretchen, who I bundled into the back of a van to watch monitors showing a feed from a camera I’d hidden in my glasses. I also wore an ear-piece so their advice could be relayed to me in real-time. After explaining the fictional predicament I was in – I was unemployed, lived with my parents and was single – they were more than happy to help.
The first bit of advice was getting a job. They suggested I wear a suit and go door to door with my CV to hand it to managers, so there I was with a stack of freshly printed vitae’s ready to get employed! After going to a few businesses in Downtown L.A., it turned out people didn’t accept CVs, even if they had jobs available. Instead, it seemed you had to go on the company website and fill in an application form.
“Keep trying, son, you can’t give up at the first hurdle. I remember when I was just out of college, it took me nearly two days of door knocking until I got a job.” Teddy-Jo says in one ear.
“What was the job?”
“Oh, they needed some animators for Disney, I said I could draw so they let me in.” he says.
“Maybe we can head to Disney and try that out?” I said. And so we did. Turns out that didn’t work either. The only place that even looked at my CV was a burrito place near an overpass.
“You got any cooking experience?” says the owner.
“I cook at home, all sorts of food. Burgers, hotdogs.”
“Say burritos.” Gretchen whispers in the ear-piece.
“Burritos too.”
“Okay, come by tomorrow morning, I’ll give you a trial shift. Let’s see how it goes.” the owner says, hitting a vape and going back to cutting onions.
“Shake his hand dammit.” Teddy-Jo says. I go to shake it but the owner thinks I’m going to dap him, so we end up awkwardly bending our arms and I head back to the van.
“See, I told ya.”
“You did so well dear.”
“Thanks. How will working at the burrito place help with my student debt though? Or utilise my qualifications in Cybersecurity?”
“Don’t worry about that. You just need to work hard here, who knows, in a few years you might even be able to open your own place.” Teddy-Jo says.
“Ah…I don’t really want to run a burrito place though. I don’t know anything about the restaurant business. I kinda spent a lot of time and money on my college degree.” I say. Gretchen tuts.
“Its that kind of attitude that means your generation is still living at home.”
“What did you do again?” I ask her.
“I was a stay at home mom, brought up two boys, now I’m a proud grandma.” She says, smiling.
“So, your husband brought in enough money to pay for the whole family? Do you think I can do that on sixteen bucks an hour?”
“I don’t see why not. My Carl was only on ten dollars an hour, we could still afford everything.” She says. Teddy-Jo nods in agreement so I also nod. It seemed reasonable that what somebody had experienced forty years ago would still be exactly the same now.
The day after I turn up at burrito place, work for a few hours and the owner takes me to one side.
“You’re too slow. I don’t think you’re a good fit for the kitchen.”
“I just want to do a good job.” I say, repeating the advice in my ear-piece.
“Look, I’ll pay you forty for the morning. And I don’t even have to do that.” The owner says, digging through his wallet and handing me a bunch of small bills. I go back to the van.
“Looks like I’m not cut out for the restaurant business.”
“Don’t worry sport, you tried, you just have to get back into the saddle and keep trying.”
“I remember when Carl got fired from his job at the paint factory, it took him nearly a month to find somewhere else.”
“How about we look for houses next?” I say.
I show the Boomers the sorts of houses I wanted to live in, though even quite a small house seemed to be a million dollars. If I was to put a down payment of 10%, I’d need $100,000, which would take me at least 150 weeks of working whilst spending money on nothing else.
“That’s the problem with your generation, you want the best there is straight away.”
“Yeah, you need to get yourself a starter home. Something you can do up and sell.”
“I mean, there’s not that much in California that seems affordable.”
“You’ll just have to move out of the state. What about Nevada? Arizona?”
“I helped my son buy his first home up in Oregon, it was only $350,000. Now he rents property out to people all up and down the coast.” Gretchen says. We look at Nevada and Arizona, though it still didn’t look very affordable. It seemed there were some houses in rural Alabama, but when I pointed out there probably wouldn’t be many jobs I was qualified for as well as not knowing anybody, it might be tricky building a new life out in rural Alabama. The two Boomers shake their heads.
“Men a lot younger than you went to fight in WW2 for this country. You think they thought it was too tricky?”
“But that generation was before yours. America has lost every single war since.”
“You saying we lost in Iraq? Afghanistan?” says Teddy-Jo. I nod.
“Well, yeah. The biggest military in the world invaded the Middle-East then got mogged by a few roadside bombs. And then when veterans came home they often live in poverty and get hooked on fentanyl to help with injuries they received whilst serving. Don’t you think that’s kind of sick?” I say. The Boomers are apoplectic with fury, so angry that they can’t form sentences, shouting at me that I didn’t know. I wave at them.
“Look, lets agree to disagree.” I say.
“That’s the problem with your generation, you don’t know shit about the real world, too busy sitting around deciding on your pronouns rather than trying to hold down a job and start a family.” Teddy-Jo says.
“Yeah, it’s almost as if the generation that raised us and had all the power totally failed lol. Are you guys sure you aren’t paedophiles, because it seems you’ve fucked the kids.” I say.
“You can’t blame us, dear. Your life is what you make it.” Gretchen says, patting me on the head.
“I’m not blaming you, you’re just too oblivious to understand what’s happening. All your lives you’ve been comfortable. Why would you try to change the system when it suits you so well? It’s not even a thing of who is at fault, as nobody is really. If I had lived your life I would have done the exact same thing, as you would in mine.”
“Now look here sonny, you can bet your bottom dollar that if I was your age I’d have invented Amazon and would be a billionaire by now. Because I know about hard work.”
“I don’t think so, as you’re clueless enough to think that being rich is about working hard. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk got where they are because their parents gave them tens of thousands of dollars. I don’t even want to argue with you. There’s no such thing as Baby Boomers or Millenials or Gen Alpha or whatever, it’s all just made up bullshit, labelling successive generations is just a way for a journalist to fart out another article about avocados. Who gives a fuck?”
“You do! You invited us here to give you advice! Which, you’re welcome for by the way.”
“Oh yeah. You can go home now.” I say, getting my phone out and taking selfies. From the corner of my eye, I watch the two old Americans walk away, leaving me to stew in my own juices.
Later that day, I wondered about future generations. Would one day they complain about Millennials for all the things we accused Baby Boomers of? Or were we actually a lot cooler? There was a certain privilege attached to when you were born, with children in the far future never being able to walk into a store and buy a slab of beef, or know what a tree looks like, or not pay a subscription fee to megacorporations for cybernetic lung modifications, but that was just the way it is. Thinking about the poor souls of Future Earth, it made me glad for what our generation did have. Sure, we might not have property, or families, or careers, or education, or healthcare, or community, or hope. But we did have fidget spinners and disposable vapes.
And though the coddled oldsters who constantly vote against the interests of their grandchildren and buy up property they don't need and fritter away pension funds on meaningless luxury goods, maybe it was time we put our differences to one side and joined forces to fight the true evil of this Earth. We must destroy Mr. Beast.
