Help! My boss is a d self-entitle millennial madam
Ever more older women are finding themselves working for a younger generation of tech savvy managers – and the culture clash is agony . . .
ThERE were signs this might not be a seamless working relationship from the start. Alexandra Abrahamson, 41, turned up to her job interview wearing a smart suit and heels. the 28-year-old woman she hoped would be her boss looked casual in a long, bohemian frock.
it wasn’t just their different approaches to work attire that struck Alexandra, however, but their attitudes to the interview itself.
Self-consciously slipping off her jacket in the chaotic confines of a bustling coffee shop, she struggled to deliver a painstakingly prepared presentation that would prove she was the right choice for the position of marketing manager at an upmarket catering company.
But all the while, her potential employer’s smartphone pinged continuously with notifications from instagram.
‘She was distracted and spoke in business jargon at breakneck speed,’ recalls Alexandra. ‘All i could think was: “Wow — she’s young.”
‘But when she offered me the job, i was excited. i thought working for someone so youthful would be a positive challenge.’
Yet, within five months, Alexandra’s hopes that her new young boss would provide a ‘positive challenge’ had morphed into dread at the prospect of sitting desk-to-desk with her every day.
‘her know-it-all attitude was intimidating,’ she says. ‘i felt so drained that i quit.’
Much has been made of the hazards of employing millennials — the generation born between 1982 and 2000, with many now in their 20s and early 30s. Entitled. Oversensitive. Unable to make decisions. Unfairly or not, this is the less-than-flattering reputation many have acquired in the workplace.
But what’s it like as a middle-aged employee having a millennial boss? if you haven’t given the idea much thought, then perhaps it’s time to start. After all, millennials now constitute the largest generation in the American workforce.
And thanks to a fickle job market and, some might say, this sense of entitlement, increasing numbers of them have not so much risen through the ranks as leapfrogged their elder underlings altogether — to end up in the boss’s chair at an age when previous generations were still making the tea.
But if you expect them to be grateful for their exalted status, you may well be disappointed.
‘Millennials don’t have a concept of “serving time”,’ explains helen Goss, an employment lawyer at legal firm Boyes turner. ‘ Older generations expected to have to climb a career ladder, but millennials don’t want to wait years to be promoted. they want their abilities to be taken on trust — which can cause friction.’
indeed. Especially if, like Alexandra, your decades of hard fought-for experience are given scant appreciation. Alexandra had been working in the marketing industry for 20 years when, in February, she joined the fashionable London catering firm whose marketing arm was managed by her millennial boss.
She realised that, for all her ability and knowledge, being in her 40s also made her something of an anomaly.
‘As well as our boss, the rest of my team of six were also female, in their 20s and had clearly been recruited to reflect the creative, youthful vibe of the company,’ says Alexandra, who lives in Bromley, Kent, and is engaged to Cez, 38, a financial consultant.
‘You could count the number of staff aged over 40 on one hand. When i heard one of my team describe a 40- year- old man in another department as “old”, i decided to keep quiet about my own age — and they didn’t ask.’
Meanwhile, the trendy open-plan office was more boutique hotel than corporate building, with its free coffee counter and complimentary breakfasts served from the specially designed ‘rustic’ kitchen.
With even the likes of billionaire Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, 33, famously choosing to sit among his employees, it seems a coveted corner office is a thing of the past for millennial head honchos — a fact that disquieted Alexandra.
‘i sat opposite my boss and found it intimidating asking her advice in front of everyone,’ she says. ‘i wouldn’t have minded a private room in which to speak to her.’
Not that her boss was always there to offer advice anyway, because her seniority didn’t stop her holding the popular millennial view that worklife balance is sacrosanct.
‘She spent half her week working from home and often came in late on a Monday. Everyone else rolled in casually after 9am and clocked off on the dot of 5.30. i was frequently in the office on my own. it wasn’t ideal.
‘And call me old-fashioned, but i prefer to speak to people face-to-face than constantly emailing people.’ AND
when her boss did speak to Alexandra, it tended to be in indecipherable jargon. ‘ She was always talking about “reaching out” to clients and using words such as POA (plan of action).
‘When she told me to get the iA (information architecture) for the ROi ( return on investment), it actually felt as if she were talking in a different language. Luckily, that instruction was emailed, so i was able to look up what on earth she was talking about online.’
Alexandra quickly became overwhelmed. ‘All our work was done on Apple Macs and in Google documents, which i’d never used before,’ she says. ‘i tried to learn the systems in my lunch hour and took my Mac home with me — but the work piled in too quickly.
‘My colleagues said they were too busy to help. they’d all done degrees in digital marketing, so technology was second nature to them. they would look at me condescendingly when i said i didn’t understand.’
the age gap between Alexandra and her boss — newly promoted to marketing director after six years at the company — made her feel increasingly alienated.
‘She’d formed a close-knit gang with my younger colleagues. in meetings, they’d all walk away whispering and i knew they were talking about me. Whenever i tried to approach her, colleagues would step in and say she was too busy to speak. i felt bullied and left out.’ HAViNG
been trained to finish one job at a time, Alexandra loathed the multi-tasking expected from a generation known for its ever-decreasing attention span.
‘As part of our marketing strategy, we were encouraged to check our social media accounts throughout the day. Colleagues were always on twitter or instagram, while i spent time making sure that jobs were done properly.
‘Everything had a “hashtag” and one colleague who helped train me remarked i was “so unusual” in doing things slowly. But they were always so busy, they made mistakes.’
Alexandra’s confidence evaporated. ‘i was so worried i wasn’t fitting in that i stopped eating and sleeping properly. i felt constantly stressed.’
in June, she resigned. ‘When i told my boss it wasn’t working out, she was nice, but effectively said that the company “is what it is”,’ says Alexandra, who is now looking for another job. ‘But surely experience should count for something?’
Admittedly, the staggering selfbelief that many millennial bosses display is, in large part, down to older generations who have raised their offspring in a ‘child-centric’ manner, leading them to believe that others exist to cater to their every whim.
‘Social media also makes the world seem a smaller place,’ says employment lawyer helen Goss. ‘Millennials glean experiences online in a way that previous generations couldn’t.’
Carer Jennifer Davidson, 43, can certainly vouch for the confidence of the millennials who are now her superiors at work. ‘When i was in my 20s, i listened to my older boss who had been in her job for years,’ says Jennifer, who is married to Simon, 42, and has two young children.
‘But the girls newly above me in rank are power- crazed — despite having no experience.’
Until 2015, Jennifer was on an equal footing with most of her twentysomething colleagues at the home for elderly people in Scotland, where she works.
But while she was on maternity leave, many of the younger staff were encouraged to complete an additional level of training — so, by the time Jennifer returned to work, they ranked above her.
‘they are now in charge when the
senior nurse is away and can tell me what to do,’ she says.
‘ Whether it is cleaning or escorting an elderly patient to the toilet, there is never a please or a thank you. They use their new authority as an excuse to disappear to chat and are attached to their smartphones even on duty.
‘Because they have so little work experience, they think that such behaviour is normal.’
Still worse is their worrying disregard towards their newfound responsibility. ‘ They’re not bothered about leaving jobs undone, just as long as they finish on time,’ adds Jennifer.
‘Recently, at 7.50pm, I pointed out that one elderly patient needed to be changed for bed. They told me: “You can take over if you want, but we’re finished” — and left because their shift ended at 8pm.’ SHE
says that although her confidence has been ‘knocked’ by her millennial bosses, she doesn’t plan to question their authority as that would ‘cause friction’.’
She adds: ‘In the care industry, I think it is easy to become too qualified too young. Experience comes with age, and they lack it.’
Of course, not all millennial managers are dictatorial bullies. Indeed, many are reluctant to see themselves as ‘ bosses’ at all, because it doesn’t chime with their egalitarian world view. Goss says: ‘Millennial bosses often have a new sensitivity and terminology in terms of how they refer to their staff . They are “colleagues” or are “working together”.
‘They generally see the workplace as being less hierarchical.’
Which can be quite unsettling for employees like 46yearold Leigh Hancock — a baker employed by cake company owner Samantha Whittingham — who find comfort in the structure of the career ladder.
‘Everyone needs boundaries,’ says Leigh, who in her 20s was a credit controller, before taking a decade off work to raise her twins, now 12.
Yet Samantha, 28, from Swindon, Wiltshire, who hired Leigh this
May to help her cope with her expanding business Corporate Cakery, which provides cakes for events, says she finds it ‘weird’ when Leigh calls her boss. ‘I consider her part of the team,’ she says. ‘I don’t look down on her.’
And that’s not the only difference in mindset between the pair. Samantha is a fan of ‘disruptive change’ — which, for the uninitiated, means she is ‘artistic, creative and an improviser’.
Leigh, on the other hand, is a meticulous planner who likes to stick to the brief she’s been given.
Samantha explains: ‘We work well together, but it will cause minor disagreements. A few weeks ago, we were making a large cake for a vehicle launch, but as Leigh was making it, I realised that the silver balls she was decorating the sides with could be flattened to look like tyres. She looked worried when I told her. She said she had to stick to the design.’ Then there is social media, on which Samantha spends ‘several hours a day’ to promote her company. She’s told Leigh that it would be good for her to be on Twitter, too — ‘but she doesn’t understand it’. And nor does Leigh, who lives in Cirencester with her husband John, particularly want to. ‘I would feel vulnerable on Twitter and Instagram,’ she says, adding that Samantha has ‘done a blog post’ on her — not that she is ‘100 per cent sure’ what that means. ‘It’s gone out to millions of people and I’m really nervous about it. This way of working is alien to me. Everyone needs to know everything about you — I’m not comfortable with that.’
Yet management with a personal touch has become increasingly ingrained in the metaphorical millennial boss handbook.
‘There has been an Americanisation of work culture, which encourages more openness,’ says Goss. ‘For older staff, it can feel awkward. Many will wonder why they have to talk about their feelings at work.’ Dan Bladen, who in 2013 set up Chargifi, a solution that allows smartphones to charge wirelessly, is a case in point. At 28, Dan already has 15 staff, 12 of whom are older than him. His chief operating officer is 52 and all but one of his five board members are over 40.
‘At first, I found it intimidating,’ he says. ‘But I’ve found the older staff are comfortable with straight talk in a way my generation is less used to.’
By that, he seems to mean his older employees are less likely to fly into a strop if they disagree with his decisions than oversensitive millennials. ‘My generation needs to rediscover the art of discussion — and appreciate that disagreeing with people doesn’t mean you don’t like them any more.’
So far, so refreshing. But Dan, a theology graduate who is married to Jessica, 33, who is expecting their third child, hardly has what older generations would consider a conventional management style.
‘I’m relational,’ he says. Come again? ‘I walk the line between professional and friend. Hiring has to be a twoway street. I invest in people and ask how their home life is going. I understand if there is anyone ill in their family, and that my team are going through different relationship cycles.’
To that end, Dan, who sits with his staff in an openplan office, has set up a slack channel (no, me neither) on which his staff can share jokes. There is a ‘team away day’, an ‘office perk box’ and free treats. He sounds, in truth, more like a therapist than a boss.
‘Millennials are far more mission orientated,’ he says. ‘They’re on a mission to change the world, which is inspiring.’ If slightly discombobulating for the rest of us.