7 Lessons Millennials

Taught Me About Work

When you’re in middle age, you have no choice
but to learn from the kids

I got laid off a couple years ago, at 41. When you get laid off
and you’re 40 or older, included in your severance packet is a
document that lists the ages of all your co-workers. It’s
required under the — and typing this makes me slightly
despondent — Older Workers Benefit Protection Act of 1990,
meant to defend the benefits of workers from age
discrimination. Perusing this list feels wrong, like you’re
invading your former colleagues’ privacy. Yet you can’t look
away. Seeing your age and their ages, like that, in a list, in
black and white, jolts you into considering where you’re at on
your professional journey. And what I realized when I saw
my age on the list: I was much older than I thought.

It wasn’t just that I was 41, which, let’s face it, isn’t old. It was
that I was 41 and bored. And a little tired. And, at times,
cantankerous. Crotchety, you might say. My professional age
was more like 51. Sometimes 61. Once, in a conversation with
an intern in the work kitchen about the fridge clean-out
schedule, I was 89. A spry 89, but still.

Exacerbating this problem was the fact that I had spent the
entire span of my thirties at one place — a prestigious men’s
magazine. I thought I had stability and security and swagger.
What I didn’t realize is that I had slowly started draining
energy from the place where I worked instead of injecting it
with my own. I was getting soft. I was getting lazy. I was
getting older than my colleagues.

And then I was getting let go.

A couple months into unemployment, I got a job at another

prestigious men’s magazine. There, I was even older relative
to my colleagues. And I was all of a sudden having to prove
myself, for the first time in a decade. To do this, I had no
choice but to become one of them. And becoming one of them
meant lowering my professional age.

When you’re middle-aged and suddenly find yourself

surrounded by younger people, you can either ignore them
(because what could they — especially Jaydn — possibly
teach you?) or you can open your mind and learn from them.
You can Benjamin Button your way to a renewed career. All it
requires is a little humility and a lot of respect for people who
are hardworking, ambitious, and bubbling with a thousand
times more energy than you. It requires learning from them.

And if you choose to learn, here’s what they’ll teach you.

No one cares how old you are.

They care how good you are. And how kind. And how willing
you are to collaborate. They don’t care how old you are. But
they do care about how old you seem.

Your office is a trap.

Recent research has debunked the hateful myth that open
offices are more productive offices. But here’s my own
research on a less-studied aspect of the office setup: Unless
you’re the boss — and maybe even then — that office is
ultimately going to get you fired. That office is an illusion. It’s
a comfy sweater that hides your weight gain. It’s a warm
place for people who are tired and want to talk to the cat
groomer without anyone knowing their business. I spent a lot
of my twenties and thirties waiting for the day I’d have an
office, and I finally got one at the new place. And all of a
sudden I was working with people who just didn’t care about
it.

Not only did they not care, but during a restructuring, one of
my colleagues was actually bummed he would have to leave
Cubeland and move into his own closed-door space. At first,
it didn’t compute. “But you have a door, man!” I thought.
“And you can close it! You can privately talk to your
plumber!!”

But now I get it. For him, the office is a democracy. The office
is where you work with people and make interesting things
happen, together. Why would you work any better because
you were able to close your door? Why wouldn’t you want to
be around other people who are working hard? Why wouldn’t
you want to Slack funny shit to them and hear them laugh
about it? Why wouldn’t you want to be an active member of a
community? (Because you’re tired, that’s why. And your
office is where you can nap with your eyes open. And soften.)

You’re acting old.

The older employee can’t help it sometimes. At some point
you just lose the ability to sense your own behaviors. And
early on at my new job, I was just that older employee. I
interrupted people in meetings. It got back to me, too, and it
was mortifying. So I changed my behavior. Soon there were
numerous other behaviors I discovered I needed to change:
Saying no a lot. Also: “We done here?” The “no-look pass”
where you walk past someone in the hallway without
acknowledgment. Attentive readers will note that what these
jackanapes were pushing me to develop were… manners.

You can change your job from within.

If you came up in the 2000s, within a year or two of being in
the workforce, you were disabused of the notion that you
have, you know, a say in what kind of work you do and how
you do it. But for people coming up in the 2010s — people
who look at jobs as stints — being nimble and
entrepreneurial is just how you are… always. You pivot,
either to another job entirely or to a new way of doing your
current job. For older workers, you just have to tap into that
post-college idealism you felt at your first job. Because you
were right and they were trying to screw you over. The office
manager who says “We don’t have the resources for that” or
“Please leave my office” is an obstacle you have to work
around, not a brick wall.

Mentorship is reciprocal.
Help them. Because you know things and have seen things.
And you are inured to certain events, like mass layoffs and
budget cuts. You know how to cope. Your stalwart attitude is
a model. But also admit what you don’t know. There’s
nothing more humble than saying to a younger colleague,
“You’re better at this than me. You should do it, and I’ll
watch.” And there’s nothing more flattering.
You have to move on.
Younger workers just don’t carry around shame and
embarrassment like older workers. Social media has provided
them with a platform for expression and feedback to that
expression. We think we’re the calloused ones. We’re not.
They are.

You have to stay hungry.

People in their twenties have always been naturally hungry.
They’re even hungrier now that, almost a quarter of the way
into this bonkers century, “stability” seems like an outmoded
concept. If you’re not looking to prove your worth every day,
then you’ve stopped being afraid to fail. So you will.

Earlier this year, I was laid off from the new place, too. It was
a strangely thrilling experience. It felt like an opportunity,
not an ordeal. The prospect of starting over somewhere else
wasn’t traumatic at all. Why would it be? I was nimble, eager,
ambitious, and unshakable. I was young.