Millennial Support Group by Naomi Elana Zener

[AlmostDr.1987]: ISOJ. I can’t believe how after 11 yrs of school & training, I make $0.37/hr as a surgical resident SAVING OTHER PEOPLE’S LIVES! With residency coming to an end, I can’t find a job because old fucking boomers won’t retire or die! FML #WM #ISU

[HeartofGold]: WTF did I go to law school for? At least you’ll have a job. I’ve been sofa surfing in my parents’ basement for two years looking for work, but there’s nothing out there that meets my skills. #TSPMM

[Z63]: I’ve seen lots of job postings for lawyers. If you can’t find work, why don’t you just apply to everything?

[HeartofGold]: Um because who the fuck wants to just do insurance defense work? I want to be an entertainment lawyer, but no one wants to let a junior in!

[Z63]: Both of you should stop complaining. With your degrees you’ll land on your feet. What about poor people not lucky enough to go to med or law school? Would you rather flip burgers at McDonalds? You should be grateful that your parents let you stay at their place. Think of the money you’re saving on rent that you can use to repay student loans.

[AlmostDr.1987]: What student loans? My parents paid for school.

[HeartofGold]: Same here.

[Z63]: Some of us aren’t so lucky. By the way, what do these mean:

FML

WM

ISU

TSPMM

ISOJ

[AlmostDr.1987]:

FML – fuck my life

WM – why me

ISU – it’s so unfair

TSPMM – they should pay me more

ISOJ – in search of job

[Z63]: Well aren’t you both special! You are whiners. Do you know what the Gen Xers faced on graduation? Recession. Yet, they still made careers for themselves.

[AlmostDr.1987]: Well we’re in the midst of trying to recover from the Great Recession, so it’s worse for us.

[HeartofGold]: Our problems were caused by Gen Xers. They showed us what we should aspire to: 4+1 bedroom house, two luxury cars, 5 star vacations, 2.5 kids cared for by ethnic nanny who simultaneously walks designer hybrid doodle mutt. So we went to school with our GenX dreams in mind while our Boomer and Zoomer parents Blackhawk-hovered over our every move, put us in every conceivably organized team sport were we all got gold stars & no one lost.  We’re not special? We are Generation Special because our mommies told us we were.

[SupaStah]: The problem is every other ‘special’ kid from our class and teams are competing against us for jobs that Boomers & Zoomers won’t retire from. Or, Gen Xers won’t quit.

[HeartofGold]: I want to be my own boss

[Z63]: So, you have a law degree. Hang a shingle. Start your own practice!

[HeartofGold]: Then who will mentor me?

[AlmostDr.1987]: That would be negligent to practice law not having been taught how to be a lawyer.

[SupaStah]:  I got thrown in the deep end at my job. No mentorship.

[Z63]: What do you do?

[SupaStah]: Investment banking.

[Z63]: Hard work.

[SupaStah]: I kill myself for my $100K salary, which works out to about the same as AlmostDr.1987’s hourly wage when you look at my hours. I should only have to work 8:30am-4:30pm for that money, especially when my bonus was only $250K last year.  I’m lucky if I get more than 6 hours of sleep on weekends.

[Z63]: Is that because you’re working non-stop?

[SupaStah]: Are you out of your fucking mind? My weekends are sacrosanct. Only for the occasional big billion-dollar deal will I work a weekend. No man, it’s bottle service time.

[AlmostDr.1987]: The only bottle service I see on call is the coke bottle I get when I have five seconds between patients from the pop machine.

[HeartofGold]: I don’t even want to be a lawyer. At least you two have jobs & are living the dream.

[Z63]: What do you want to do?

[HeartofGold]: I want…I want…

[Z63]: You don’t even know what you want!

[HeartofGold]: Yes I do! I want to make A LOT of $$$$ & do very little for it.

[AlmostDr.1987]: Hate to break it to you, no such thing.

[SupaStah]: I’d say send me your c/v, but you have to kill it to make cheddar in I-banking.

[Teach4Future]: You are all such jerks. I’m a teacher staring down a lifetime of union membership oppression, low pay, no respect from students let alone parents, overcrowded classes, under the pressure of teaching our future leaders, doctors, lawyer, etc… You have NO idea what that’s like.

[AlmostDr.1987]: Don’t talk to me about pressure. Come back when you’ve had your arm elbow deep inside a guy’s chest cavity massaging his heart back to life. Try training for 14 years to make less than a kid in a Bangladesh sweatshop. I haven’t eaten a decent meal in years. My ass is so large that I have to wear scrubs on dates because nothing in my closet fits & I don’t have any money to buy a new dress.

[HeartofGold]: Maybe you’ll marry rich. Or, another poor doctorJ

[AlmostDr.1987]: Fuck you. I was one of the unlucky ones not to snag a classmate as a hubby while still in med school.

[SupaStah]: Hey teach, what do you have to complain about? 8am-3pm school days? Two weeks off at Xmas? A week’s vacation in March? Sick day bank? Wait, you must HATE summers off!

[AlmostDr.1987]: You’re not even responsible for their lives. You get a new batch of students every year. So if you fuck up one group, there’s another right behind to teach the following year to make up for it. They’re just like Kleenex.

[HeartofGold]: Seriously, you have lifetime job security. The rest of us here don’t.   What do you really have to complain about?

[AlmostDr.1987]: If someone dies on my table, my career is one scalpel cut away from being killed.

[SupaStah]: Please, if I do something to screw up the NYSE, I face public career execution. If I tell anyone I work in finance & the stock market had a bad day, I get looked at like I “Madoff” with their $$$.

[Teach4Future]: Do you know how hard it is to teach today? To get a kid to listen to you when plugged into their iPod 24-7? Or, to get a parent to care long enough between calls on their smartphone? To top it off, everything is digital so we have to be computer geniuses too, even though our degree is in social anthropology of lemurs & basket weaving.

[Z63]: You’re Generation Steve Jobs complaining about working a computer?

[Teach4Future]: Just because I have a PhD in Facebook® doesn’t mean I write code or am a software genie.

[AlmostDr.1987]: I have the same issue in the hospital. I understand the inner workings of a human brain, not that of an iMac. Where are all the great six figure salaries we were promised? Where’s the help, the mentorship? Where’s the accommodation we need for our ADHD? Where’s the life-work balance so we can all be #1?

[HeartofGold]: This is our parents’ fault. I can’t afford a real house. Who wants to come home with me to have sex in my parents’ basement? Being a GenY has totally screwed up my sex life.

[Z63]: Ever hear of renting?

[Teach4Future]: That’s a total waste of $$$. You have no equity in a rental. And, how would you save for a down payment?

[SupaStah]: Or bottle service?

[Z63]: Live within your means? Cut out the bottle service? Don’t go into debt?

[HeartofGold]: There’s nothing wrong with a little debt. We can always declare bankruptcy and start over.

[Z63]: It’s called setting priorities, sacrificing & saving for what you need before you impulse buy what you want.

[HeartofGold]: We do make sacrifices. I buy my coffee at Tim Hortons, not Starbucks.

[SupaStah]: I buy designer clothes that are two seasons old.

[Teach4Future]: All I want to do is give my kids a home with a yard, is that so wrong?

[Z63]: Oh, you have children?

[Teach4Future]: I will one day, and on that day I want them to have a yard. How can I give them that if my parents don’t give me a down payment for a house?

[Z63]: Maybe move to a community with cheaper housing?

[SupaStah]: That makes no sense. Location, location, location. Learned that one from my Boomer dad. No point in putting money down in a non or slow appreciating neighbourhood.

[HeartofGold]: Seriously Z63, that’s your dumbest idea yet. We already have shitty life-work balances as it is. So if we move to the nosebleed section of the city, our life will be spent working and commuting. What do you even do? Are you even a Millennial?

[Teach4Future]: Yeah, you’re really critical of us. This is supposed to be a supportive Facebook group. Not one designed to hate on each other, like some of the mom groups here.

[Z63]: I can’t take it anymore! You’re a bunch of lazy, spoiled, entitled Gen Y brats. In my day we worked hard to get what we needed before we even thought about what we wanted. Couldn’t afford a house? Rent. No mom, dad or government to come along and just bail us out or give us handouts. I thought that Gen Xers were bad, but you are the “ME” generation. You live like this is an expectocracy, where you expect everything to be given to you on a silver platter…

[HeartofGold]: How fucking old are you?

[Z63]: I’m 63 dipshit! See, if you even used your itty bitty brain cells to read my handle, you’d have put two and two together.  I’m the person you’re waiting on to retire so you can grab my corner office at 27 because you think you deserve it. I’m the one you want to force into retirement with 0% return on my portfolio as a result of an economic meltdown that eroded my capital because you all think you have the right to borrow your brains out to buy things you can’t afford. I’m the one driving a 12 year old Volvo that is fully paid off while you speed around in your leased BMW like you’re starring in a rap video.  I’m the one who like your fathers and mothers, gave you far too much because you treat the world like it’s your toilet.

[AlmostDr.1987]: You’re a Boomer!

[HeartofGold]: I know that speech. You’re my dad!

[Z63]: Rubin, I should’ve known it was you! The whining sounded too familiar. I’m coming downstairs and taking away your iPad.

© 2014. Naomi Elana Zener. All Rights Reserved.