Filed under: news
I know that I have a lot of peers in Generation X who remember being called Slackers by the (ahem) Baby Boomers or the (ahem) Greatest Generation. Yes, it didn’t matter that we graduated from college during a recession. And it didn’t matter that many of the only jobs available were low-wage service industry jobs that didn’t allow us to pay back our college loans. Get to work, slacker! * **
Lisa Takeuchi Cullen points out in In Praise of Slacking that we haven’t been called slackers in a while. True that. But when you read enough generational differences in the workplace articles, you’ll see that the stereotype is still there in the “Generation X values their down time and weekends” as if that’s a bad thing. I do value my down time and I haven’t seen any in a while.
And then there is the Slackism movement, Cullen points out, which seems to be the evolution of the slacker stereotype in the corporate sphere. To subscribe to slackism is to understand that the corporate system is not going to reward you for hard work (and may just fire you).
Resources
In Praise of Slacking
*I actually heard that.
** And I do know that not all of Generation X is the same.
Interesting observation. In my line of work, I spent eight months working 60 hrs a week, and afterwards I realized how much I missed–like essential-for-good-mental-health downtime–and how I would never do that again. Gen X and Y may have many things wrong, but we’re not wrong about everything.
Comment by Mile High Pixie 12.18.07 @ 8:55 pmDowntime is your friend.
Comment by Ms. Theologian 12.19.07 @ 8:41 amFor me, at least, it’s an implicit understanding that no job is worth taking that increases responsibility and additional tasks without providing an equally proportionate degree of financial recompense. An equal day’s work for an equal day’s pay doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.
Comment by Comrade Kevin 12.19.07 @ 4:08 pmI know it’s supposed to be my generation, but seriously (esp after looking at the Slackism site), is “Slacker” just a euphemism for “30 something white people?”
Comment by h sofia 12.19.07 @ 4:23 pmMaybe. I have the term associated with the movie Slacker, but apparently it has a long history.
Comment by Ms. Theologian 12.19.07 @ 5:47 pmOh, I’ve seen Slackers, but it occurred to me that I’ve just never seen it applied to anyone else.
Comment by h sofia 12.21.07 @ 12:18 amReally? I think you raise an issue of race as I’ve never seen a person of color called a slacker or identify as a slacker. But the term was really used a lot in the mid-1990s for recent college graduates who couldn’t obtain white collar jobs immediately after graduation.
Comment by Ms. Theologian 12.21.07 @ 7:32 amI have a lot of slacker UU friends (altho by now it’s long after graduation). I guess I can’t be a slacker as I’ve never actually graduated college. Yay!
Comment by h sofia 12.23.07 @ 11:37 amLeave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>