“I can’t imagine living my whole life in a full-time job just to take out a loan for 30 years”

I am writing to you because I am a representative of Generation Z, those ‘terrible’, ‘demanding’ and ‘lazy’ children, and it is on your website that I read articles about myself. That girls my age would prefer to work in front of the computer for 2 hours a day, drink coffee and just do yoga. Or that we go to a job interview with our parents. Oh no. We don’t go.

Our reader decided to respond to the accusations leveled against people from Generation Z. The author of the letter points out that today’s 20-year-olds do not have it as easy as people from higher age groups think:

The worst, however, are the comments under the articles. I don’t really need to read about being a ‘snowflake’ because I’ve already heard a lot about it from my family. It is worth adding that I study at an art university and work in two places at the same time – one job is really light, easy and pleasant work on the phone after 2 hours. a day, but on weekends I work in a cafe. Plus science, so it’s not all that rosy. But of course I am an ungrateful, spoiled ‘Zette’ – writes Malwina.

Zetki are called snowflakes. “Because what, we don’t want to do overtime?”

This is how most of my friends work, but of course not all of them. Most of the hate is directed at us in the context of work. I wonder why? Because what, we don’t want to do overtime? Because we don’t devote our entire lives to work? Personally, I can’t imagine wasting my entire youth in a full-time job, which I don’t even like, just to be able to take out a home loan for 30 years.

This sounds like the biggest nightmare to me. Unfortunately, previous generations got a bit trapped in this system. And I’m not writing this maliciously, I feel sorry for my parents, for example, who only now have time for their own passions and traveling, because previously they saved pennies for pennies and constantly took on extra shifts. Of course, I am grateful to them with all my heart, I love them very much. They made sure that my brother and I didn’t lack anything. But this is not how it should be, that you have to fight for your survival and that of your family…

Perhaps older generations should learn something from us. Respect for your own time, for example, but also for your employer to respect you. For example, I can’t imagine my boss writing to me on messenger about work or telling me to come in for a shift outside the scheduled schedule. And if he blames me for it, thank you, goodbye. I’ll find another job.

Is Generation Z demanding? “We are more aware”

Recently I read that when girls recommend others to find a light remote job that does not take up much time during the day, it is called a job for a “lazy girl”. However, such a person often devotes the rest of the day to other types of work: working on himself, his passions and skills. For example, I’m going to start learning programming soon because I think it’s the future.

I’m not saying that we Zets are perfect and so on. But sometimes people could pay attention to positive aspects, such as the fact that we care more about the climate than our parents (because the climate catastrophe is not nonsense, as many people think), and we do not live in the worst of times. There is much more competition on the labor market and none of us will buy a studio apartment for PLN 180,000 in Warsaw anymore. Apartment prices have skyrocketed.

We are sensitive and we can openly name mental health problems. We go to therapy more often and analyze ourselves. We are familiar with new technologies, and this is important because most of our lives will be completely digitized in the future. We are also much more aware of our rights, at least that is my impression. Maybe not everything in us is just so “bad”?

Malwina.

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