I'm On HuffPo Live Tonight (!!) Topic: Are Millennials Lazy And Entitled

NEWS ALERT: 

• The HuffingtonPost has a new, live news platform called HuffPost Live

• Tonight they're covering the hot-button topic of whether or not Millennials are lazy and entitled (aka the "news" story that will never die)

• They've invited me to be a guest pundit! All I have to do is sit at my Mac and try to look as normal as possible while sitting five inches from a computer screen and awkwardly wearing head phones. 

• You can participate too! Just log onto HuffPost Live at 9:40 EST/ 6:40 PST and post a text or video comment using the seemingly user-friendly thingy on the right hand side of the screen.

I've been thinking about this topic non-stop since the HuffPo producers reached out, and here are a few things I've concluded:

• We're not lazy, we're just not interested in being underemployed at a job we don't want anyway.   

I want to be a writer. I can work at a magazine as an assistant to an editor in Manhattan for 28K per year, 60 hours a week. It will be good experience, yes, but it will be draining, and I will likely go into serious debt living in New York City on that salary. If I have student loans, there's a chance I can't even afford to take that job. 

For the same amount of money, I can work at Starbucks in my local town for 40 hours a week and write every single day with my extra time. I can create my own blog and build an audience for that blog on Facebook. If I build a good audience, I can pitch articles to the same magazine where I was going to be an assistant! That magazine might pick up my articles, in which case I will be a paid writer while the assistants are still slaving away.  And, to top it all off, Starbucks has health benefits!

Yes, I'm living in my parents' basement. Yes, I'm avoiding a "real job." Yes, it will be a challenge for me to enter the traditional work force as an older person, if I decide on that path later. But if it's between being miserable for the sake of joining the rat race and charting my own path, I have a real choice today.

Does that make me entitled? Does it make me lazy? Not in my opinion. It just makes me unwilling to participate in the machine just for the machine's sake. Frankly, the rules are changing, and Millennials are well aware of that fact. We're re-writing them!

• We're not overly entitled, we're overly aware.  

There was a time when the disparity in income between CEO and assistant wasn't publicized. There was a time when company earning were now so easily available on the Internet. Now I generally know what my boss makes, what my company earns, and how much cash the conglomerate that owns us both has in reserve.

So am I entitled if I don't think I should have to intern for that company for free? Am I entitled if I think I deserve more than $20 per post for an article I've written for a media behemoth like AOL? Yes, you have to start somewhere. Yes, you have to pay your dues. But Millennials have been overworked and underpaid since we entered the work force, and we know that it doesn't need to be the case.

In some circumstances a very challenged economy is the rationale, and that is often legitimate, but there are ways to invest in employees that aren't just financial.

• Just because generations before us "dealt with it" doesn't mean we should. 

 I am so tired of hearing that the generation before me dealt with low wages and unpaid internships and a lack of benefits, so I should too. Older generations weathered tougher times, so I should hunker down and stop clambering for more. That's NUTS!

Things should absolutely not be the same for me as they were for my parents and my grandparents! Our society has and should advance. It's 2012! Companies should adapt to the changing nature of work in a technologically advanced society. Bosses should foster better development of employees and teams based on the piles of research we now have on what makes for a strong company culture. Things should always get better for the working public or else what the heck are we doing as a society?

Are we lazy and entitled as a generation? I don't think so. Are we unwilling to settle at times, yes. But that's because of myriad factors that make it easy for us to choose a counter-culture path. We've watched companies be revealed as crooks, CEOs indicted left and right, and wages remain criminally low given the rise in cost of living nation-wide.

You know what I think is lazy? Delivering our generation the same conditions that were "good enough for our parents and grandparents", holding onto old business practices and structures, and getting unpaid interns to do the work you should pay real employees to handle. So maybe someone should write an article about the lazy, entitled Baby Boomer generation instead.

I think we're going to have a VERY interesting conversation tonight, and I hope you'll join!

Also, please feel free to include your own comment below. I'd LOVE to raise those points in the convo tonight.

Thanks!