boomerlaughs

AAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

Finally I have faced the dreaded thing………..AGE DISCRIMINATION!   At 54 I find the company I have worked for has gone out business, the economy being what it is.

Competition is tough, no doubt about it.  It is irksome, however, to even think about having to compete with whippersnappers who weren’t even around when President Kennedy was shot.  Who, in their mindless inexperience, do not realize that the new modern look of interior design is a direct rehash of those awful colors and designs of the 50s and 60s.  They were ugly then, and they’re ugly now.  And God save us from belly shirts!  I am THRILLED that they are moving out of style.  I only know of 6 women who could wear them and have them be even remotely flattering.

Competing.  Didn’t think I’d have to do THAT again, especially with people 20 years younger than I.  I pitty them, however, for they do not know.

I totally HATE the looks of mild amusement and condescension I am given during a job interview.  They worry so.  Will she have a heart attack?  Can she even handle a computer?  Can she keep up?  Her ideas may surface from another century.  Does she even know what’s going on in the world? 

Do ‘I’ know what’s going on in the world?  Geeez, the big question is, do they?  Nope, save for a few.

Many, many of them are a  bunch of inexperienced know-it-all dolts that haven’t really thought this thing through.  They praise and push the 20 and 30 somethings, listening to their ideas in the board room as if they were new. They think they’ve invented sliced bread.  Comments by anyone with grey hair seem to be taken with a grain of salt, dismissed for ‘lacking originality’, or politely tolerated, that is, unless the grey hair happens to own the company.

What are they missing?  They have not yet learned that history repeats itself and are therefore doomed.  They have not yet learned that there truly is nothing new under the sun.  Oh, it may look new.  It may act new.  The truth is, it was there all along and we just didn’t see it.

They use words like fresh, young, upbeat, fashion forward, marketable, out of the box……..as if these were words and ideas that baby boomers were unfamiliar with.  They often tell us we are not being open minded.  I find this laughable.  I roll on the floor.  Talk about PROJECTION!  The very idea that they have categorized us indicates their own close mindedness.  Now, please notice that I am NOT, by any means, unaware that I have categorized THEM too.!  There’s the beauty of being older.  You get to recognize your own foibles and those of everyone else.  Too often, however, we baby boomers don’t realize just how valuable we really are.  We  KNOW a thing or two.  We have (hopefully) developed a thing or two.

We have:

Fought for peace and embraced love and learned how far to go with that;

Know how to spell words correctly and know that ‘boys’ isn’t spelled with a ‘Z’ for Christ’s sake, and while it was cute and saucy for a while it’s now boring and reeks of  a lack of intelligence;

Know that patience IS actually a virtue;

Know that just because you can doesn’t mean that you should; 

Know that being polite and kind is the opposite of being a self-centered jerk who cannot sit in traffic for 10 seconds at a time without blowing a gasket;

Know that the economy works on supply and demand as well as fear and greed;

Know that friends, family, and health are the only really important things (this one I had to learn in my 30s);

Know that respect is something you give automatically until someone causes you to lose it;

Know that a work day is usually 8 hours, not 5 hours with 3 hours of chatting and surfing the net;

We know that the customer is always right and we attend to them putting their needs first;

We know enough to put our hand over our mouths when we cough;

We know that there are many unpleasant things that we must experience in order to get where we want to go and that it’s a part of life;

We know how to take pride in our work.

I wonder if they all put a little perspective on things that they would realize what it means that the majority of our sex symbols are over 50?  That our world leaders are NOT in their 20’s?  That baby boomers never really retire, we just go on to our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th careers.  We may not all be crackerjack gang-busting geniuses, but together and separately we’ve forgotten more than they will probably ever know.

If this younger set of business people decided to get it right, they’d hire us on the spot and take advantage of the blocks that we’ve been around.  Having been around the block a few times, you tend to know where you’re going.

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