So they took people actually doing work, and had them do nothing because it looked more like doing work than actual work did. This was one of the many, many things that led to me leaving that company.

Or, if the corporation’s expectations were ridiculous, maybe if enough “peons” told them to shove it, they would eventually stop manufacturing these bullshit distractions that prevent the company’s actual work from getting done and probably have a side effect of scaring the shit out of people who really need that low income job that most of the employees can afford to lose.

The thing is, you know some other BK managers are not cheating the system. They’re in danger of getting fired, getting their restaurants closed (that happened to one BK here a few years ago), etc.

Cheating always has invisible collateral damage – someone always gets hurt.

Thıs getting customers to drıve back and forth makes no sense other than to piss the customer off. As a fıfteen year old İ got that.

You really explain well how we’ve managed to miss every boat that was supposed to sail past us at some point.

The one thing I’ve found with GenYers in cushy positions exercising no responsibility whatsoever is that I can scare the piss out of them and whip them into a “yes ma’am” frenzy. That’s a special skill of mine, and it shouldn’t be required when you’re only asking someone do what their position entails.

The other day, a little puke at Burger King’s drive-thru window told my mother to back up her car. She did so, and he directed her when to stop. Then, several minutes later, he told her to pull forward. She asked what it was all about.

“Oh, we have time quotas we have to meet,” Puke explained. “If you were up here the whole time it took us to get the order together, we wouldn’t have met it.”

She sat there for several minutes, carefully checking her order and then pretending to look through her purse. He was pissed, poor thing.

I try to do things like that as well – just wreck their plans, get some sort of revenge. I consider it the teaching of object lessons.

And of course, I have to reiterate: there are lots of great Boomer and Y individuals. There are also lots of asshole Xers. It’s just the way our country arranges everything by demographic – from “what will we manufacture” to “who will run the country” – that causes us to see these divisive lines. The X generation is the smallest of the 20th century, and in a very real “majority rules (at the expense of the minority)” way, I think we ARE seen as disposable because there aren’t enough of us to merit being treated as human.

The disabled have been consigned to America’s collective trash heep, even though everyone stands a 40% chance of becoming disabled if you’re between the ages of 18 and 60. Most of America’s homeless are among the ranks of the disabled, or are women – some with kids, some without.

The “bootstraps” (those things we were supposed to pull ourselves up by) were permanently slashed by Reagan and Bush, Sr. with cuts in Pell grants for college and trade schools, eliminated funding for subsidized housing for the poor, and Reagan’s blanket denial policy: Disabled Americans are denied even basic income support of a meager $600/mo SSI check.

Then Clinton came along and passed NAFTA and the Welfare Reform Act to appease House Scrooge Newt Gingrich, a rich white male alpha dipshit Boomer who wanted to punish women out of poverty. Clinton caved in and threw poor women and children under the bus for political gain. All of this happened at a time when we Gen-Xers were being denied any chances to get a shot for the good jobs because living wage jobs were rapidly disappearing due to off-shoring and NAFTA, while the remaining jobs went overwhelmingly to the Boomers who were a hell of alot more financially secure than we’ll ever be!

The employment prospects for those with disabilities are slim to none. All the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) did was kick poor people with medical problems off of SSI – even though there are no jobs for them because no one gives them a chance. The ADA should be called “The Americans Who Have Been Discarded Act.”

A disabled person only has a 4% chance of getting even a crappy minimum wage job – despite having a college education and skills to offer. That means the unemployment rate for the disabled is 96%. Yet, with cuts and denial of SSI income support, how do those with disabilities live? Look at the soup kitchens and “tent cities.”

Gen-Xers are still being denied good jobs because we’re no longer young; we’re middle aged. We never got the chance to get any experience at the good jobs when we were young, so now we’re “overqualified” while also lacking “experience.” We’re being shoved aside in the job market by the Boomers’ kids who are alot younger than many of us. Now, compare our situation to that of wealthy Boomer’s kids (alot – but not all – Gen-Yers/Millenials) whose influential Boomer parents actually bully employers to negotiate the best employment deals possible for their spoiled progeny – at the expense of what is right, what is reasonable, and what is fair.

When I walk into a bank and see a 23 year old bank president with a snotty, rude, and condescending attitude; and who is no more deserving of that job than any of us here, I want to scream. When I was in my 20’s back in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s (before becoming disabled), no one my age could get a good job, let alone a top job. Many of us still can’t get good jobs now!

The job market, society, and economy we have today, and have had since the mid-1980’s, is NOT a meritocracy by a longshot! It’s a nepotocracy.

What’s the solution? Disenfranchized Gen-Xers can’t “create their own jobs” by starting a business without money, or any way to get any money. Been there, done that.

I write books because it’s the ONE thing I CAN do.

But I struggle without any income, unless people buy any of the books I wrote, which most don’t/won’t because (1) my books are about social justice and nobody cares about the working class and the poor; and, (2) Lack of ability to be able to afford to market my books; and, (3) “Brick and mortar” bookstores won’t carry any self-published books on their shelves because self-published authors cannot afford to incur return costs of unsold inventory like the big guns in the publishing industry can.

The struggling author who has no money, no “important” job title and/or Ivy League degree, or who isn’t a celebrity like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan can’t get a mainstream publisher to pick them up because of being a “nobody”.

When your opportunities for earning any money at all are limited due to age discrimination, socio-economic class discrimination ( a real biggie!), and discrimination against the disabled, you can’t support yourself let alone even buy a crappy home and “be responsible” for saving for your own old age.

Yet, we’re constantly told, “tough shit, you’re on your own” by all the snots that got theirs – while most of us got gypped out of any chance whatsoever to ever get ours. Yet, we’re not supposed to be the least bit bitter or angry about any of this. Go figure.

This thread is making me feel less alone, too. I was raised to think that because I was smart, focused and had common sense, I would never be without a job, never be in debt, etc. unless I did bad selfish things for which I had only myself to blame and should be ashamed of myself.

Even though I know the reasons I wound up without a job and in debt were not my fault, I internalized a lot of that shame because the thinking was so ingrained.

And there’s nothing quite like idly flipping past Oprah, noticing that she’s talking about great money saving tips, and discovering everything she suggests cutting back on is stuff you’ve never ever once in your life indulged in. Christ.

You’re expressing a lot of how I feel about my future and the future of my friends. I’m almost 30, still renting, about to lose my job in another month and am going more in-debt as I try to pay off my student loans. I wonder about the “American Dream” of owning my own house and blah blah…wonder if it will ever happen or if I want it to happen. I feel so far behind and yet I’m not the only one struggling. I don’t really have any incredible insight besides just saying that I’m glad that I’m not alone as a struggling working class woman trying to make ends meet.

While I was working, saving for retirement would have been a luxury.

It really is. I’m surrounded by GenYers who got college paid for by their folks and are buying houses in their mid-20’s, and Boomers who bought their first homes 30 years ago and never had to pay escalating rents since then. I feel like I’m so far behind.

And yet when I look at people my own age, most of us are struggling with college debt (what happened? at my high school, everyone in my class saw an older and/or younger sibling get college paid for, but for us it was like, “Fuck you, you’re on your own”) or debt from not being steadily employed, or debt from taking care of sick Boomers. None of us own houses yet, without which I don’t see how you can retire – if things continue as they’re going, rent will be $4k for a studio by 2038 and I’ll probably end up homeless while working full time, forget retirement!

Compared to others my age, I really am lucky. I’m debt free, saving for a house (probably out of state, given L.A. prices, which I’ll lease to renters while I continue to work here until I can afford to quit my job, whenever that is) and in good health. The fact that I work 80 hours a week between my “real job” and my internet stuff that’s meant to become portable income so I can move somewhere cheap without fear of joblessness galls me to no end – no human should ever need to do that just to earn a little bit of financial security – but I do have it better than a lot of people my age.

Sad. I’m not complaining so much as saying for how hard we work, we really ought to have what the other generations all seem to have. And if we don’t, and we’re told “times are changing, suck it up” then the Boomers and Yers can damn well suck it up when things don’t go their way.

As someone else who’s disabled (kidney patient waiting for a transplant), I’m really irked by Boomers worrying that their retirements won’t be quite as comfortable as they’d like. While I was working, saving for retirement would have been a luxury.