Weird Excuses
October 22, 2009People cannot always complete work in a timely fashion. I get that. What I don’t get is a trend I see in Millennials to hyper-justify absences and late work.
The stereotype about Generation Y is that they strive for work-life balance and may be willing to sacrifice opportunities at work to have improved quality of life at home. But my experience teaching and supervising scores of Millennials a year, suggests that’s not quite right. Millennials may in fact be willing to do less at work to have more time at home, but they aren’t inclined to take the hit at work. Hence, the hyper-justification of why the slacking at work shouldn’t be counted against them.
A case in point – here is the ACTUAL text from an email I received this week from a Millennial who didn’t complete an assignment:
“I sent you an email regarding my absence on Friday. I have yet to receive a response. I don’t know if it was due to something being wrong with the email…. I wrecked my car friday and I was also ill. The doctor thought I had swine flu but at the appointment on Monday, the test found it was just the regular strain of flu as well as a URI. Yesterday my cousin (by marriage) committed suicide. I also had to have an echocardiogram and stress test today due issues I have with my heart. I had to have an IV put in after the stress test because of some issues. After all this I am just now able to email you my outline. I have documentation. Thanks”
Now, I’ll ignore the poor choice of tone in the opening sentence and many grammatical mistakes (Millennials and email etiquette will have to be it’s own blog post later), but what I love is the multiple, multiple excuses: broken email, wrecked car, swine flu, URI, family suicide, and other nebulous “issues.” All of these things may in fact have happened, but there’s something about the thinly veiled indictment that I hadn’t responded to her initial email (which I had in fact) and the light hearted and legalistic “I have documentation. Thanks” that suggest a less than earnest gravitas about her predicament. Either way, is this the way you’d notify your supervisor, professor, or boss about the need to turn something in late?
The best part of all – she forgot to attach the assignment to the email.
That’s insane!
I laughed. I cried. I fired my Millennial assistant. But seriously, thanks for reminding us that the little techno-savvy darlings aren’t always all that and bag of chips!