Stereotypes and Generalizations

This post is one I wrote for Leading Associates in February 2009.  I’m proud of the posts I wrote for LA, and I wanted to include them here at Trina Left Iowa. 

During our training session, we were told to understand and memorize (for testing purposes) the difference between stereotypes and generalizations.  A long debate ensued about the difference between the two words, and we got so busy debating the semantics that we almost missed the purpose of the discussion.  The reason for having this discussion was to make us better aware of diversity and the problems that stereotypes/generalizations pose in today’s work place.  For this entry, I would like to refer to them as the same thing and discuss stereotypes/generalizations about young millennials. 

While on a family vacation I was quite surprised to find that everyone in my family had a strong opinion about hiring young people, except my niece who mainly says “cookie” and “dog”.  All of my family members (parents in their sixties; brother and sister-in-law in their thirties) are in management positions, and together they threw out almost every stereotype about young millennials.  I have highlighted a few of the main ones:

1. No Patience
   1. Spoiled kids with no patience.
2.  Dress Inappropriately
   1. Management has to sit down and review the dress code with them, because they wear scandalous clothes or pajamas to work.
3. Don’t have a concept of the “real world”
   1. Too bad if you parents coddled you…that is not the real world.
   2. Don’t want to work, and sometimes show up late or not at all.
4. Demanding
   1. Have too many demands/needs/wants when starting a job.

It is hard for me to swallow this from my family.  Every day I go and sit in my cube for hours on end with minimal instructions.  Nothing makes me want to go crazier than sitting in a tiny space with only a computer and a phone.  However, my fellow training graduates and I have had the patience to sit there for four months while our company figures out what to do with us and we create work for ourselves.  Not to mention the fact that we got shipped across the country far from our family and friends on a salary that barely makes rent (let’s not even mention student loans…).  It is hard and frustrating, but I haven’t given up and I do not intend to anytime soon.  If that isn’t patience or the real world, I do not know what is.

Every day I go to work at the headquarters for one of the nation’s largest companies, and I see middle aged women wearing skirts that show more thigh than I would ever dare.  I see other twenty and thirty something women wearing shirts that leave nothing to the imagination.  Is it really millennials or is it just daring/scandalous/tacky women? 

As I analyzed these stereotypes, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe myself and my friends were just unique millennials that don’t live up to these stereotypes?  Is it just that millennials stand out more at the work place because we are young?  Isn’t every generation a little guilty of these things?  Have our managers forgotten what is like starting a new job?  Is this an experience issue?  Is this just like any stereotype?  Do we need to break stereotypes and change managers’ opinions?  For now, I will continue to go to work every day in my conservative clothing in a place far, far from home and have patience that it will all work out in this big bad “real world”.  For my friends and me, it is just another day breaking down stereotypes/generalizations…  Oh and by the way, I still don’t see the difference between the two words.

ster·e·o·type

“stereotype.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 05 Apr. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/stereotype>.

gen·er·al·i·za·tion

“generalization.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 05 Apr. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/generalization>.