Employee responds to boomer complaining about 'lazy' younger generations working from home

The conflict between generations is an unavoidable aspect of every walk of life, particularly in the workplace, where the differences stand out more. Recently, a real estate development employee, u/WarmAge9940, shared about one such controversial boomer who worked with them. Workers in a workplace with around 25-30 employees between the ages of 23-68 have contrasting opinions about working remotely. While they were expected to be in the office twice a week on their preferred days, most of them welcomed this arrangement. However, many in the older generations of workers criticized this decision.

Despite many senior-level employees embracing the hybrid working model, one boomer employee always had a bitter attitude whenever the topic of people working from home came up. "He isn't a senior-level employee, but most of us answer to him out of respect for his age," the young worker mentioned. Also, this boomer often used younger employees to run errands for him. "He's just an old bully and always has something negative to say about our generation," they pointed out. "One day, he was tasked to do some admin work for our manager and he asked for help on it (I had back to back meetings and a boatload of work to do). I told him I couldn't help. He was visibly frustrated with me and told me off to my manager."

Though their manager defended the young employee, they were frustrated by the boomer's unprofessional behavior. So, when the chance came to get back at him, the young worker jumped in. During a meeting, the boomers started criticizing those who worked remotely. "He said that his generation was harder working and that our generation has become extremely lazy. That working from home is just an excuse for people not to work. That our generation has it so easy and how people worked harder back in the day and didn't slouch at home pretending to be doing their job," the employee mentioned. Offended by this, the employee responded, "Well, back in the day, people could afford a house and support a family of a single person's income at 25."

With that response, other team members also chimed in with their opinions and pointed out that the older generation could easily afford a house. "Most of us are almost 30 and can't even afford a car. So time/money wasted on transportation makes a huge difference to some of our lives," the young employee added. The coworkers conveyed some strong points calmly that left the boomer employee speechless. His condescending attitude was finally shut off by the younger employees. This post went viral and people couldn't take the boomer's criticisms lightly.

"Am I the only one who sees the screaming irony in asking other people to do your job, yet complaining how other people are too lazy to work?" said u/bamacpl4442. "So this guy asks for help finishing work assigned to him and then has the audacity to complain that the younger generation doesn't want to work anymore? This guy got off lightly," pointed out u/LambCo64. "I wanted you to say, 'Well, my generation does our own administrative task without pawning it off on other busy people,'" suggested u/TootsNYC.