I have been doing a lot of thinking about the
Millennials, and I have to say, I’m seriously worried about them.
There are more than 80 million of those little critters walking
around our country – and a fresh new crop is about to graduate from college and
enter the job market. As a sales
manager, I have interviewed several Millennials. And, I’m here to tell you, it ain’t pretty.
Millennials – those privileged children of the 1980’s and
1990’s, raised by doting parents, played
on t-ball teams with no losers, taught with positive feedback and could text
before they could talk.
Armed with an iPod, iPad, and iPhone, they come flip-flopping
into my office with a brand new real estate license - Donald Trump wannabes who
expect to start at the top while working their schedule around their Zumba
classes. These kids have visited several
different countries by the time they are 20; have climbed mountains, can speak
several languages, can completely reprogram a computer and they can look you in
the eye and talk to you while carrying on a text “conversation” with a buddy. They come for an interview on Monday and expect
to be the CEO of the company by Friday.
They have never lost at anything and expect to automatically win
everything – and get heaps of praise for showing up along the way. They express themselves in a very different way.
Once I interviewed a young lady who had such a large
tongue piercing that I could not really concentrate on what she was saying for
looking at the beach ball on her tongue.
I was just trying to figure out how the world she let someone put a
needle through her tongue and plant a silver ball on it. Before letting her go, I had to ask her, “Doesn’t
that big ball in your mouth bother you?”
“Not really,” she said.
“I can always take it out if it bothers you.”
Heck, I was even more afraid of what the HOLE that thing
went through would look like.
A nice looking young man came in once to interview for a
sales job. Nice, clean cut, conservative
looking. Until I noticed the snakes
coming down his arm and out his sleeve.
Tattoos of all kinds of critters peeked out of every opening of his
clothing. If he wore very long sleeved
shirts, long pants with socks, buttoned his top button and wore a scarf to
cover his neck, he would have been okay.
But, he would only be able to work winters; he would have burned plum up
selling houses in the summer time.
During interviews, I have seen belly buttons, booty
cracks, and piercings of all kinds, bare feet, toe rings, black nail polish and
gold teeth. Seriously, the young people
today can do all kinds of i-things -- all things technical – but they never have had
to show up on time or stay with a difficult task or work to someone else’s
satisfaction. They never mowed grass or
babysat or delivered pizza --- that type of summer work doesn’t get you into a
big deal college or look too good on a polished resume.
After much thought, I have figured out what is wrong with
the Children of the 80’s and 90’s. They were
never allowed to get dirty.
These children of the Children of the 1960’s were made to
wear shoes, sanitize their hands, and stay out of mud puddles. They were slathered in sun screen, wore
undershirts and gloves in the winter. I’ll
bet these young people never drank from a water hose in the middle of a hot
July day or slept in the back yard with a blanket and flashlight watching for
falling stars. I’m sure they never
caught lightning bugs in a mason jar or made clover necklaces or begged their
dads for a dime for an orange cream push-up from the Merry-Mobile. I’ll bet they never double-dog-dared each
other to play chicken on their bikes, racing toward each other until one
chickened out by swerving out of the way first.
How can anyone learn to improvise without first playing Barbies or GI
Joe all afternoon under the carport with match box furniture and Cracker Jack
prize accessories? And, how can you
learn to trust anyone unless they cross their hearts and hope to die, stick a
needle in their eye? When all of us over the age of 45 were rearing our children, we wanted better lives for them than we had ourselves...we thought.
Sure, the Millennials are
the most tech savvy generation in history and they are also the most
politically progressive. They are the first generation in
human history who regards behaviors like tweeting and texting, along with
websites like Facebook, YouTube, Google and Wikipedia, not as astonishing
innovations of the digital era, but as everyday parts of their social lives and
their search for understanding. And, it
is estimated that within six years, this generation will comprise more than 50
percent of the workforce.
But, still……I
think there is a little something missing with this group.
Getting dog tired and dirty is the best thing that can
happen to a kid. I know. I grew up in the 1960’s with a gang of dirty
kids on Camille Street in Senatobia, MS – a kid’s paradise filled with kids,
dogs, cats, hollering mamas and working dads.
When summer vacation started in May, we kicked off our
shoes and pretty much never put them back on until after Labor Day, when school
started back. Summer days were endless –
the only time we came into the house was to eat and sleep – and many times we
ate lunch outside under the tree. When
it started getting dark, carport lights came on, signaling for us to come in
and take our baths. We took a bath every
night, not because you are supposed to take a bath daily, but because if we
didn’t, we would get our mama’s bed sheets dirty.
Once Olan Mills came to the Senatobia Community Center to
take family portraits. We had to get
dressed up in our Sunday clothes to go get our picture made. The photographer lined all four of us
Hudspeth children on a long bench – starting with me, the oldest, and going
down to my baby brother, Jeff. My sister
and I had on dresses and my brothers had mama-spit, licked back hair and their
shirt tails tucked in. Just as the flash
bulb was about to flash, I looked down and saw 40 dirty little toes dangling
from the bench. The photographer told my
mama the picture would only show from the waist up. No sense in messing with shoes if you didn’t
have to, my mama figured.
Playing outside with no gadgets or electronics teaches
valuable life lessons. We learned
diplomacy, loyalty, negotiation skills, ethics, and the value of being tenacious. We had to learn to get along with each other
because there was nobody else to play with.
Our mamas didn’t haul us across town for a “play date.” We fussed and fought and made up. Sometimes two or three of us would gang up on
one or two of the others. We’d make dirt
bombs and send them flying across the yards, smacking each other on top of the
head with the dried mud, careful not to hit the wood siding on each other’s
houses because we knew eventually we would just have to go clean it off. In the end, we made up and started all over
the next day.
We learned to love and care for each other.
Once our friend, Ricky, was sick and it was also his
birthday. So, Charlotte and I made a big
chocolate birthday/get well cake for him.
A mud pie, if you will. It took
us hours to find rocks small enough to substitute for pecans. I had to sneak into the bathroom and steal
my daddy’s shaving cream for the frosting.
It was a masterpiece of a cake.
We proudly marched across the street and knocked on Ricky’s back door to
give him the magnificent cake. Mrs.
Earlene, Ricky’s mom, answered the door.
“Hey, Mrs. Earlene.
We made this cake for Ricky cause it’s his birthday and he is sick.”
“That is so sweet, girls,” Ricky’s mom said to the dirty
little grinning faces knocking on her door in the middle of General Hospital. “He will just love it and it will make him
feel better.”
Now, Miss Earlene could have said, “You are not going to
bring that mud into my house. Where are
your shoes? Let me get some sanitizer to
clean those dirty little hands. Oh my
gosh, you girls are getting sunburned!
Let me give you some sunscreen.” But, she didn’t because we were one of her
kids and she knew we meant well. Ricky’s
mom – just like all of our mothers – scolded all of us, loved all of us, was
proud of all of us. She could hug us or
swat us. On Camille Street, we shared
bikes, mud pies, dogs, cookies, skate boards, footballs, Barbie dolls, and
mamas. And, a whole lot of dirt.
I have come a long way since the Camille Street
days. I wear shoes every single day and
I have a bottle of sanitizer on my desk right now. I know I came into the work force many years
ago with street smarts and little else.
And, I know that I have been blessed to have several wonderful mentors
along the way.
Steve Ballard, CEO of Hernando Bank, who plucked me from
a fledgling newspaper career and gave me a job as Vice President of Public
Relations and Marketing when I was in my 20’s and knew absolutely nothing about
public relations or marketing - opened the first door to my career for me. He often said, “Ok, kiddo, this is what we’re going to do.” Then he would brainstorm with me to come up
with solutions to problems. Within a
year, I was “presenting” those solutions to the bank’s Board of Directors – one
of whom was Jon Reeves, co-founder of Reeves Williams, the largest home builder
in the Mid-South at the time – and with whom I spent the next 18 years honing
my marketing skills in the home building industry. Mr. Reeves taught me that it was possible to
work hard and succeed and have a happy and fun life. I never met a man who loves his family more
than Jon Reeves. He has been a
tremendous blessing in my life.
Judy Beard, my oldest and dearest friend, told me when I
was 22 years old – dress for the job you want to have, not for the one you have
right now. She sent me off to my first real job with two
skirts, two jackets, and two blouses – all that could coordinate to make
several different professional outfits. She
continues to be a huge influence on my life today.
Many people looked at this little old small town girl
with a pretty serious southern drawl and Mississippi mud permanently imbedded
into the bottom of my feet--- and gave me a chance. They looked past the quirky personality, firstborn
child know-it-all attitude, and social ignorance and saw ….me.
I’m thinking about this when I stumbled upon an interesting
Bible Verse:
Show yourself in all respects to be
a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity and dignity. Titus 2:7
I look at my latest resume, the one from the young man
who told me he was looking for something to do until times get better and
thought he might just try the real estate business. I choose to look past his sandals and long
hair and I remember his confident attitude, his curious nature, his amazing
computer skills and I decide to give him a chance. As Steve Ballard told me many times, “What goes around, comes around.”
I pick up the phone and call his cell number. “Kiddo,” I say, “This is what we’re going to
do.”
It’s payback time.
