Dear Editor,

The attitude of young people in the workplace is becoming an issue, and we must applaud Dionne Jackson Miller for giving the matter attention on All Angles. Being an intelligent interviewer, Jackson Miller often seeks the opinion of both millennials and older professionals to get a balanced view. However, millennials never fail to indicate how little they know about the real world.

In these interviews the younger guests exhibit not only an extreme sense of entitlement, but also overestimate their worth and underestimate the difficulties of life. A common thread in such discussions is that some millennials believe they should be employed in a white collar job because they have a degree. The sad reality is that more people have degrees than in the past; therefore, prospective employees have to rely more on the skills they possess than actual qualifications. This is particularly important in an environment where businesses place a strong emphasis on cutting costs, such as labour. Though the more intelligent job seeker will exploit the opportunity to create value in any sector, the vain and entitled prefer to remain unemployed, thus preventing themselves from acquiring new skills.

But nothing is more shocking than their ability to overestimate their worth. If some young people are lucky to be employed in a white collar job, they only want to do tasks perceived to be important. To this class of individuals, activities such as filing are not important enough to allow them to make an impact. Such reasoning only exposes their ignorance of the working world and inept expertise in learning by doing simple tasks. Filing allows one to exercise his judgement and pay attention to detail, and because important notes are filed, if not done properly, it could cause great distress in an organisation.

Furthermore, most entry- level jobs entail mundane tasks. Millennials should understand that if they can’t perform simple tasks, they will not be entrusted with more important duties, and if they don’t have the stamina to do mundane activities, they will never develop the discipline to make an impact.

However, nothing is worse than the disdain for internships displayed by millennials in these interviews. Even if interns are poorly paid, they provide young people with the opportunity to network and develop their professional abilities. The fact that some millennials interviewed by Jackson Miller scoffed at such opportunities it shows their myopia.

Additionally, it is acknowledged that some companies have poorly designed internship programmes, but that is not important. Life does not need to be perfect, all great people endure hardships, and if Jamaica’s millennials can’t accept this simple fact, then they will never achieve anything of substance.

Lipton Matthews

lo_matthews@yahoo.com