millennials

[low_delta]

A friend posted, last week about a common trait of millennials being that they text their parents when they have questions. I hadn't really noticed this, but I don't know many of them. And then yesterday at work I heard a story:

Nine o'clock at night my phone rings.
"Dad, my car's on fire! What do I do?"
"OK, first GET OUT."

In the friend's post about generational traits, she reported that a boomer said that a Gen X trait is using Excel and Powerpoint. I found that funny because why would you not use Excel? It's the greatest tool ever! I spend a good chunk of my day using it at work, so I know it well, and I understand how it can help me with all kinds of tasks. I just spent well over an hour on it tonight at home, putting together a whisky tasting. I had data on sixty whiskies, and prices from four different retailers, plus ratings and a couple other data points. It was so nice to sort and filter all that data and find what I needed to know. And it does math, so I could total up the results and multiply times the number of bottles, and multiply the number of tickets by the different proposed ticket prices to determine potential profit... Or maybe I just like it because I'm old and can't visualize all that data inside my head.

Comments

[ranunculus]

I agree that Excel (Ok, the Libre Office version of it) is a fantastic tool. I can never understand why more people don't want to learn it.

[low_delta]

It's so easy to learn, too. I've been learning new functionality gradually over the last ten years or more. I know tons of it now, but you don't have to be an expert all at once.

[sara]

IDK, my Boomer parents have been known to call me to ask if they should call an ambulance, so I'm not sure it's generational ("I can't believe we're having this conversation, Dad, I'm going to hang up now and you call me back once you've got Mom in at the hospital and let me know if I need to come meet you there.")

[low_delta]

Right. Well, there are always exceptions. But also, this was the observation of a boomer. On the other hand, a lot of people seem to have a stories about millennials texting their parents. I've heard it said that Gen X'ers Google everything, while millennials are more likely to go a more personal route. It makes sense because they were more likely to have been brought up using text and chat all the time, while we Gen X'ers were just thrilled by having the universe of knowledge at our fingertips.

[jo]

The thing with all of those generational labels is that they usually get the dates wrong. Especially for Generation X. Gen X is actually the tail-end of the Baby boom (so peeps born from about the mid-1950s to the mid-60s). I'm Gen X and I get so fed up with people giving that tag to the next cohort. I'm not a boomer -- my experience with life, jobs, etc., has been completely different from that of actual boomers -- BECAUSE OF THE GLUT OF BABY BOOOMERS sucking up all of the good jobs and such.

Anyway, likely in the anecdote above, it's not a Gen X trait to use Excel or Powerpoint, but a PC Generation trait. That's the cohort born mid-60s to mid-70s. Although why anyone still uses powerpoint is beyond me...

[low_delta]

Yeah, the labels are always generalizations anyway. A friend of mine had a new label - the Spaceager. The tail end of the baby boom plus the early Gen X'ers. I wish it had caught on (he wrote a book about it). I think the labels are too broad.

Powerpoint, I hates it.