7 Lessons Millennials Taught Me About Work
When you’re in middle age, you have no choice but to learn from the kids
I got laid off a couple years ago, at 41. When you get laid off and you’re 40 or older, included in your severance packet is a document that lists the ages of all your co-workers. It’s required under the — and typing this makes me slightly despondent — Older Workers Benefit Protection Act of 1990, meant to defend the benefits of workers from age discrimination. Perusing this list feels wrong, like you’re invading your former colleagues’ privacy. Yet you can’t look away. Seeing your age and their ages, like that, in a list, in black and white, jolts you into considering where you’re at on your professional journey. And what I realized when I saw my age on the list: I was much older than I thought.
It wasn’t just that I was 41, which, let’s face it, isn’t old. It was that I was 41 and bored. And a little tired. And, at times, cantankerous. Crotchety, you might say. My professional age was more like 51. Sometimes 61. Once, in a conversation with an intern in the work kitchen about the fridge clean-out schedule, I was 89. A spry 89, but still.
Exacerbating this problem was the fact that I had spent the entire span of my thirties at one place — a prestigious men’s magazine. I thought I had stability and…
