“I’m gonna buy a gun and start a war; if you can tell me something worth fighting for”- Coldplay
I never knew what this lyric meant until recently. I always felt there was a purpose to my life and career, that I was on a track to greatness, somewhere I deserved to go for all my hard work in school and on my career path. Lately, with the fall of the economy and the collapse of every market imaginable, I’m starting to question whether my generation will ever get the chance we deserve, the chance to make a difference, when the companies we work for don’t let us and the rest of the world doesn’ t care. We are the first to lose our jobs, since we are neither cheap to employ (when recent grads can “do our jobs” or be trained to for less) or experienced enough to keep (since we have a mere 5 years of experience, compared to the 15-20+ years of our elders). Loyalty doesn’t exist anymore, and we will no longer have the luxury that our parents had of 20 and 30 + years at one company. Employees are now seen as disposable and devalued at every step of the way. We work 10 hour days, we skip lunch, we stare at a screen that makes our eyes blur with lighting above us that rivals a surgeons operating table. We don’t complain, we adapt, we refocus and we succeed. Until we are forced to change course, and sometimes wonder why we tried so hard in the first place. We are tired of ending up at square one. We are told to stick to one career, yet expected to be multi faceted. We are in sales, yet afraid to mention that our true passion lies in writing on interviews, for fear of seeming indecisive or unstable. We are hired for one purpose and spun off into seventeen others. Five of my closet friends have lost their jobs since last year, all in different industries, all intelligent, all responsible, all a tremendous asset to a company. And all disposed of like extra fat on a steak. What future does this country hold when it treats its future so much worse than its past. What should we be fighting for? We have the ambition, we are some of the most adaptable human beings that have ever lived. We can pitch a client, write a proposal, and calculate an algorithm all while shoving a $14 salad down our throat, drowning out an easy listening station, answering a coworker’s question, updating our Facebook and Twitter, returning 3 emails and checking our debit card balance, simultaneously. We are overloaded, underpaid and lack security on all fronts. We deserve more.
I never knew what this lyric meant until recently. I always felt there was a purpose to my life and career, that I was on a track to greatness, somewhere I deserved to go for all my hard work in school and on my career path. Lately, with the fall of the economy and the collapse of every market imaginable, I’m starting to question whether my generation will ever get the chance we deserve, the chance to make a difference, when the companies we work for don’t let us and the rest of the world doesn’ t care. We are the first to lose our jobs, since we are neither cheap to employ (when recent grads can “do our jobs” or be trained to for less) or experienced enough to keep (since we have a mere 5 years of experience, compared to the 15-20+ years of our elders). Loyalty doesn’t exist anymore, and we will no longer have the luxury that our parents had of 20 and 30 + years at one company. Employees are now seen as disposable and devalued at every step of the way. We work 10 hour days, we skip lunch, we stare at a screen that makes our eyes blur with lighting above us that rivals a surgeons operating table. We don’t complain, we adapt, we refocus and we succeed. Until we are forced to change course, and sometimes wonder why we tried so hard in the first place. We are tired of ending up at square one. We are told to stick to one career, yet expected to be multi faceted. We are in sales, yet afraid to mention that our true passion lies in writing on interviews, for fear of seeming indecisive or unstable. We are hired for one purpose and spun off into seventeen others. Five of my closet friends have lost their jobs since last year, all in different industries, all intelligent, all responsible, all a tremendous asset to a company. And all disposed of like extra fat on a steak. What future does this country hold when it treats its future so much worse than its past. What should we be fighting for? We have the ambition, we are some of the most adaptable human beings that have ever lived. We can pitch a client, write a proposal, and calculate an algorithm all while shoving a $14 salad down our throat, drowning out an easy listening station, answering a coworker’s question, updating our Facebook and Twitter, returning 3 emails and checking our debit card balance, simultaneously. We are overloaded, underpaid and lack security on all fronts. We deserve more.
-KJ
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