You would not believe how young people are being treated in the workplace by their older coworkers…
Picture yourself as a freshly graduated high school student that is eager to get started at your newly acquired job. Excited to learn new things, make money, and to more importantly, start a career. Little do you know, upper management has a different perspective of you. They see you as a less able, less intelligent, and overall incompetent worker. All this information being based on your age, of course. Ageism is better known to affect the older generations, but it affects younger generations all the same while being unrecognized and underreported.
According to Ageism.com, “If a younger worker receives stereotyping based on their age, they may not climb the career ladder the way they could if they were instead judged based on their capabilities or abilities at work.” I see this constantly at my workplace. There is a staggering number of people that are of working age (35+) that I have tried to train for a managerial position that, simply put, couldn’t even manage themselves.
The few people that are my age (22) that in my opinion, have every quality needed to manage a crew of people, but are disregarded just because they’re young.
According to HRO.com, “…[A]ge discrimination is most experienced by baby boomers (36.8%) and Gen Z (39.7%).” I am apart of the 39.7% of Gen-Z that has experienced age discrimination, according to HRO.com. Age discrimination comes in many ways, such as jokes, missing out on promotions, job assignments, and even as significant as not even getting a job.
Age discrimination can be a deterrent in someone’s aspirations to move up in their job, especially if there are multiple people gunning for the same position.
Just like with everything else, people will argue. The argument now I’m sure you’re thinking of now is, “Well, didn’t you say that baby boomers also experience a large amount of agism?” Yes, I did say that. The reason I’m not diving into that topic is because those people, as messed up as it may sound, are on their way out.
You obviously wouldn’t want your 85-year-old grandfather to be the social media manager for a startup company that sells cat shaped air fresheners. There are understandable exceptions to what people would consider agism.
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I think there is a difference between a smart business decision, like not giving someone that’s 60 years old a promotion to become chief of staff and just being an as*hole to an old person. Same thing goes for young people. You wouldn’t want to have an 18 year old as the chief of staff fresh out of high school.
According to NursingPaperSlayers.com, “The ADEA does not stop an employer from favoring an older employee over a younger one even when the younger one is over 40 years old.” This insinuates that the MINIMUM AGE for legal agism protection is 40 years old.
As I mentioned previously, I am 22 years old and have seen many of my peers forced into lesser jobs and not have the opportunity to work up the ladder at the company. The owner does not like young people doing things better than old people. Point blank. Once one of the young people has proven they excel at their job and you would imagine a promotion is coming, it never does.
These people that have come and gone at my job could never have legal grounds to sue for their jobs back, or to get compensation for being pushed out of the company after trying to speak up.
Even though I’m a manager, I still get called out and questioned because of my age even though I’ve worked there going on three years. “That’s what happens when you don’t have 35 years of experience with this sort of thing. I have to take what you say with a grain of salt because you don’t have near the amount of experience that me or the rest of the crew has. I’ll send Elam out to assess the damage, but you should’ve said more sooner.”
That’s what was said to me by my boss after we had a motor go out and I told him the signs beforehand, which he shrugged off and didn’t listen to me. This type of harassment came about because he didn’t listen to me when I (the young person) told him (the old person) something bad was about to happen, and when it did, he got pissed and blamed me because I’m the young person. It makes perfect sense. Right?
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