Millennial Woman Learned 3 Lessons From Gen Z Co-Workers That Make Her Not Want To Trade Places With Them
Michael Kim from Studio South Korea | Canva Pro For the longest time, all you heard about was how millennials were going to upend the world forever. But now, this generation is all full-blown adults, with the oldest already hitting their 40s.
It's Gen Z's turn. The cohort born roughly between 1997 and 2012 seems to be inspiring seismic shifts in every part of life. One millennial woman got a front-row seat to how these burgeoning adults are changing things, and it offers a glimpse into just how different our world might be by the time Gen Z reaches their 40s, too.
A millennial shared the lessons she learned from her Gen Z co-workers.
It's fitting that TikToker Bailey Henry got her Gen Z crash-course at work, because the workplace is where the generation has so far seemed to stir things up the most. She quipped in a video that the first lesson she learned from one of her 19-year-old Gen Z coworkers is, "I am not 19, that is lesson number one." However, for Henry, this was just scratching the surface.
Krakenimages.com | Shutterstock
Some of the lessons she learned from Gen Z focused on trends, like the retail website DHGate, a low-cost Amazon-style site Henry had never even heard of (nor had this Xennial writer), that is so ultra-cheap that Henry joked it "seems illegal."
Then there was the lesson that "[influencer] Alix Earle and [model] Sofia Richie are very important" to Gen Z. Earle is one of TikTok's biggest stars, and Richie is the daughter of singer Lionel Richie and sister of Nicole Richie (for all you Millennial, Xennial, and Gen X old-heads who have no idea what Henry is talking about!).
Henry found that Gen Z has different approaches to practically everything, and they're doing it their own way.
Another of the Gen Z trends Henry learned about seems frivolous at first. "There's a great divide," she said. "There are the Golden Goose Girlies, and then there's the Air Force One girlies." She's talking, of course, about the popular sneaker brands, and for the record, Sofia Richie apparently favors the former while Alix Earle favors the latter.
But it goes even further than being just a fashion fad. "Those are shoes, obviously, because you don't wear heels anymore to the bar," Henry said, "so 2008 me would have really appreciated that you don't wear high heels going out."
It may seem frivolous, but that really is a major shift from previous generations, and one from which you can extrapolate Gen Z's attitudes toward previous notions about what women are and are not supposed to do and look like when out on the town, which, of course, also plays into their views on dating and attracting mates. Long story short, they want to be comfortable while doing it, heels be damned. That has rarely been the fashion for women until now, and it's one that future generations will surely thank them for.
However, Henry noticed dark spots that add up to some pretty bracing signs of the times.
In a follow-up video, Henry shared more of what she learned from Gen Z at her job this summer, and three specific lessons paint an unsurprisingly bleak picture of the times we're living in. As you can probably guess, she found that when it comes to the ways economics have shaped Gen Z, the story is... well, pretty sad. "We're going to take a bit of a nosedive," Henry said. "They haven't seen great economic examples, especially in the United States... So they're just going for it. They're just living credit card debt."
SeventyFour | Shutterstock
Like their millennial predecessors, homeownership is particularly bleak, but in a way that goes far beyond the struggles we older generations have faced. In short, they don't even think it's possible. As Henry put it, "Homeownership who? They don't care...the economy is going to implode any minute, so they just really don't care." She said this has produced a situation where "they're just living," because things feel like they're on the verge of collapse. Which is beautiful in its way, but it is also heartbreaking.
This is reflected in many of their relationships with their families, too, according to Henry's Gen Z coworker. "They're not super close to their parents," she said. "A good bit of them are just not really close to their families. And that makes me sad. As a mom, that makes me sad." You have to wonder if the extreme political polarization that has torn apart countless families in recent years has something to do with that. Gen X, the generation of Gen Z's parents, does have quite a rightward bent nowadays, after all.
There's no way around it. Gen Z has a tough road ahead, far tougher than even us Millennials had, which many probably assumed was impossible until recent years. As Henry put it, "I wouldn't trade places with them for anything in the world. I truly wouldn't."
But one thing is for sure, they are doing things their own way, and they don't seem to feel any compulsion to honor the old ways of doing things. It may be tough now, but that kind of attitude is exactly what we need to eventually pull us up from how far we've fallen once the reins are finally handed over to this maverick generation.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
