Millennial Boss Explains The Sad Reason She'll Never Hire A Boomer Again
nortonrsx / CanvaPro Millennial boss Sara Holcomb admitted she's never hiring a boomer again because they are "too old to work" and don't understand technology. While it's possible the new hire wasn't qualified, her sweeping generalizations about an entire generation were ageist.
If you’ve worked in a corporate setting, or really any workplace environment, you’ve definitely been around a “bad employee.” From poor customer service to bad attitudes, there are many things that can lead to a “bad employee” label. Instead of simply chalking up a new hire as the wrong fit, however, Holcomb made her displeasure a generational issue, sharing her experience onboarding a new “boomer employee” whom she said was “unqualified” simply because of her age.
A millennial boss said she’s never hiring a boomer again because they don't understand technology.
“I hired this 65-year-old lady,” Holcomb said, “and I told her several times that we’re closed on Friday. If she has any questions she needs to discuss with me, she needs to call my cell phone.”
Holcomb explained that she had just finished a shower on her day off when she got a concerning email. In a reply to her training email, which walked the new boomer employee through the log-in process for her first day at work, she simply asked, “How do I log in?”
Instead of going back and forth on her work email on her day off, Holdcomb decided to just give her a call, hoping to sort out the issue quickly. However, when she called, she was immediately met with a voicemail.
Holcomb received numerous emails on her day off, only to realize the boomer new hire didn't have a cell phone.
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Going back to her resume to check the number, she quickly realized this employee had listed only a landline. “Do you have a [expletive] cell phone? You have to send me a Zoom code, then I text it back to you… That’s how you log in.”
“I told her that she had to receive this text message in the training email,” she continued. “She didn’t even read the email.” Frustrated over the fact that this employee might not have a cell phone, a relatively necessary tool for the job that they’d previously discussed, Holcomb called the woman again, this time leaving a voicemail.
“Susan, I’m kind of concerned because I gave you all of the information on how to log in, and then you responded back asking how to log in,” Holcomb candidly said in her voicemail. “You also gave me a landline phone number, and I’m just seeing this now.”
Of course, everyone makes mistakes and is bound to have questions when they start a new job. Answering a phone call with questions is one thing, but as Holcomb described it, being blindsided by “ignorance and lies” is another.
Holcomb claimed her new boomer hire lied about her qualifications, including her previous experience using Zoom.
In addition to disregarding the emailed training materials, Holcomb claimed in a follow-up video that the boomer employee lied on her resume. When they discussed her qualifications, she was adamant about being able to “host Zoom meetings” and even discussed “several” she’d done in the past.
“That was the second lie,” Holcomb said. The first was that she was able to receive texts, both for Zoom links and log-ins, but also as a general qualification for the position.
Despite her frustrations, she candidly explained that simply “not having a phone” was not the issue. She would’ve been glad to set up an alternative login method before her very first day. Instead, it was the misguided reassurance and outright “lies” the employee gave that culminated in an incredibly stressful first day for everyone.
Holcomb named similar ‘technology issues’ as the basis for her view that boomers are just ‘too old to work’ in today’s world.
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“Now I have to stress all night thinking that this [employee] won’t be able to work tomorrow and that it’s going to be [expletive] chaos at 8 a.m. on a Saturday,” she said. “I have other people, teachers, people who I manage who are Gen Z and millennials and are fine.”
Holcomb went on to say that “every single time” she hires “a boomer,” there’s a similar issue. “They’re just too old to work,” she proclaimed.
Not everyone agreed with her take, however. Many commenters found her opinion downright inappropriate, saying she was “ageist.”
“It was a ‘tongue in cheek’ comment. Do you know what that means?” Holcomb defended. “The reason why I hired her is because I didn’t want to be ageist.”
“I get that it sucks that they have to work until after 65, but I didn’t make that law. This is what’s wrong with our country. You’d rather get on TikTok and be mad at [me] for not wanting to hire incompetent employees than talk to our representatives [and revolt].”
Age does not determine the quality of an employee.
Overall, this was a sad situation for everyone involved. It's important to remember, however, that we only have one side of the story. The story of a woman who was bothered on her day off by a new hire who was struggling.
Was this boomer a bad employee? It's entirely possible. Does that mean all boomer employees struggle with technology? No.
An American Staffing Association (ASA) survey found that a whopping 78% of baby boomers said they believe their age puts them at a disadvantage when finding a new job, and they aren't wrong. Newsweek reported that hiring managers, much like Holcomb, worry about their technological fluency.
"Unfortunately, and from my experience as a headhunter, I see this type of discrimination firsthand," Ally Nathaniel, technical recruiter at Soul Staffing Solutions, told the outlet. "It is often portrayed as 'overqualified' or 'will not be a good fit for the team,' especially when it comes to women."
Is it any wonder Susan lied about her experience using Zoom or even her access to texts? Of course, that doesn't mean Holcomb didn't have good reason to be frustrated. But perhaps the issue is more that Holcomb didn't do her due diligence in vetting her new hire. Perhaps this isn't an issue of hiring a boomer but rather hiring someone unqualified for the role.
TikTok was probably not the best place for Holcomb's rant or her aged-based generalizations. She had two viable avenues for recourse: fire the incompetent employee she had hired without proper vetting, or work with her and be patient.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a senior editorial strategist with a bachelor’s degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.
