Wow, we couldn't see this one coming. The "Millenial Generation" coming out of college to mingle with us Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers in the workplace are having trouble coping:
"They wipe out on life as often as they wipe out on work itself," says Mr. Hannay, who let go more than a dozen millennials from his 130-person staff over the course of 2006.
That's when he stopped hiring them. "They get an apartment and a kitty, and they can't cope. Work becomes an ancillary casualty. They're good kids with talent who want to succeed. That's what makes me nuts."
[. . .]
"They've been overparented, overindulged and overprotected," she says. "They haven't experienced that much failure, frustration, pain. We were so obsessed with protecting and promoting their self-esteem that they crumble like cookies when they discover the world doesn't revolve around them. They get into the real world and they're shocked.
Of all the wrong turns taken by our schools, the self-esteem movement has done the most damage. It's not just the lack of preparation for adversity so well described in this article. It's also that those subjected to it have been so routinely praised so lavishly for the most mundane "accomplishments" that they have no real concept of what it means to succeed, either. May the movement die the death it so richly deserves.
