The New Generation

He was asking for his aunt's car, and his aunt merely laughed his request away. 

He's in his late 20s, a bit rambunctious, and showed he's had his way too many times growing up. He was seated in the restaurant beside my table. 

He looked at me and remarked he can't have survived his grandmom's years as a young adult, having to read a lot using a real book, and without gadgets. 

"Putang ina mo," I almost blurted out but that would have meant putting down the book I was reading. 

He proceeded to play a game using his gizmo. 

What is it with this generation I do not understand, I often ask myself. 

Almost every Monday, I get sent a list of people who have left the company and whose clearance I will have to sign within the week when it gets routed. I have always studied this list carefully, noting how most of them have been with the company for under a year. 

Some last just weeks. We have had so many cases of young graduates just leaving; no resignation letter, no text messages, no word. They just leave. 

I wonder how they will navigate the world if they give up on challenges the way they do these days. They want money but apparently think they don't have to work for it. 

But journalism is a world that relies on people who work longer than 12 hours a day. It thrives on staying on the story, keeping one's focus, doing more than the usual research. It means a lot of sleepless nights, unchanged underwear (sometimes) until you're able to buy fresh ones when on overnight assignments that turn to a week. It calls for long hours, unsafe travels, dangerous places, and risky but often respectable-looking people. 

An acquaintance holding an upper-level position in a multinational company once sent me a letter asking if her daughter can join the company. I said any Tom, Dick, and Harry can join the company as we give exams to anyone who sends in a resume. His daughter passed the exams and was employed for a month. 

Apparently, the father and daughter team thought a newsroom job is an 8 to 5 gig. 

Still another told me she was quitting because she didn't realize she was tired after all those years she spent in school. She needed to rest, she said. She failed to consider how her OFW mom spent countless years abroad just to be able to send her to school. 

A few months later, she was back. Her job, however, was gone. And for crying out loud, I didn't want her back. 

A friend says perhaps if we paid them more money, the kids of these generation would stay longer. 

But I think not all the money in this world can solve a problem like the sense of entitlement of some young men and women we have now.