The Instant Gratification Generation
WORK: Noun, adjective, verb: to labor hard hours and get paid to do it; to be proud of your accomplishments, earn your place, earn your stuff, learn to appreciate things more; to build character and personality.
This is definitely not Webster’s definition of the word, “work.”
It’s mine and those around me who have the same motivation and determination in life.
I’ve been working since I was tall enough to reach the cash register at the family business. I was taking phone orders at our hoagie shops as soon as I could say, “Hello Furillo’s, Can I take your order? I may not have been so eager to do it after the newness wore off but I still had to do it.
I was by all standards spoiled. I had everything I wanted and most of it was from my parents until I was a teenager. After that I was on my own to buy named brand clothes that cost way too much for my mother to rationalize.
The best part about it…I was perfectly happy to hand over my hard owned dollars for some Z. Cavaricci jeans in the eighth grade while other kids were still sporting their Levi’s I was onto bigger and better. But, it came with a price. Lots of teenage social sacrafice.
Working meant missing some Saturday morning high school football games and some weekend nights out with my rowdy friends. I was too busy making cheese steaks, filling ketchup bottles, doing a hundred dishes, and mingling with the customers.
I still played sports, got good grades, and managed to be social; maybe too social if you asked my parents. The phone never stopped ringing. Between my brother and me we gathered quite a bit of friends over the years. My dad used to tell me I should work for Bell Telephone since I was always on it or had one in my hand.
At our family business I learned the best lessons in life. I learned to deal with all walks of life. It was customer service at it’s finest. I had to take orders and make sure your food was right and let me tell you, people are crazy over their food. I promise.
I learned how to really appreciate those M.C. Hammer pants and those gold charms I wore around my neck on my charm holder. I also learned how to save that money I was earning.
My parents always said, “You are nothing without good credit.” They were right, again.
Working at a young age definitely fills your schedule makes you more organized because you become great at time management. To all the parents who don’t want their kids working during high school and college I say you are wrong…all wrong.
You can get good grades and work. Your child isn’t working a forty hour week in high school. In college you make your classes fall around your schedule. There is no excuse for our future generations. I guess some parents want their children to leech onto them forever.
And, that famous line, “Let kids be kids,” is only going to ruin them and they will never grow up.
Nothing bothers me more than seeing kids want, want, want and not work for any of there wants. They are so spaced out on cyberspace that they do not have social skills today.
When I go to the store and some computer taught teen is checking me out I am lucky if they actually tell me the total, usually they expect me to look at the computer screen for my balance. They don’t say, ‘Thank you,” or “Have a good day.”
Say something!! Tell me to drop dead or go to hell let me know that you have some social skills and that you can actually mutter some words to another human being!
I didn’t have a car when I turned sixteen and got my license. Not a new one, not even a used one. My father wasn’t having that either. He bought a used car that I was allowed to drive after school. He wasn’t cheap he was just making sure his daughter didn’t have too much freedom.
I didn’t want to buy one because clothes were more important to me.
At sixteen you don’t need to be behind the wheel all the time. You definitely don’t need your own wheels either. It’s too much power for kids.
Today we see shows where kids are getting BMW’s and Mercedes on their sweet sixteen birthdays. That is insane. I don’t care if you are a millionaire; you’re setting the wrong example. What will your children aspire to when they are already in the lap of mommy and daddy’s luxury?
Nobody eats with their families anymore. Dinner at our house meant dinner with all of us. Most nights my dad worked until ten o’clock, but the rest of us sat down together and ate our HOME COOKED meals. No fast food or eating in the car.
We’re family and my parents kept it that way.
A child doesn’t need a cell phone or any other technologically advanced electronic device in the first grade! Come on people. I hear so many people say that it’s for safety reasons. By all means if your child is in first grade and not with you or someone you deem fit to watch them or safe, then we have a bigger issue than them owning a phone at age six.
Kids don’t run around outside playing tag or any other games. There’s no bike riding, no fishing trips, or go cart races. Everyone is afraid to let their kids get hurt. We made it alive and never wore helmets and stayed outside until the street lights came on. We turned out just fine.
We used our imagination. Today’s instant gratification generation thinks everything is boring unless they have a computer screen in front of their faces.
If your kids want material things that are in excess let them work for it. Young kids should be doing chores around the house. Teenagers should be stocking the supermarket shelves or working at any number of fast food chains with “We’re Hiring” signs.
This generation wants to become an overnight sensation because they have the venue to do it. The internet is making life fast forward.
Nobody wants to work and get to the top. They just want to start at the top. No, they EXPECT the top spot.
What are we fueling this generation’s minds with? Why are we letting them down?
When we were young our parents were scared of the internet and computers. And, when Elvis took over the country he was poison too.
I realize that every generation faces adversity. The unknown is always scary and unpredictable. I’m not saying you should skip on the internet, just use it less. Don’t let your kids miss out on life. Not cyber life, real life.
Make your kids value a dollar. Teach them to value the people around them. Working will lead them to gratification, it may not be instant but it will be more gratifying if they have to earn things. And, not just material things, abstract too.
I worked since I was very, very young and will never regret it. My parents gave me wings and I took off.
There’s going to be plenty of rejection coming to our future generations and if we “yes” them to death, they will never know how to deal with the “no’s.” We aren’t doing kids any favors or justice by buying their love, trust, or adulation. We are losing their respect.
When kids are telling adults what to do it’s time to take action and get our heads out of the clouds. Two working parents isn’t the problem. Our laziness is the issue. Life is hard but your kids need you more than they need the computer and television that has become their babysitter, teachers, and mentors.
Both of my parents worked. I worked. My brother worked. My whole family, cousins, aunts, and uncles worked at young ages.
Maybe it’s in our blood. Maybe it should be in yours. Working is a good thing. Your kids will appreciate your decision to make them work in the end and they will learn a lesson and appreciate it for themselves.
I learned a very important lesson in life. I went to four years of college and learned more in my working years than in the classroom.
Education is key but working is learning too. I wouldn’t change a thing. I feel gratified when I can say I worked for all of this that I own and nobody can take it away from me. It’s mine.
I respect myself and others. But, if you don’t work for it you don’t deserve it. Stop the instant gratification generation from ruining themselves.
My Nana and Poppop are eighty-six years old. Nana retired a year ago and still volunteers at the hospital. She’s not a candy striper, she actually files and does work in the office. She has a computer and knows more about it than I do.
My Poppop still works at our family business. He runs around like he’s forty. All they have ever known is work and it keeps them young and up to date.
A devil’s workshop is an idle mind. That’s why they are constantly in drive.
If eighty year old something’s can still work why are we teaching our kids they deserve a free ride?
I do not have kids yet, but I was a kid. I know the difference between wrong and right. I had a family full of great examples. I idolized my parents not celebrities. I know things are changing and it’s not for the better.
Fasten your seatbelts America, it’s going to be a bumpy, long, selfish ride in the fast lane we call “life.”
When the instant gratification generation learns that they are disposable and their cries for help have run out they are going to fall to their knees because they never learned to stand on their own two feet.
And, like every generation, the spoiled, computerized kids of the future will place blame on their parents and our generation. And, will we really be able to say, “It’s not our fault?”
I think not, but at least it’s my own original thought and not a computer generated answer. God Bless the children and more importantly, their parents.
