Step 5 - Bridging the gaps between generational perspectives

5.  Bridging Gaps Between Generational Perspectives

Another problem faced by today’s youth is a feeling of un-importance for what was once held sacred and an emphasis on things once considered frivolous.  An example?  An older cafe owner employs a young person to wait tables.  The youth is able to text his friends, check his Facebook page (via his cell phone), and provide excellent service to customers - simultaneously.   Somehow the youth, because of their affinity with and ability to employ various forms of technological leverage, has the capacity for incredible output levels in less time than the cafe owner can imagine.  The cafe owner is operating on outdated perspectives about time and output possibilities and so can start to resent the youth on the basis that they cannot possibly be getting the work done whilst doing so much multi-tasking – even if they are getting the work done.  Even if the cafe owner considered themselves dextrously adept with cell phone technology they would still probably struggle with the multi-tasking (were they to attempt to emulate the youth) and customer service would suffer so the café owner is against such behaviour.  That is why most cafe owners in this position would reprimand their employee (and probably watch the youth walk out the door, never to return).  But our particular cafe owner quickly gets over his employees apparent lack of focus when he begins to understand the youth is delivering exemplary service and that happy customers are complimenting the youth as well as returning more regularly than in the past.  But what the owner can’t get over is the fact that the youth places more emphasis on socialising the night before a busy Saturday morning  than he does coming into work on his business’s busiest day of the week.  The youth, for his part, does not live to work and is adamant he won’t be giving up his regular Friday night plans with friends for his boss.

There is a void in perspective between youth and business owners in terms of certain expectations.  But, with the right amount of understanding, these voids can be bridged.  And it is vitally important this happens ASAP, so that opportunities are not lost to un-necessary feelings of frustration.

Oh, and it has been suggested to me in the past couple of days that the ability to multi-task (in the brain) does not actually exist.  Now the experts seem to think that "apparent" multi-tasking is actually the brain switching from task to task rapidly and that it is extremely in-efficient.  I never really believed that multi-tasking was possible other than in appearance (as several things can be happenning physically at the same time whilst actually the brain is operating only on one task at a time).