Filling the Generation Gap with Cash

More so than my state of health, my distance in social and moral views from the current generation of twenty-somethings blitzing about the land in a haze of Red Bull, Monster, straight caffeine and bused prescription painkillers enhances this feeling of accelerated decrepitude lolling about my psyche these days. I don't pretend to be one of those fogies who long for 'the good ol' days,' for much of current technology and convenience is tempting enough to keep my senses in the here and now. But, I am missing some sense in those 'coming to age' right now of anything that matters to them other than immediate disposable cash flow and self-indulgence.



Coming up on two months ago, I had to fire my assistant manager at work. It was discovered during an inventory/sales audit that he was falsifying returns and pocketing the cash. He had some degree of fines and legal fees to pay to the state to prevent continued incarceration. I stuck to the silent treatment after it occurred, ignoring his calls and voice mails requesting the opportunity to explain why he did it. While I reserved any feelings of outright hostility and animosity, it didn't matter to me in the least why he did it. My punishment for not discovering his crime on my watch, aside from the insult of being questioned as to whether or not I had aided him in his theft (an insult which, ironically, may well be beyond the grasp of most of the generation I lament in this post), is being put on 'action plan,' a company euphemism for final notice. Every step I take or miss, every transaction I perform, every company policy I follow, bend, or adjust to my own store's needs is closely monitored and scrutinized. If, at the end of a ninety day period, my level of shrink is not acceptable, I will lose my position, and my family will lose over half its stream of income. What on earth could my former assistant have to say to me that would make me understand, make me see something reasonable and acceptable in his actions?



Last I heard, he was arranging to skip state and head for Florida at his father's expense. It seems he has more warrants out for his arrest than just the one generated by his failure to completely pay his restitution to the company. He has no intention of paying back any of his friends the money he's borrowed thus far to pay the paltry percentage of restitution he's made, and in fact, has been very vociferous and boastful of this position. He proudly announces this trip to Florida as his 'get out of jail free card.' He shows no remorse for what he's done, not for the money he's borrowed in ill faith, not for the falsification and manipulation of a co-worker's sales records to hide his crime, not for jeopardizing my family's well-being, not for the embezzlement itself. All that clearly matters to him is the opportunity to party at anyone else's expense and avoid all consequences.

The part of all this that astounds me is how this situation does not make any impact on the vast majority of his friends. He's just the fun-loving bad boy that everyone else loves to hang out with. My personal challenge in this is not just to make certain that no one else is ever able to scam me like that again, but to try and gain some ability to fathom why this doesn't make him a pariah. He's still fairly good friends with one of my part-time associates who, on his own MySpace page, announces how he's 'all about money,' and it's that very attitude of consumerism and greed that I cannot understand.

It would be easy or me to plan the parents, except that both sets of parents are not only so different from each other, but so close to myself in age as to be either 'fellow' Gen Xers or at least members of the previous generation. In the case of the embezzler, I think his mother may have showed overwhelming concern too late in his petty criminal development while his father seemed to be prepared to forgive or ignore anything while trying to throw enough money at it to make it go away. In the case of my part-timer, I think he's rebelling against a strict religious upbringing in an independent denomination/congregation that forbids displays of ostentaciousness while trying also to adapt to the urban environment that idolizes the massing of money without clear interpretation of what money can and can't do. I think a lot of this money-centric thinking is an uneducated remain of the Me Generation born of the stock boom days of the mid and late 1980's, when virtually the only activity of social value became skill in amassing wealth. The uneducated portion arises from the current misinterpretation of that 'value,' that the only skill of note is the amassing of money.

Consider the images you see in hip-hop videos, urban sit-coms, crime dramas, and the like. Money is tossed around to satisfy any number of whims and vices, but rarely is it invested or spent on anything of even vague lasting value. The next high, the next lay, the next craving is the only expense of importance that occurs to today's generation. Now, please understand, as will become apparent in most of my postings here, I am no fan of capitalism or free market economy. I am not suggesting mass emergency education in economics as a panacea to urban ills. I am suggesting that this seeming problem is, in reality, a symptom of greater illness, namely the lack of hope, and consequently, the aversion to accountability.

The hard lessons in avoiding consequence go back several generations, their roots lying in Nixon-era politics. Most of the Watergate players, including Nixon himself, were able to avoid criminal consequences and even profit from their wrongdoing through Washington connections and the talk-show circuit, with ample assistance from the publishing industry. Fast forward to the Iran-Contra hearings of the late 1980's; did anyone truly suffer consequences from their actions? Oliver North still retains some degree of notoriety for his complicity. Consider the treatment of celebrities in the U.S. legal system. Throw enough money and glam at any issue, and it goes away, or at most, results in a little community service. If those who set the example for acceptable behavior (and most of us who know better know that they shouldn't) are not held accountable for what they do, then why should anyone else? Then we come to the national travesty of the past eight years, the criminal occupation of the White House by the Bush regime. Dubya's entire life is a testament to avoiding consequence by the careful distribution of payola, from required military service to gross sub-mediocrity in an Ivy League institution that should have found his aversion to learning repugnant. Difficult to argue that one must pay their own way or do the hard work when the Caricature-in-Chief tosses pay-off about with the ease and dexterity of a common gangsta rapper. To that, we must add the fully developed selfishness of the Baby Boomer generation, which has proven itself to be the prototype for the Me Generation. Clearly concerned with their own preservation and clearly unconcerned with the fate of their offspring, they have conspired to preserve social security for themselves while virtually guaranteeing it will not b around long enough to help those who are currently funding it. Wherein lies hope and concern for the future when your own parents and grandparents pickpocket you to fund their retirement and your demise?

The only stand I have against the poor education provided by common behavior and the poor parenting of others is the parenting I do with my own children. Perhaps I'm setting them up to be the social outcasts of their own generations, but better that than setting them up as the outlaw heroes of another crop of corrupt children. Most parents hope that their children listen to and absorb the lessons we teach; my hopes aren't any different, and I'm starkly aware of the personal editing I've done to the lessons my parents passed on to me. I struggle most with my oldest son, but there are those occasional glimpses of hope, when he does the right thing. For now, I'm content to continue molding my portion of the next generation instead of fighting the throng of uncared for misexperiments in social pioneering that will leak through the fail safes.