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Who's really more "entitled": young people or older people?

Asked by Demosthenes (14933points) September 30th, 2018

“Entitled” is the negative buzzword of the century, it seems. It’s the favorite put down for people of my generation (the infamous “millennials”), lumping them in a group of lazy brats who expect the world to be handed to them for doing no work.

However, from my experience working in customer service, I can say that, at least in the world of consumers, I come across more “entitlement” among older people than younger. Now I would say that only a small percentage of customers ever behave this way (at least at my job; I’ve heard it can be much worse elsewhere), but when they do, they are overwhelmingly middle-aged or older. They are impatient and easily irritable, they have an attitude of the rules shouldn’t apply to me, I shouldn’t have to pay this, I should be able to do what I want.

And no, I’m not attempting to malign any particular generation, and I come across plenty of friendly and pleasant middle-aged and older people (the majority of them are), I’m just curious to know what has been your real-world experience with “entitlement”? It’s a word thrown around so often that I think we need to talk about what it means and who actually deserves that label.

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