• TheDoozer@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    So I’m in the military, and my unit is particularly pleasant to be at, enough that if there are other military people on here, they might get upset by what I’m about to say.

    We have peer group meetings with the Commanding Officer of the base, meaning each paygrade meets with the CO without the people above or below them to hear, and discuss issues. As you can imagine, those in the lower paygrades tend to be significantly younger, and when it got to my paygrade, we were all, almost without exception, millenials.

    To give a background, in the military we get 30 days of leave per year (basically vacation), unlimited sick days, maternity and paternity leave (I believe it’s at 2 months for Paternity, which is pretty generous by US standards). Additionally, at my unit, we get a four day weekend for every federal holiday, have various “morale days” through the year for fishing derbies, group hikes, etc, and a 6.5 hour work day (cue all military going WTF?!).

    At the lower paygrade peer group, a few of them were apparently asking for “more control” over their time off, and being able to take ask for days off with no notice because the weather was going to be good (for hunting, for example). When the CO brought the stuff they were saying up to us, the older, supervisor, millenials, we were facepalming and talking about the fucking Zoomers. But then something amazing happened:

    The CO said he could see their point, and maybe we take some of those four day weekends and instead give a few “Liberty Bucks” at the beginning of the year to each person, that can be turned in to get a particular day in the immediate future off (like getting the next day off to go hunting). That actually worked really well for us, because it made those long weekends easier to schedule, and spread out the days people would be out.

    And I realized we Millenials were just so happy to have what we had, we couldn’t fathom asking for something better… but they could, they did, and got it.

    Fucking Zoomers indeed. Keep pushing, y’all.

    • bitwaba@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      My personal theory on why old people become miserable conservative pricks is that we’re born into this world knowing absolutely nothing, and spend every moment of our lives trying to figure out what in the fuck is going on. Over time, you start to figure some of it out. Then, when you’ve finally started to get a hold of some shit, and finally start to get into a rhythm of what you’re supposed to do, the next generations come in and start changing shit.

      People aren’t against things being better. But they are against not knowing what the fuck they’re supposed to do in life. The problem is the overlap. Changing something for the better means people that spent their whole life doing it one way are now in a state of chaos and uncertainty, which is followed by fear.

      So you slowly become conservative, and resist all change.