We hear people claim something discrimination all the time. Everyone is being discriminated against and everything has become offensive. The funny thing to me is that it is usually people claiming the millennials are always the ones crying about this stuff. It is just not true though. For every young person out there that is easily offended by something or claims someone is being discriminatory, there is most likely someone much older doing the same thing.
I had a great example of this at work today. This was the exchange between me and a woman today:
Woman: I should report you.
Me: Um, for what?
Woman: Age discrimination.
Me: Huh?
Woman: You took away the phone survey and replaced it with the computer. Us old people do not have computers. I am 82 years old. You are discriminating against old people who want to give their opinion.
Me: I am sorry, we decided to change as a company…
At that point she interrupted me and mentioned how the owner went to Penn State and one of his brother’s went to Pitt. She and her husband went to Pitt. She had a cousin who went to Penn State. Those people are loyal to that school, he would go up to every football game and he lived to be 92. I said that I went to Penn State and she said “well that figures.” She then tried to make a joke about something, but I could barely hear her, so I countered with “well at least I received a good education.” She laughed and then said something about old people not using computers and their voices need to be heard.
Ma’am, you are not being discriminated against. In fact, you are the one being slightly bigoted since you believe that all old people cannot use a computer. That is simply not true. Also, the reason our company went with the online survey tool was because the phone system skewed all the results to the older demographic. We wanted a better sampling of groups, and this was probably the best way. We still have many old people who do the surveys. In fact, the number of people answering the survey in the 65+ demographic almost equals the other age groups together.
So remember, just because something does not go your way or you are not able to do/understand something, that does not automatically make it discrimination. The same goes for things being offensive. What you find offensive, may be pretty tame to some people. Stop judging everything and everyone by your own perfection.
