Millennial Boss Explains The Sad Reason She Will No Longer Be Hiring 'Boomers'
She's overly frustrated with older generations at work.
nortonrsx / CanvaPro If you’ve worked in a corporate setting, or really any workplace environment, you’ve definitely been around a “bad employee.” From poor customer service to bad attitudes, there are a number of things that can manifest into a “bad employee” badge.
However, millennial boss, Sara Holcomb, took to TikTok to share another quality associated with this distasteful badge: being a “boomer.” In a recent video, she shared her experience onboarding a new “boomer employee” who she said turned out to be both “unqualified” and simply “too old to work.”
Holcomb admitted she’s never hiring a boomer again because of one sad reason.
“I hired this 65-year-old lady,” Holcomb said, “and I told her several times that we’re closed on Friday. If she has any questions she needs to discuss with me, she needs to call my cell phone.”
Holcomb explained how had just finished a shower on her day off, when she got a concerning email.
In a reply to her training email, which walked the new boomer employee through the log-in process for her first day at work, she simply asked, “How do I log in?”
Instead of going back and forth on her work email — on her day off — Holdcomb decided to just give her a call, hoping to sort out the issue quickly. However, when she called, she was immediately met with a voicemail.
After training a new boomer employee, Holcomb received numerous emails on her day off only to realize the new hire didn't have a cell phone.
Going back into her resume to check the number, she quickly realized this employee only listed a landline. “Do you have a [expletive] cell phone? You have to send me a Zoom code, then I text it back to you… that’s how you log-in.”
“I told her that she had to receive this text message in the training email,” she continued. “She didn’t even read the email.”
Frustrated over the fact that this employee might not have a cell phone — a relatively necessary tool for the job that they’d previously discussed — the woman decided to call again, this time leaving a voicemail.
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“Susan, I’m kind of concerned because I gave you all of the information on how to log-in and then you responded back asking how to log-in,” Holcomb candidly said in her voicemail. “You also gave me a landline phone number and I’m just seeing this now.”
Of course, everyone makes mistakes and is bound to have questions when they start a new job. Answering a phone call with questions is one thing, but as Holcomb described it, being blindsided by “ignorance and lies” is another.
It became clear to Holcomb that her new boomer hire had lied about her qualifications, including her previous experience with Zoom and having a cell phone.
In addition to the disregard of this boss’ training materials, Holcomb claimed the boomer employee lied on her resume. When they discussed her qualifications, she was adamant about being able to “host Zoom meetings” and even discussed “several” she’d done in the past.
“That was the second lie,” Holcomb said. The first was that she was able to receive texts, both for Zoom links and log-ins, but also as a general qualification for the position.
Despite her frustations, she candidly explained that simply “not having a phone” was not the issue. She would’ve been glad to set up an alternative avenue for log-ins prior to her very first day. Instead, it was the misguided reassurance and outright “lies” the employee gave, that culminated in an incredibly stressful first day for everyone.
Holcomb named similar ‘technology issues’ as the basis for her view that boomers are just ‘too old to work’ in today’s world.
“Now I have to stress all night thinking that this [employee] won’t be able to work tomorrow and that it’s going to be [expletive] chaos at 8 a.m. on a Saturday,” she said. “I have other people, teachers, people who I manage who are Gen Z and millennials and are fine.”
Holcomb went on to say that “every single time” she hires “a boomer,” there’s a similar issue. “They’re just too old to work,” she proclaimed.
Not everyone agreed with her take, however. Many commenters found her opinion downright inappropriate, saying she was “ageist.”
“It was a ‘tongue and cheek’ comment — do you know what that means?” Holcomb defended. “The reason why I hired her is because I didn’t want to be ageist.”
“I get that it sucks that they have to work until after 65, but I didn’t make that law. This is what’s wrong with our country…you’d rather get on TikTok and be mad at [me] for not wanting to hire incompetent employees than talk to our representatives [and revolt].”
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Age does not determine the quality of an employee.
Overall, this was a sad situation for everyone involved. It's important to remember, however, that we only have one side of the story. The story of a woman who was bothered on her day off by a new hire who was struggling.
Was this boomer a bad employee? It's entirely possible. Does that mean all boomer employees struggle with technology? No.
TikTok was not the appropriate avenue for Holcomb's rant, or her gross generalizations. She had two viable avenues for recourse: fire the incompetent employee who she hired without being properly vetted or work with her and offer patience.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a news and entertainment writer at YourTango focusing on pop culture analysis and human interest stories.