Ageism

This morning I am sitting here nursing a sore knee and wondering what I could possibly have done to it.  Did I twist it in the night, do I have rheumatism or did the chiropractor over work the body?  In any event I am missing work today, or rather “working from home”.  Now those quotes could be interpreted in various ways, the truth being that yes, I actually sit at my computer for the bulk of the day working on whatever comes across my computer screen or else I work in the background completing various tasks online.  But bosses tend to be suspicious of staff that “work from home” not believing they are doing anything at all.  Indeed, I had one manager make a comment that the staff would be in their pajamas and my thought was “does it matter as long as they are working”? 

       All that aside I find myself becoming more sensitive to that term “ageism” in the work place.  I reflect back to when I was a youngster first entering the workplace and often noting that the middle aged staff seemed to have difficulty with new concepts or processes.  I was 18 and I was trying to teach a 40 something the simple task of working the telex machine.  Not for the life of her could she grasp how to turn the machine on, much less type on it.  I could not understand it.  Forty years later I look at my generation of workers and wonder, why can we learn things at rapid rates when this poor woman couldn’t understand a two step process?  In my company we learn at least two new processes a year, some years up to seven, and we seem to nail them almost immediately.  Are we smarter or are we just so inundated with change that our minds are nibble and attuned to learn?

       I recognize that there are individuals who slack off but those people come in all age groups and for the most part I see my peers going the extra mile in professionalism, coming in early, leaving on time or later, working through lunch hours, following up loose ends and basically giving their all at work.  I therefore question why employers only look at a spreadsheet that indicates that Susie, Dolly and Molly are “expensive” and they should be the first to be “attritioned”.  Are they really so shortsighted as not to realize that they get four times the amount of work out of the senior folks than they get out of the majority of juniors?  Not to mention the history, quality and added value of the work they put out.

       This article is dedicated to the wonderful women that I’ve been privileged to work with, associate with and acknowledge as peerless peers.  I salute you.