Readers React: Quit micro-aggressing baby boomers with your millennial wisecracks

To the editor: After reading Ann Friedman’s Op-Ed, I was forced to stop the game of “Pong” I was playing to respond. (“How to handle baby boomers at work,” Opinion, March 25)

At first, I was going to send the author a response by regular mail, but then I thought she might not have the set of skills necessary to open an envelope and unfold a letter.

Then I thought about sending a video response, but I couldn’t get the VHS tape into my laptop.

I would like to say that I always try to help millennials any way I can.

I try to assist them in crossing the street, so that they don’t get run over while texting.

And since some of them are into albums these days, I’ve been showing them how they can flip over the record and play songs on the other side.

During tax season, I’ve also been advising them that they can deduct a portion of their bedrooms in their parents’ houses for business purposes.

And I do admit that I do not pay enough attention to “micro-aggressions.” I was born and raised in New York City, so I am only familiar with macro-aggressions.

Howard Levine, Encino

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To the editor: What a fabulous piece. I learned the definition of “micro-aggression.” What a great service The Times performed in printing a piece that is the very definition of micro-aggression.

I do hope that this was tongue-in-cheek comedy. If it wasn’t, then it is a very sad world that we live in. Oh yes, “we are the people our parents warned us about.” Someday, they will be too.

Kristin Cano, Corona del Mar

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To the editor: The piece was clearly a parody of what the writer sees as the condescending treatment millennial employees receive from the media and corporations. She wasn’t slamming boomers; she was illustrating the absurdity of reducing any generation to a set of belittling stereotypes.

I’m a baby boomer, and I for one found it very funny.

Linda Goldstein, Sherman Oaks

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To the editor: Shame on The Times. You frequently report on the social wrongs of the world (for example, the front-pager “Campus tainted by misconduct” on the same day as this piece).

The Times should not allow this author’s stereotyping (Luddism and fragile egos) of groups of people who are different.

Times management: Please set the bar higher.

Dennis Ford, Lompoc

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To the editor: I was trying to figure out if the author was engaging in satire or whether her piece was to be taken seriously. Then I realized that the micro-aggression-obsessed millennials don’t have a sense of humor.

In her psychological analysis of baby boomers using the scientifically rigorous 140-character Twitter social networking service, she has failed to realize that most of us have retired.

The reins of business are now in the hands of GenXers like my executive niece, who — guess what — also says millennials come to the workplace with “a sense of entitlement, a tendency to overshare on social media, and frankness verging on insubordination.”

Melissa Verdugo, Rancho Palos Verdes

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To the editor: The advice to millennials reminded me of my own eye-rolling at my parents’ befuddlement in setting up a “complicated” VHS recorder menu.

The author forgets that many of us boomers were not only inventors of some of the current digital technologies but — necessitated by our computer-impacted jobs — made to become early adopters of the same.

With the coming computational developments envisioned by technology futurists, the children of these millennials will more than likely, with their eyes rolling, patiently explain to their non-cybernetic parents the advantages of brain chip implants.

Larry Lytle, North Hollywood

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To the editor: I thought that this opinion piece had to be a joke. But millennials don’t read the news.

So who exactly is the target audience supposed to be?

I’ll wager that most oldsters won’t think it’s funny. I didn’t.

Constance Rawlins, San Diego

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To the editor: Instead of the tech-savvy, with-it senior citizen I thought I was, apparently I’m a Luddite with a fragile ego. Who knew?

Damn. I think I’ve been “micro-aggressed.”

Lorraine Gayer, Huntington Beach

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