I remember reading an opinion piece written by an obviously underworked journalist once. The entire piece was a long, drawn-out whine, which coincidently sounds nothing like my suggested remedy of an artillery strike on the journo as he sat waiting for his decaf espresso. He related the story of how he and a friend tried to get a coffee in the city but were set upon by the needless delays of the staff making other peoples orders first. *dun dun duuunnnnn*
Dramatic scene-music aside this guy must have been jonesing like Charlie Sheen in Amish country. He needed his fix and he needed it to arrive quicker than me on a date with Jennifer Hawkins. So the story unravels that he complains about the wait, then he complains about the over-worked teenager behind the counter’s response to his original complaint, then he starts on the staff’s attitude (who the hell expects smiles and sunshine from a teenager making coffee for minimum wage?).
After all this our journalistic white knight, defender of the “good ol’ days” moves on to express his disgust at ‘kids these days’ always seeming to have facial piercings, which never happened back in his day, oh no! And politicians were honest, and the roads were safer, etc. ad nauseam. Cue shaking of fists, waving of walking sticks in the air and angry letter writing to the editor/mayor/Easter bunny. Interesting point; if you want to make a complaint about something and immediately start looking for a pen and paper there’s a good chance you have no idea what an internet is thus won’t be reading this and can’t argue back. Nyah nyah, your hip’s broke!
Seriously though, facial piercings? On a teenager working in hospitality? Heaven forfend! I can already hear Helen Lovejoy shrieking in the background. Isn’t hospitality the industry where you can get away with that sort of thing? It was turning out that this was the degradation of civilisation happening right in front of us and a bold and fearless journo was there to shine the light on this scourge of the cafferatti.
This is where it hit me, this isn’t an original thought. I could picture some chain-smoking journalist sweating into his polyester shirt twenty years ago thinking the same thing. No, not that he had desperately needed to come up with an opinion piece by 3pm or start looking for a new job, the other thing. Someone would have written the exact same piece about the quality of service at his local restaurant and the lazy, good-for-nothing, long haired layabouts that worked there. Long hair and unkempt side burns! These were the problems of that age. Also chlamydia, but more on that later.
This was the same “damn kids, get off my lawn” crap that had been doing the rounds in journalism for generations. Swap piercings or tattoos for long hair, facial hair, rock music, short skirts, the word ‘dude’, or any other hundred decency destroying habits and you have essentially the same argument going all the way back to 1665 when Lord Orpington published his hand written essay “ “The Modern Youth and Their Damn Baggy Pantaloons”.
I'm wiritng this with the full knowledge that absolutely nothing will change and in twenty or thirty years time I'll be sitting down to a breakfast scotch and nodding along to an article about how kids these days need to respect their elders and stop getting their skin dyed/eyes tinted/cyborg limbs chromed/whatever. It's a cycle, it's going to go round and round and will continue to do so unless we do something. I for one can't be arsed, but i'm going to sit back and giggle about it from time to time, so I'd like to invite you to join me...
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Comedy of Generations.
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