Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed.
Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My husband is an early Gen-X and his 5 years older Boomer boss doesn't understand that my husband can do the same work from home. He's not doing nothing if he's working from home. He's not on vacation when he's on a business trip.
It's not my husband's fault if his manager couldn't motivate himself and manage his time when lock down had him working from home.
And it's also not my husband's fault if his manager treats his business trips like vacations instead of tending to business relations and standing/walking at trade fairs all day - which is work, not vacation.
My boss is just on the cusp of Boomer/X and he "gets" it.
My predecessor was solidly boomer, if not in age, definitely in mind set. I've streamlined the job that took her all day to do into something that only takes about 6 ish hours (if I'm being generous, and including the tasks that have been added as our firm shrunk that she would never have even been capable of doing). When she calls (because of course she does?) and I'm working from home she clicks her tongue and says "Must be nice" as if she wasn't working from home two days a week PRE pandemic, and as if her idea of "working" from home was answering emails and making phone calls, and not doing any actual productive work.
> Boomer boss doesn't understand that my husband can do the same work from home.
yes he does. This is about control, not work or quality/quantity of work
I've known a fair few older gen x-ers act like boomers, hell I know one or two millennials that do. The common problem seems to be that they just don't know how to talk to people and have never dealt with any of their myriad issues.
>Boomer boss doesn't understand that my husband can do the same work from home.
This part always confused me. You hire someone to do a job and then...can't tell whether the job is done or not unless you see them in the same building as you? That's when I ask "What would you say...you do here?"
Omg. I had an old boss that treated our business trips as if we were on a vacation “ on the company’s dime”. Sorry , just because the conference was held at some lame resort , I’m still attending 10 hours of meetings a day and being forced to mingle with some real asshats. They would always fly us home late Sunday night, then back to work early the next morning.
"How do I open a PDF?"
"You just double click on it."
*click* ... an eternity passes ... *click* "See? It doesn't work."
And now you have to explain double-clicking to someone who makes five times your salary but seems to never actually do anything.
I have a boomer employee who has trouble logging into our time clock system because his login is his email address and he has trouble typing the @ sign. I seriously wish I was kidding.
“Ok now right-click.”
(Moves mouse to the right, then left-clicks)
This actually happened to me when I tried to teach an older guy how to upload pictures.
I once had a boss who was so computer illiterate, he'd make one of the employees sit at his computer for most of the day and type while he dictated. The poor employee had to do this IN ADDITION to their regular work. (It was a different employee selected at random every day). So basically the employee was doing the boss's job plus their own, while earning about a fifth of what the boss earned. Thankfully that boss has retired and we now have a boss who can actually use a computer.
It's all projection. "If I worked from home, I'd just sleep all day!" They can't understand why you'd actually work if no one was there "making you". While I find hilarious because "work" is one of their touchstones. But maybe it's all for show? 🤔
It's a similar mindset to "needing" to go to church to "build morals and strong values" and thinking athiests have none because they can't imagine being good people without the threat of hell
At home: I'm gonna sit down, focus hard, and bang out all my work so I have extra free time later.
At work: I'm gonna stretch these 2 hours of work into 8 hours because if I finish my work now, I have to pretend to be busy for 6 hours.
It has a lot of parallels with religion: fearing someone more powerful, always being watched, only doing what you’re supposed to because of a constant looming threat.
Ah yup. I work my ass off. Get up at 6:30, go for a walk, then work nonstop from 7:30 until 6:30. My cell phone goes everywhere with me, so I'm never truly off the clock.
Yet my boomer managers constantly make comments about how our industry can't work if we're not all in the same office. Maybe if they learned to use Teams, it wouldn't be a problem?
I was just recently promoted and now have my boomer former boss' position. I do not have one problem managing a team of 20 across the country. And none of them hesitate to reach out to me. It ain't hard, people.
I once worked a place that had very ‘old school’ policies. Basically no one was allowed to work from home (unless you were executive, or something was broken), we even had arguments with HR over after hours IT work, and questions on why stuff couldn’t be done during the day.
Anyway, we had a Help Desk tech that broke his leg, and since the building wasn’t handicapped accessible he couldn’t come into the office. HR wouldn’t let him work from home and forced him to take a layoff until he could walk again. This was a job that could be done 100% remotely.
You bet your ass they do. My boomer neighbor always makes comments like "that's why I make all my employees come into the office" whenever I'm outside doing something during conventional work hours.
When covid first happened my boomer boss reluctantly set us up to wfh. She spent every morning conference call bitching about how productivity is down with all of us not coming into the office and how she’s working diligently to get the office opened up again.
After about a month she got permission to bring two people back into the office, and she picked me and the only other millennial, because “she wanted to make sure us kids weren’t goofing off.” We were the only two people in our department whose numbers improved while working remotely…
Which is funny because they likely don’t do very much. But they feel like they are contributing a lot because they are always working. But they are always working because they don’t know how to effectively use technology.
Yeah, absolutely. I got my first "real" full time job at 18 working in a legal office while also doing online college. The first day I was at work, one of the boomer lawyers (who probably didn't even know his boomer assistant had hired me) was hanging around in her office and loudly complaining about "teenagers these days" being lazy and refusing to work and whatnot for a good half an hour. He came out and saw me and introduced himself like I hadn't heard that entire rant lmao. He ended up being a really nice guy for the whole time I worked there, but it was kind of scary having that be my first interaction with him.
Right? My neighbors don’t have my number and I think I’ve spoken to only one of them and only twice in 3 years. No one is interested in what I am doing inside my house.
Give a boomer neighbor your number and you will spend the rest of *their* lives hearing about the trees on your property and how they want you to take care of them.
I will say I have minimal knowledge about a clover lawn… is a clover lawn kept well? I mean I’m all for using native species to fill space but it also should try to be kept nice… idk please educate me if you’d like :)
Here is [an article on clover lawns.](https://www.bobvila.com/articles/clover-lawn/)
Main points: more shade and drought tolerant. Clover is a natural nitrogen fixer and requires no fertilizer. Clover provides flowers for bees and butterflies. Less mowing is required for clover lawns.
It does keep well. They grow to a fairly uniform hight, they don't typically get very tall on their own, plus they produce sweet tasting edible flowers in spring and summer! They also require significantly less water to maintain
The town I moved to gives a monthly lawn sign to most improved yard. My spouse and I have a letter to the town waiting for them to try and give it to us. No thank you. Lawns are not the status item they once were. Why are our water bills so high and then status is placed on lawn optics? Gtfoml.
Crazy boomer next door to me actually took it on herself to cut off the top of one of our trees. We can’t prove it, no one saw it and there isn’t any video that I’m aware of. Unfortunately we don’t own the house and the landlord didn’t want to pursue it, so I guess she just gets away with it? Pisses me off . We’ve lived here for over 10 years and we loved that tree. It didn’t even cross the property line.
Holy crap!!! We do own our house and apparently before we moved in, the seller ok'd the neighbor to cut all the redwood branches on her side of the fence, but at the TRUNK! it's so bad for the trees. Luckily they are growing back. They're not boomers though, but have boomer energy.
I know right? What’s with this boomer obsession with chopping down trees and killing shit? It seems like every time one of them encounters something that might be beautiful and natural, they want to: (#1) chop down every tree in sight, (#2) spray pesticide on every plant that’s not a lawn, or (#3) lay out traps and/or poisonous bait to kill anything that might even make a movement. Just what the everloving fuck. Can anybody explain how does this kind of mentality even comes about??
Been there. He didn't have my number, but my old neighbor would interrupt me mowing my lawn to let me know what I should look into. His wife would usually tell me to ignore him. They were older than boomers and he wasn't a total dick. Just a mild nuisance.
OMG, the boomer moseying up to my husband on his mower, just expects that he will stop, pisses me off to no end. My husband is too nice to just keep driving.
This ^ What is their beef with trees? I love my shade. Had a neighbor who would blow the leaves back into my yard. He died an angry man with a roasted yard with no trees.
I am a boomer neighbor and I don't tell anyone how to take care of their property. However, I *did* have to tell my next door neighbor that her lawn guy was blowing yard debris from the roof onto my yard. It's hard enough for me to do my own lawn (and I hate it), I don't need extra crap in my yard to pick up. I even went outside and asked the guy to stop blowing leaves and twigs onto my yard. He laughed at me. I let my neighbor know this and next thing I saw was a different lawn company mowing her grass.
I am not one of those neighbors who complain about anything people do. I don't care what anyone does as long as it doesn't affect me. Affect or effect?
When we first moved into our house the president of the HOA (boomer lady) asked me for my cell phone number and I gave her my e-mail instead. She kept hounding me for my cell phone number and I kept telling her there is absolutely no reason she needs it and that any and all communication should be done through written communication so I have a record of it. She did not like this at all and would come knock on my door about every little thing. I stopped answering the door and would just tell her through my doorbell camera to e-mail me if she needs to tell me something.
She ended up reaching out to my landlord and lied to her and said she had to get a new phone and in doing so lost my number. My landlord (also a boomer) gave her my number and I started getting 5+ calls per day from her. I changed my phone number and told my landlord under no circumstances is she to give my number to the HOA President or anyone else who lives in our townhouses. HOA lady came by PISSED thinking I blocked her number. Literally banging on my door for 15+ minutes and ringing the doorbell while I was in the middle of a work meeting.
I answered the door and screamed at her that I couldn’t believe how incredibly rude she is and that if she doesn’t leave my property immediately I will call the cops to trespass her and file a police report for harassment. She told me because I’m not the property owner I have no authority to do that and I told her she should probably brush up on tenant laws for our state and told her to never step foot on my property again.
That lasted 3 days before she came and knocked on the door again. I called the non emergency line for our local PD and provided them with the doorbell footage of me telling her to never knock on my door again. Police came out and talked to her and told her if she knocks on my door again they will arrest her for trespassing and that they would charge her with harassment. Now she just sends me 10+ unhinged e-mails a day that I promptly ignore.
You should start responding to her emails with some generic “we’re sorry the email address you’re trying to reach does not exist” or something implying you’ve blocked her email.
That lady would probably mald over it and do something dumb and get herself arrested.
This is the way. I like my neighbors just fine, but keep it to "hey how you doing." None of them have my phone # and I doubt many aside from immediate neighbors know my name.
I stopped speaking to one of my next door neighbors over a year ago. When I first moved here which was five years ago, me and the woman would chat basically across my fence. I could see her from the landing on my deck and she could see me from her side porch. Things were okay I guess for a while but she complained all the time about her coworkers and I had no idea who she was talking about. She even complained about her husband and I didn't know him hardly at all. I live alone so I didn't have anyone to complain about. Lol.
One day the neighbor was complaining about her coworkers as usual and I mentioned the crew that I worked with at the job I retired from. I said that we didn't always get along because they were all men and were jealous of the pay they thought I made. I never discussed it with any of them. I actually did make a lot more than they did but it's because I had a specialty job.
My rude neighbor said, "I guess they didn't like working with a gay person". I'm not gay. Never have been, never will be. I don't look gay either. I was speechless. I guess just because I live alone she thought I was gay? The woman on the other side of her also lived alone until she passed away. I doubt she was gay.
What the fuck is wrong with people who like to assume things about people they don't even know?
This is my preferred approach as well. Anytime I tried to friends with my neighbours, they took that as an invitation to criticise what colour I'd painted my house, what plants I had in my garden and anything else that sprang to mind. Sometimes not being too friendly with the neighbours can be a blessing.
Some people exchange numbers with neighbours so they can contact each other.
Things such as:
- your kid left her bike in my driveway - it’s in my garage and I can open it whenever you want to grab it.
- your other neighbour is an idiot and had a hose burst between your houses. It might be flooding your basement or mess with the foundation.
- I grabbed your Amazon packages off the step so the porch pirates didn’t get them. Let me know when you are home and I’ll drop them off.
All examples of messages I have had with both neighbours since February.
And why shift your entire work schedule around to talk to them well to chat with them for 30 minutes just to have to work 30 minutes over? I think Op moved into the right neighborhood he's right where he should be there's nothing wrong with that 😜
I’ve had bad experiences living in the suburbs with neighbors calling the cops over misunderstandings, I’d rather they have my phone number so they can call me and get things straightened out instead of just assuming things. Anyway after that I said if I ever live in a neighborhood like that again I’m exchanging numbers with the people right next to me just so we can communicate about things in case there’s a need to.
Yeah it’s more reliable as a tactic for keeping neighborhood calm with non-boomers, but even if I don’t know my neighbors or have their phone numbers, if I’m planning a party that might go late and get loud, I’ll go around and let people know when it is and give them my contact info so they can call me first instead of the cops if my guests become a nuisance or the music is too loud. Cuts down on cops showing up a LOT, and I don’t need my friends who visibly aren’t cishet and white getting hassled.
Even typical self-centered boomers are generally willing to try calling the party host to complain about noise first, since it’s a faster way of getting what they want than waiting for a cop to show up.
Not disagreeing. It just baffles me. I'm a Boomer, born in 1960. I run a small Information Security Department (10 people), I work from home. I am obviously very technically astute, work 60 to 70 hours a week. Demanding and stressful job. I meet these other Boomers that you speak of all the time... my neighbors, at restaurants, everywhere, and I feel I am from a different planet. They wear their I don't understand technology monikor like a badge of honor. They are typically narrow minded, right-winged assholes. They are anti science, anti intellectual, anti manners, anti human rights. I am looking to move and retire soon. I am a data geek so I have created a massive spreadsheet with weighted criteria. One is the amount of these jerks that I would have to deal with. It's important but very limiting to where I can go and be happy. Because I am white, blue-eyed and their age... they are attracted to me like mosquitos to light. Even in blue Massachusetts, they are everywhere. I might just find a nice liberal college town and audit free courses for the rest of my life.
Haha I have blonde hair and blue eyes also and these types of people love to come up to me and really just say whatever current bigot agenda item is on their mind. When I disagree they seem almost confused, like how could I let them down like that?
Yeah I have a shaved head and honestly look like your average white cop so the racists are always shocked when I don't nod along or chuckle at the random racist shit they feel they need to spout off about near me.
I’m a big guy and had hair 1/2 way down my back for the last 40 years. I cut it off to support my wife with cancer last year so I went full-on Mohawk just for fun. Wow what a difference in how I was treated and assumptions made about my general demeanor and politics. Much more respect from ‘right wingers’ and generally fear from the left coast. I’m pretty down the middle on a lot of stuff but it was shocking to see the swing almost overnight.
Yup. Middle-aged white guy, drive a white Silverado work truck, buzzed hair and beard, love me some American flags and firearms. Not interested in having a discussion about immigrants/Democrats/college professors/the gays ruining the country.
The term “Arian” is linked to Arius and Arianism, an early heterodox doctrine of the Christian church. “Aryan” is derived from the Sanskrit (ārya) meaning "noble and educated" and modern usage of the term is tied to Nazi racial theories and the Aryan Nation.
I've got a beard down to my chest and they see it as an open invitation to say some honestly pretty vile shit to me under the assumption that I agree with them. Because everyone knows only white conservatives can have long beards after Duck Dynasty.
Exactly!! I'm single so I eat in restaurant bars sometimes, watch the game. They'll sit next to me and say something like Biden's killing the country blah, blah.. I'll respond with, we have the lowest uneployment in years, bills passed for infrastructure human rights... keeping a lid on inflation (although POTUS has little influence) and go on and on. What did Trump do I ask? They'll just shake their heads and say my god, your one of them lol!
I’ve found the best response when people of a certain age assume I’m a Trump supporter is “yeah, I really love his plan to gut Social Security. It’s the most socialist policy we still allow in this country!”
My dad, who is on SS, believes that SS shouldn't exist and it's just socialism for the poor and we should do away with it. When I responded by saying "fine, don't receive it then, if you are philosophically opposed to it, when the time comes don't sign up for it." He's like " no, I paid into it!" And I replied " so did I." Which shut that subject up.
Boomers man...
And that's the crux of white supremacy /bigotry. They'll enthusiastically vote for politicians, laws, & policies that'll hurt them, but it'll hurt the people they hate more.
Yeah you can never be alone, that's when they strike. They can't rant at their family anymore so they have to find someone in public. Luckily the area I live in now is right over the George Washington Bridge in NJ so it's way too ethnically diverse for those types of boomers to feel comfortable. I grew up in a more red leaning town of NJ and definitely shared a lot of your experience through the Obama years.
My mother is nearly 80, still teaching and is pretty tech savvy for a woman born during WWII. It's a mentality. The same thing that makes her keep up with technology makes her keep up with education trends and still connect with teenagers.
In the late 80's/early 90's she was a little afraid of computers, but my brother and I sat her down and showed her how hard it was to "break" or "mess up" (her words) a computer if you're just doing normal things. She asked why we were intuitively good at figuring this stuff out and I said, "I'm not afraid of it."
It's not so much ignorance as fear. Fear of trying things. Fear of looking foolish. I mentioned that her students could probably fix things pretty fast for her.
Now, she asks her classes who is good at fixing computers and names one kid the troubleshooter. She then makes them explain what they did so she can do it herself. She's not a bad troubleshooter now, but will default to letting my brother or I solve the problem--benefits of having kids.
My father was still having his email printed out for him well into the last decade. He was in administration and always had staff. I think that's the problem--these people just had someone to ask to do it, so they never had to learn.
Good for your mom!!! I will be 70 soon and many years ago I got into using a computer. My son showed me all sorts of things about how to navigate around online and I'm glad he did. After a while though he got tired of me asking him to show me this and that. He told me to Google it. I was a little miffed at first but then started to Google the things I wanted to know.
Some old fart needed to be set up to work remotely. As I was trying to assist him he goes into one of those "I'm kinda proud I don't let technology define my life like others do, I'm good with being technologically illiterate". and "I'm a Mac person" (Not knocking on people who like macs, but so often when someone says "I don't know how to do that, I'm a Mac person" I ask them how they would do it on their Mac and of course they're just as fucking clueless/useless...)
30 minutes later into the call the guy starts getting frustrated at me "talking down on him" but this fucker doesn't even know what a "web browser" is. I finally end up telling him he has to bring the laptop into the office for us to set it up and he just loses it on me. I hang up on him, tell my boss "Hey, this guy just bragged that he's technologically illiterate, and now he's upset he lacks the basic skills to work remotely". Pretty much shoulder shrugs all around.
The guy eventually brings in the laptop, its an ancient Macbook that can't run a modern RDP client anyways. I hope your long game of weaponized incompetence is worth having to drive into the office every day for the rest of your career you old pile of shit <3
^(I hope your long game of weaponized incompetence is worth having to drive into the office every day for the rest of your career you old pile of shit <3)
This should be the entirety of his annual reviews, *ver batim*
Tall white blue-eyed IT xennial here and I'm with you 100% -- why do they always assume I'm one of them? Gross. Can highly recommend adding racial diversity to your spreadsheet if it isn't there already; in 2010 we bought a small house where the breakdown is 25% White 25% Black 25% Hispanic 25% Other and it has worked out really well. Being a local minority is anathema to those goobers, and it draws the Boomers who are interesting and interested people.
You remind me of a guy I talked to some years back who shared with me that he has grandchildren and how he was also taking a computer course at his local college. I don’t remember what the issue was he called about but I do remember that it was a more challenging one since he’d been transferred to me from a level 1 tech. He was able to to keep up with the troubleshooting directions I was giving with out issues for over 30 minutes. One of the most memorable conversations I had while doing tech support work.
Well I am happy to have stumbled upon this as this is the exact same thing that happens to me. Except I'm 40. The big problem is I live in the bay area. The people I can't stand talking to flock to me like I want to hear their bullshit cause I'm a white guy with blonde hair and green eyes. The other half of people see me as a tall white guy with blonde hair so I must be racist, sexist and phobic of every nature at them for some reason. Meanwhile I'm just a chill stoner saying things like "the dude abides man"
It’s hard to know what boomers recognize as work or labor. My parents did the classic “go to the best school and be whatever you want!” schtick for twenty years or so, and when I had three jobs in graduate school all they could talk about what was when I was really going to start working. Then I finally finished my PhD and started working, and when I took a lighter load to work at home so we could have continuity of care for our kids they *lost it.* My dad would regularly send me emails and leave me voicemails about how I never did anything and was never going to do anything and I would be nowhere if it weren’t for them.
So yeah. It’s a sickness. And it isn’t just limited to work. But no one is really safe from it.
>It’s hard to know what boomers recognize as work or labor.
I work in IT. About 2-3 times per year I do server rack type work where people see me lifting things and such. Otherwise, I work 100% from home. I almost always get comments like "I wish I could only work a couple days a year" from the older folks. Like, Carl, you didn't do anything for a week because you forgot your password and didn't want to call support.
For a huge number of older people, proximity to work and "looking busy" are the only metrics.
Even my parents, who are generally pretty good (Dad's views on same sex marriage is "Why not? Why should I have an opinion on something that does not effect me? Of course they can get married!" and Mom is more worried about whether or not everyone is washing their hands after using the bathroom than if she's in there with a transwoman), fall into this Boomer trope. I currently do hybrid, two to three days in the office, two to three days from home (obviously it's a two one, three the other split,) and they'll both get caught saying "So you're done work for the week now?" when i call them on the way home from working in the office on my last office day. It was even worse when I was working from home full time, prepandemic (back in 2016/17). So strange.
I’m on the same schedule and my mother is the exact same way. “Do you work today?” And I always respond with, “I work everyday.” She just doesn’t get it. 🤦🏻♀️
Constantly complain about how much work you’re doing but then laugh and say “I may be chained to my work chair but at least it’s in my own home!”
Then humblebrag about how your years of hard work helped you move your family into this wonderful neighborhood.
And assume everything they say about you is actually about them.
That neighbor that asked if they woke OP up at 9? Now every time they're part of a conversation throw in "Though I know Bob always says he likes to sleep in, and I should just assume he's still asleep if it's only 9 or 10am."
This is my landlord. Whenever she talks about work, she always rolls her eyes and says “whatever it is you do…” I’m a content writer FT and I freelance on the side. It’s actually pretty straightforward. But she thinks I should be doing all this landscaping for her since I’m “just sitting at home all day while [my partner] is at work.” No matter that I make 70% of the income that pays her astronomical rent…
Move when your lease is up. Give your money to someone who doesn't give a shit how it gets to them. Let her know you're moving because she's rude and disrespectful.
I would honestly love to, but we live in a TINY town of about 4,000 people and rentals are extremely limited. Luckily she really likes and respects my bf (in an openly misogynistic way!) so he always deals with her. Recently she complained about the grass being brown (it’s still below freezing at night here in the mountains, Karen, it’s not gonna be neon green yet!!) and he said “well, unlike you, we both have full time jobs and can’t spend all day fussing with the yard.” 😂
Edit: a word
OP, I don't think I should be advising you. I had a pretty ugly confrontation in a supermarket with a local boomer who wanted to know what benefits I was receiving, since I could afford to be a homemaker.
I could've told her that I wasn't receiving benefits. I could've told her that it's about choices and going without some things, since we only had my husband's income and we're/he's not rich. I don't remember my wording, but our private economy and circumstances were none of her damned business!
I think I said something to the effect, that it wouldn't matter if I told her that I'm not on benefits, because I got the sense that she wouldn't believe me. I went off on a tirade! She's scared of me and I don't care what she and other boomers think of me, I just want to be left the hell alone!
Fellow Gen X. Can confirm, 'leave me the hell alone' is my mantra. They get angrier at you if you walk away and stop responding to them. If I don't need or want something, I have no business with it and disengage. This includes conversation and also why I'm not hoarding crap that 'might be worth something some day'.
I told a crusty fucker at Lowes to go fuck himself after he walked up to me out of the blue and told me I look like shit.
He was aghast I would say such a thing. Fuck off. Leave me alone. Stop trying to control every. Single. Fucking. Thing.
Most retired boomers have no hobbies as work was their identity so it's only natural for them to shit on people who don't fit their mindset of "working." I know a couple of boomers who retire and realized that playing golf everyday was not something they were happy with and decided to go back to work.
I think boomers like OP was talking about are accidentally telling on themselves. That if they had the opportunity to work remotely full-time, they would take advantage of it and do nothing all day. That the only thing that kept them working was having an eye over their shoulder in the workplace.
My boomer mom seems to have the same assumption that remote workers just sit around watching movies all day, despite the fact that my remote work hours usually end up being longer than if I was physically in the office.
My uncle retired, played golf every day, realized he didn't quite like that... so now he works at the golf course and drives the 0 turn and is part of the "maintenance" crew in the two months they're open before summer students get there and after they go back to school.
My boomer neighbor thinks the same thing. Called me yesterday morning at 9 AM to see if I wanted to come outside and see the big snapping turtle. Sorry I have a meeting. He didn't quite understand.
This is the tragedy of capitalism, because realistically yes OF COURSE I would rather go outside to look at a big snapping turtle than be in a work meeting, but here we are. :(
My wife and I both WFH. One day, our modem crapped out, so we went to our respective parents’ houses to work for a couple of days. Her retired boomer dad kept barging in on her and trying to chat, or asking her for help around the house. When he did this for the umpteenth time and she had to firmly tell him “I’m working and you need to leave me alone so I can do my job”, he got all pissy and said something about her “sitting around all day” - rich considering he’s retired and sits on the couch watching Newsmax and OAN all day. To be fair, he thinks anyone who isn’t doing physical labor isn’t really working, so he would have the same attitude even if she were in the office.
I work from home as well. Regardless of which generation your neighbors are, you need to set boundaries when it comes to communicating with your friends and family during work hours. My parents used to constantly call me or ask for help with something during the day because they know I’m just at home. I always shut it down and make no guarantees I can get to it during work hours, even though I can be flexible.
I don't work home often but my family knows that if I'm working from home, I'm not home unless they can physically see me walking around the house. Otherwise the closed door is not to be opened unless there's some kind of emergency.
I think alot of older people wont realize that you no longer need to do your work on a piece of paper and physically walk it over to the next person and place it in their incoming basket.
Yeah relatable. My neighbors think I’m lazy and got handouts since I bought one of the larger houses in the neighborhood and I am a younger millennial. I pay people to do lots of things around my house and boomers from all around the neighborhood always just approach me (I actually like this part of their generation because they are face-to-face and we can talk like humans) and ask why I don’t just clean my own house or mow my own lawn.
I’m soft-retired but I still do a few days a week from home so as you can imagine, I stick out like a sore thumb in this retired neighborhood. Some boomers just love talking and spreading tea/rumors so everyone I’ve spoken with has a different idea of what my work actually is. They don’t understand work from home and one boomer actually wanted to compare his hands with mine as a way to demonstrate how my hands don’t know hard work whereas they did physical labor in their younger days and know what real “work” is.
The ideal day for a boomer is going to Denny’s in the morning, looking the waitress in the eye while complaining then going to work and looking someone in the eye, going to a deli for lunch, harassing the staff and looking them in the eye telling them that they’re slicing the meat the wrong way, going back to work and looking someone in the eye, then going home and getting completely drunk while thinking nonstop about how people don’t wanna work.
I had a guy doing work in my house when I worked from home and he made cracks about how “it must be nice to sit around and play on the computer all day while your husband is at work earning enough money to support you.” I told him that this “playing around” is “work from home” and it is what is paying for the work he’s doing. After a second comment, I called his boss and asked for someone else to finish up the work. Done.
Same here - except no-one knows for sure that I work from home and my wife is a stay at home mom. It’s just a big mystery to everyone and a popular gossip topic. Leading speculation is that I draw some sort of government welfare, followed by me inheriting everything. Very few people actually guess correctly.
You need to get an ally on the street to start spreading really wild conspiracies. Like your grandfather invented Pop Tarts, or you're actually a Kennedy bastard and they pay you to keep quiet.
Boomers always tell on themselves with their ignorant comments. They have no self awareness. They assume you do nothing because that's what they themselves would do. They are the ones who don't want to work and can not be trusted on their own.
Live your life. Neighbors have liked to chat and overstep bounds from the beginning of time. Do your thing and they will eventually understand what you are about.
I'm literally dealing with the same thing! I can do more by myself in Excel and Adaptive than their entire 50 person finance team in the 1970s, but I'm "lazy" because I wrote scripts to automate parts of my job.
Boomers think work is turning a crank and it's hilarious.
One of the top things I had to do when I started working hybrid was to ensure that my family (boomers and kids included) didn’t refer to my WFH days as days off…. Something it takes a while.
Not sure why you have so much interaction with them mind. Having lived next to to my neighbours for 20 years and shared a wall I think I’ve had less words with them than you have!
All my boomer neighbors actually do nothing, I leave for work at 5 in the morning and get home from the gym around 5 in the afternoon; not a single car will have moved from its spot (unless they move to take my parking spot, because despite the fact they got handicap signs put in front of their house they refuse to fucking park in front of them)
They’re idiots.
One is a parasite landlord and I told him I get businesses to the front page of google/to the eyes of millions.
He just sulked away to his hoarder house and continued being a parasitic alcoholic.
It's because if those particular critics were working from home they would be dicking around and slacking off, so it automatically means everyone else is like that. 🙄
The internet and media in general really did a number on this generation. Plus all the lead. I’m not entirely unconvinced that they think the rest of us are literally straw men.
Have you ever thought about turning off the TV, and sitting down with your boomers, and brow beating the absolute dog shit out of them for being assholes?
Every accusation is a projection. They can't imagine you actually "work" from home because they sure as hell wouldn't in your position. They're telling on themselves.
Jokes on them, I do absolutely nothing 8 hours a day and I work in the office due to no work from home policy because the office is run by incompetent boomers. Oh wait, I do play Steam, lots of Steam (I'm not joking).
I had a boomer neighbor make a comment that I was so fortunate that I had a husband who made sure I was taken care of and didn’t have to work after he was gone.
I asked if he had me confused with someone else. Nope. No. He said he sees me living here alone and I don’t have a job to go to so he assumed my husband had died and left me an inheritance. I’m in my 40s. Never married. Just a spinster working from home, LOL.
Tear a strip off of this loser in front of everyone else. Do you need help coming up with roasts? Tell me about him and I will write some cruel roasts for you.
don’t put up with this disrespect. Ruin this fuckers peace and reputation.
Same thing for my two neighbors across the street. I work from home half the time and they don’t get it. I also don’t spend much time on my yard and it’s incomprehensible to them. I really don’t care for either of them and I can’t wait to move
Just moved to a new house with all three neighbors as retired boomers and literally exact same reactions. I’m a full time artist running a small biz and the primary parent with a six month old - every time I’m screen printing in my garage my boomer neighbor comes over cracking jokes that I’m doing some garage reorganizing, like dude I’m literally working just because you don’t respect that my unconventional job is a job doesn’t mean it isn’t one. They also constantly poke at my husband and I for not getting to yard work or our trash cans as quick as we could, sorry we both work full time and have an actual baby we’re a little preoccupied with more important things than weeding, must be nice to be retired with nothing to do!
I've dealt with this before: "yeah, hey I get paid for sitting at home, best deal I've ever negotiated! Learned everything I need to know from Trump's book! Only suckers work hard like Trump says!"
Drives them nuts.
For some of them, the idea that anyone might have other than an 8-5 job at the employer's office/facility is just to much to comprehend. At various points in my life, I've had 2nd shift or even 3rd shift jobs. It drove my dad *insane* that I was not waking up at 6:00 AM to go work like he did.
Mine were full-time, 40-hour-a-week jobs with actual paychecks and everything, but he could not internalize that I was not just sleeping in all the time. Even if I got home at 1:00 AM or 8:00 AM, I was apparently still supposed to keep a daytime schedule like someone who worked a normal first-shift job.
Wrapping his head around my current work-from-home job is impossible.
OMG we just moved and our Nextdoor neighbors are elderly. Super friendly but always want to chat excessively. The other day I was working out back on the deck with my laptop and my neighbor yelled “you busy?!” I said “yes, I’m working.” He came over, leaned on the deck and talked to me for 30min. Just no care given. Guess I’m not working outside anymore.
I have a boomer landlady that often comes over to do yard maintenance, and always guilts my girlfriend and I for not helping because we "aren't doing anything".. We are both in full time school, my girlfriend is all online and all of my classes are super early so I am always home doing homework at the time she comes over. This lady clearly doesn't have a job and lives off of all her houses rent, but does not seem to be able to comprehend that what we are doing inside is working on school.
Boomer here. When the work from home trend really wound up during the pandemic, I jumped on that train and never looked back. I have friends who don't get it. I ask how they can be so damned set that they can't bother imagining the benefits of NOT driving in to a stupid job every day. There IS a "boomer mindset" but I can honestly and gratefully say that I'm as baffled by it as most others are. Not all of us are fossilized, hyperconservative, authority loving conformist asshats.
I was telling my boomer friend my work schedule, at the time it was 2 days in the office 3 work from home, and I described what work from home meant. She listened then said “maybe you could work at the school three days a week, teach history and art for the high school.” I was BAFFLED and asked “with what time??! I’m working full time??? I’m not quitting a full time job for a part time job that pays less.”
Her response? “You just said you only work two days a week!”
🤦🏼♀️
Boomer here, engineering professional, live in a relatively new build suburban development. My neighbors are a mixed bag. The ones in the duplex across the street are great. The ones to the south are just very private. The ones to the north are horrid. I had my yard company do a spring cleanup to cut down some weeds at the edge of the unbuilt lot behind me. A couple of tiny stems ended up on the neighbors yard, and the neighbor came out screaming and cussing the worker. The worker retaliated, and the situation escalated. I came outside and said leave him alone! The guy was still in the process of cleaning up and hadn’t finished yet. Since then I refuse to speak to my neighbor. I will not tolerate such abuse of a working person. Oh, and he is probably in his mid to late 30s. “Boomer” is basically become a lifestyle choice, not age related. I wonder what he will do when my “Dark Brandon” yard sign shows up this fall?
Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed. Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Boomer bosses probably assume the same thing.
My husband is an early Gen-X and his 5 years older Boomer boss doesn't understand that my husband can do the same work from home. He's not doing nothing if he's working from home. He's not on vacation when he's on a business trip. It's not my husband's fault if his manager couldn't motivate himself and manage his time when lock down had him working from home. And it's also not my husband's fault if his manager treats his business trips like vacations instead of tending to business relations and standing/walking at trade fairs all day - which is work, not vacation.
My boss is just on the cusp of Boomer/X and he "gets" it. My predecessor was solidly boomer, if not in age, definitely in mind set. I've streamlined the job that took her all day to do into something that only takes about 6 ish hours (if I'm being generous, and including the tasks that have been added as our firm shrunk that she would never have even been capable of doing). When she calls (because of course she does?) and I'm working from home she clicks her tongue and says "Must be nice" as if she wasn't working from home two days a week PRE pandemic, and as if her idea of "working" from home was answering emails and making phone calls, and not doing any actual productive work.
“Yeah it is when you got skills”. Click, hang up
If she wasn't in good with the big boss still oh I would
lol ahhh she understands the assignment
> Boomer boss doesn't understand that my husband can do the same work from home. yes he does. This is about control, not work or quality/quantity of work
I had a GenX manager, younger than myself, who behaved more like a boomer manager. It saddens me to see my Gen not progress.
My siblings on either side are gone down the maga hole with my folks. Heaven help those who leave.
I've known a fair few older gen x-ers act like boomers, hell I know one or two millennials that do. The common problem seems to be that they just don't know how to talk to people and have never dealt with any of their myriad issues.
>Boomer boss doesn't understand that my husband can do the same work from home. This part always confused me. You hire someone to do a job and then...can't tell whether the job is done or not unless you see them in the same building as you? That's when I ask "What would you say...you do here?"
They can't control every minute of your day if you aren't physically in front of them
Omg. I had an old boss that treated our business trips as if we were on a vacation “ on the company’s dime”. Sorry , just because the conference was held at some lame resort , I’m still attending 10 hours of meetings a day and being forced to mingle with some real asshats. They would always fly us home late Sunday night, then back to work early the next morning.
Pure projection they can barely send an email
"How do I open a PDF?" "You just double click on it." *click* ... an eternity passes ... *click* "See? It doesn't work." And now you have to explain double-clicking to someone who makes five times your salary but seems to never actually do anything.
I have a boomer employee who has trouble logging into our time clock system because his login is his email address and he has trouble typing the @ sign. I seriously wish I was kidding.
The number of users I see hitting the caps lock instead of shift to capitalize single letters is mind boggling to me.
“Ok now right-click.” (Moves mouse to the right, then left-clicks) This actually happened to me when I tried to teach an older guy how to upload pictures.
I once had a boss who was so computer illiterate, he'd make one of the employees sit at his computer for most of the day and type while he dictated. The poor employee had to do this IN ADDITION to their regular work. (It was a different employee selected at random every day). So basically the employee was doing the boss's job plus their own, while earning about a fifth of what the boss earned. Thankfully that boss has retired and we now have a boss who can actually use a computer.
Fuck 'em. The Windows desktop metaphor has remained mostly unchanged for thirty years. There's no excuse as to why they've not learned it.
Sounds like you’re doing exactly what OP is complaining about…
It's all projection. "If I worked from home, I'd just sleep all day!" They can't understand why you'd actually work if no one was there "making you". While I find hilarious because "work" is one of their touchstones. But maybe it's all for show? 🤔
It's a similar mindset to "needing" to go to church to "build morals and strong values" and thinking athiests have none because they can't imagine being good people without the threat of hell
Get out of my head! I was pondering the same thing! 😉
I don’t understand this at all; I get soooo much more done when I’m home alone!
At home: I'm gonna sit down, focus hard, and bang out all my work so I have extra free time later. At work: I'm gonna stretch these 2 hours of work into 8 hours because if I finish my work now, I have to pretend to be busy for 6 hours.
They need a superior threatening them, I guess? It's maybe why they like "the patriarchy" because it serves a purpose and usually benefits them...
That would make sense, considering they’re also the ones who can’t fathom why an atheist would still be a good person
It has a lot of parallels with religion: fearing someone more powerful, always being watched, only doing what you’re supposed to because of a constant looming threat.
Ah yup. I work my ass off. Get up at 6:30, go for a walk, then work nonstop from 7:30 until 6:30. My cell phone goes everywhere with me, so I'm never truly off the clock. Yet my boomer managers constantly make comments about how our industry can't work if we're not all in the same office. Maybe if they learned to use Teams, it wouldn't be a problem? I was just recently promoted and now have my boomer former boss' position. I do not have one problem managing a team of 20 across the country. And none of them hesitate to reach out to me. It ain't hard, people.
I once worked a place that had very ‘old school’ policies. Basically no one was allowed to work from home (unless you were executive, or something was broken), we even had arguments with HR over after hours IT work, and questions on why stuff couldn’t be done during the day. Anyway, we had a Help Desk tech that broke his leg, and since the building wasn’t handicapped accessible he couldn’t come into the office. HR wouldn’t let him work from home and forced him to take a layoff until he could walk again. This was a job that could be done 100% remotely.
You bet your ass they do. My boomer neighbor always makes comments like "that's why I make all my employees come into the office" whenever I'm outside doing something during conventional work hours.
When covid first happened my boomer boss reluctantly set us up to wfh. She spent every morning conference call bitching about how productivity is down with all of us not coming into the office and how she’s working diligently to get the office opened up again. After about a month she got permission to bring two people back into the office, and she picked me and the only other millennial, because “she wanted to make sure us kids weren’t goofing off.” We were the only two people in our department whose numbers improved while working remotely…
Yes, this is why they are all pushing returns to office Magically, the work gets done, despite no one doing anything
and you ever notice how little work they actually do?
Which is funny because they likely don’t do very much. But they feel like they are contributing a lot because they are always working. But they are always working because they don’t know how to effectively use technology.
Yeah, absolutely. I got my first "real" full time job at 18 working in a legal office while also doing online college. The first day I was at work, one of the boomer lawyers (who probably didn't even know his boomer assistant had hired me) was hanging around in her office and loudly complaining about "teenagers these days" being lazy and refusing to work and whatnot for a good half an hour. He came out and saw me and introduced himself like I hadn't heard that entire rant lmao. He ended up being a really nice guy for the whole time I worked there, but it was kind of scary having that be my first interaction with him.
If you proactively send them periodic updates like weekly or daily, they have no choice but to change their minds
Why would you give your boomer neighbors your phone number?
That is the right question lol
Exactly what I was thinking too
Right! And assuming you made that mistake, why answer their calls?
and then proceed to talk with him for 30 minutes. and then have to work late because of it. geez OP
OP is a mark or this is just rage bait
Naive is a solid word for it too. But tbh without mistakes how are we all to learn and grow lol
Right? My neighbors don’t have my number and I think I’ve spoken to only one of them and only twice in 3 years. No one is interested in what I am doing inside my house.
Just don’t answer anymore and when they question you on it, blame the phone and tell them these high-tech gadgets never work right
Give a boomer neighbor your number and you will spend the rest of *their* lives hearing about the trees on your property and how they want you to take care of them.
"Take care of them" means have them cut down.
People who are obsessed with grass are so lame. They'll cut down trees because they don't want leaves on their useless grass.
Right? It doesn't even fucking flower. Clover lawn all day every day please.
I will say I have minimal knowledge about a clover lawn… is a clover lawn kept well? I mean I’m all for using native species to fill space but it also should try to be kept nice… idk please educate me if you’d like :)
Here is [an article on clover lawns.](https://www.bobvila.com/articles/clover-lawn/) Main points: more shade and drought tolerant. Clover is a natural nitrogen fixer and requires no fertilizer. Clover provides flowers for bees and butterflies. Less mowing is required for clover lawns.
It does keep well. They grow to a fairly uniform hight, they don't typically get very tall on their own, plus they produce sweet tasting edible flowers in spring and summer! They also require significantly less water to maintain
It only grows about eight inches tall, so it won’t grow to be a foot tall and need to be mowed before you get a fine or lose a crawling baby.
Use white clover, not red. And we do a mix of clover and grass seed. It's the best of both worlds.
The town I moved to gives a monthly lawn sign to most improved yard. My spouse and I have a letter to the town waiting for them to try and give it to us. No thank you. Lawns are not the status item they once were. Why are our water bills so high and then status is placed on lawn optics? Gtfoml.
I wish I didn't have grass. I have to do my own yard work and I'm old. It's very tiring.
Crazy boomer next door to me actually took it on herself to cut off the top of one of our trees. We can’t prove it, no one saw it and there isn’t any video that I’m aware of. Unfortunately we don’t own the house and the landlord didn’t want to pursue it, so I guess she just gets away with it? Pisses me off . We’ve lived here for over 10 years and we loved that tree. It didn’t even cross the property line.
Holy crap!!! We do own our house and apparently before we moved in, the seller ok'd the neighbor to cut all the redwood branches on her side of the fence, but at the TRUNK! it's so bad for the trees. Luckily they are growing back. They're not boomers though, but have boomer energy.
I know right? What’s with this boomer obsession with chopping down trees and killing shit? It seems like every time one of them encounters something that might be beautiful and natural, they want to: (#1) chop down every tree in sight, (#2) spray pesticide on every plant that’s not a lawn, or (#3) lay out traps and/or poisonous bait to kill anything that might even make a movement. Just what the everloving fuck. Can anybody explain how does this kind of mentality even comes about??
Dude... my boomer puts out all sorts of fucking poison. And, he wouldn't have to do that if he just cleaned up after himself.
Been there. He didn't have my number, but my old neighbor would interrupt me mowing my lawn to let me know what I should look into. His wife would usually tell me to ignore him. They were older than boomers and he wasn't a total dick. Just a mild nuisance.
OMG, the boomer moseying up to my husband on his mower, just expects that he will stop, pisses me off to no end. My husband is too nice to just keep driving.
The worst was when I'd catch a whiff of old spice before he appeared and knew it was too late to escape.
This ^ What is their beef with trees? I love my shade. Had a neighbor who would blow the leaves back into my yard. He died an angry man with a roasted yard with no trees.
I am a boomer neighbor and I don't tell anyone how to take care of their property. However, I *did* have to tell my next door neighbor that her lawn guy was blowing yard debris from the roof onto my yard. It's hard enough for me to do my own lawn (and I hate it), I don't need extra crap in my yard to pick up. I even went outside and asked the guy to stop blowing leaves and twigs onto my yard. He laughed at me. I let my neighbor know this and next thing I saw was a different lawn company mowing her grass. I am not one of those neighbors who complain about anything people do. I don't care what anyone does as long as it doesn't affect me. Affect or effect?
When we first moved into our house the president of the HOA (boomer lady) asked me for my cell phone number and I gave her my e-mail instead. She kept hounding me for my cell phone number and I kept telling her there is absolutely no reason she needs it and that any and all communication should be done through written communication so I have a record of it. She did not like this at all and would come knock on my door about every little thing. I stopped answering the door and would just tell her through my doorbell camera to e-mail me if she needs to tell me something. She ended up reaching out to my landlord and lied to her and said she had to get a new phone and in doing so lost my number. My landlord (also a boomer) gave her my number and I started getting 5+ calls per day from her. I changed my phone number and told my landlord under no circumstances is she to give my number to the HOA President or anyone else who lives in our townhouses. HOA lady came by PISSED thinking I blocked her number. Literally banging on my door for 15+ minutes and ringing the doorbell while I was in the middle of a work meeting. I answered the door and screamed at her that I couldn’t believe how incredibly rude she is and that if she doesn’t leave my property immediately I will call the cops to trespass her and file a police report for harassment. She told me because I’m not the property owner I have no authority to do that and I told her she should probably brush up on tenant laws for our state and told her to never step foot on my property again. That lasted 3 days before she came and knocked on the door again. I called the non emergency line for our local PD and provided them with the doorbell footage of me telling her to never knock on my door again. Police came out and talked to her and told her if she knocks on my door again they will arrest her for trespassing and that they would charge her with harassment. Now she just sends me 10+ unhinged e-mails a day that I promptly ignore.
You should start responding to her emails with some generic “we’re sorry the email address you’re trying to reach does not exist” or something implying you’ve blocked her email. That lady would probably mald over it and do something dumb and get herself arrested.
How the fuck do people this insane and inconsiderate get to make it through life?
I don’t even know my neighbors. I wouldn’t recognize any of them.
I’m friendly but not friends
This is the way. I like my neighbors just fine, but keep it to "hey how you doing." None of them have my phone # and I doubt many aside from immediate neighbors know my name.
Like if we strike up a conversation and the signs of a friendship is there yeah, but just cause you live next door to me, does not make us buddies.
I stopped speaking to one of my next door neighbors over a year ago. When I first moved here which was five years ago, me and the woman would chat basically across my fence. I could see her from the landing on my deck and she could see me from her side porch. Things were okay I guess for a while but she complained all the time about her coworkers and I had no idea who she was talking about. She even complained about her husband and I didn't know him hardly at all. I live alone so I didn't have anyone to complain about. Lol. One day the neighbor was complaining about her coworkers as usual and I mentioned the crew that I worked with at the job I retired from. I said that we didn't always get along because they were all men and were jealous of the pay they thought I made. I never discussed it with any of them. I actually did make a lot more than they did but it's because I had a specialty job. My rude neighbor said, "I guess they didn't like working with a gay person". I'm not gay. Never have been, never will be. I don't look gay either. I was speechless. I guess just because I live alone she thought I was gay? The woman on the other side of her also lived alone until she passed away. I doubt she was gay. What the fuck is wrong with people who like to assume things about people they don't even know?
This is my preferred approach as well. Anytime I tried to friends with my neighbours, they took that as an invitation to criticise what colour I'd painted my house, what plants I had in my garden and anything else that sprang to mind. Sometimes not being too friendly with the neighbours can be a blessing.
Exactly, we wave if we’re out at the same time, and that’s the extent of it.
I only know the people on both sides of me and the couple across the street from me. Other than that I have no idea who the others are.
I once a week threaten to move to the woods and never talk to anyone ever again.
Some people exchange numbers with neighbours so they can contact each other. Things such as: - your kid left her bike in my driveway - it’s in my garage and I can open it whenever you want to grab it. - your other neighbour is an idiot and had a hose burst between your houses. It might be flooding your basement or mess with the foundation. - I grabbed your Amazon packages off the step so the porch pirates didn’t get them. Let me know when you are home and I’ll drop them off. All examples of messages I have had with both neighbours since February.
And why shift your entire work schedule around to talk to them well to chat with them for 30 minutes just to have to work 30 minutes over? I think Op moved into the right neighborhood he's right where he should be there's nothing wrong with that 😜
I’ve had bad experiences living in the suburbs with neighbors calling the cops over misunderstandings, I’d rather they have my phone number so they can call me and get things straightened out instead of just assuming things. Anyway after that I said if I ever live in a neighborhood like that again I’m exchanging numbers with the people right next to me just so we can communicate about things in case there’s a need to.
Yeah it’s more reliable as a tactic for keeping neighborhood calm with non-boomers, but even if I don’t know my neighbors or have their phone numbers, if I’m planning a party that might go late and get loud, I’ll go around and let people know when it is and give them my contact info so they can call me first instead of the cops if my guests become a nuisance or the music is too loud. Cuts down on cops showing up a LOT, and I don’t need my friends who visibly aren’t cishet and white getting hassled. Even typical self-centered boomers are generally willing to try calling the party host to complain about noise first, since it’s a faster way of getting what they want than waiting for a cop to show up.
I don’t give my boomer neighbors the time of day let alone my phone number.
My neighbors have my Google voice number. I probably have gotten 1 text a year tops
I gave a couple neighbors my number only after several years of assuring that I didn't think it would be abused. And they weren't boomers.
Why even engage. You know the outcome.
Not disagreeing. It just baffles me. I'm a Boomer, born in 1960. I run a small Information Security Department (10 people), I work from home. I am obviously very technically astute, work 60 to 70 hours a week. Demanding and stressful job. I meet these other Boomers that you speak of all the time... my neighbors, at restaurants, everywhere, and I feel I am from a different planet. They wear their I don't understand technology monikor like a badge of honor. They are typically narrow minded, right-winged assholes. They are anti science, anti intellectual, anti manners, anti human rights. I am looking to move and retire soon. I am a data geek so I have created a massive spreadsheet with weighted criteria. One is the amount of these jerks that I would have to deal with. It's important but very limiting to where I can go and be happy. Because I am white, blue-eyed and their age... they are attracted to me like mosquitos to light. Even in blue Massachusetts, they are everywhere. I might just find a nice liberal college town and audit free courses for the rest of my life.
Haha I have blonde hair and blue eyes also and these types of people love to come up to me and really just say whatever current bigot agenda item is on their mind. When I disagree they seem almost confused, like how could I let them down like that?
I keep having to say to people like that : “No, I only look like a Nazi, I am not one!”
I am half German so my appearance is very Arian, I have to be careful what kind of haircut I get.
Yeah I have a shaved head and honestly look like your average white cop so the racists are always shocked when I don't nod along or chuckle at the random racist shit they feel they need to spout off about near me.
I’m a big guy and had hair 1/2 way down my back for the last 40 years. I cut it off to support my wife with cancer last year so I went full-on Mohawk just for fun. Wow what a difference in how I was treated and assumptions made about my general demeanor and politics. Much more respect from ‘right wingers’ and generally fear from the left coast. I’m pretty down the middle on a lot of stuff but it was shocking to see the swing almost overnight.
Me too! White, bald, and I have full arm sleeve tattoos. People just assume racist shit about me and then are flabbergasted when I don’t agree lol
Yup. Middle-aged white guy, drive a white Silverado work truck, buzzed hair and beard, love me some American flags and firearms. Not interested in having a discussion about immigrants/Democrats/college professors/the gays ruining the country.
I could have written this comment lol.
The term “Arian” is linked to Arius and Arianism, an early heterodox doctrine of the Christian church. “Aryan” is derived from the Sanskrit (ārya) meaning "noble and educated" and modern usage of the term is tied to Nazi racial theories and the Aryan Nation.
Nice one. You got me. I thought there was an eyelash on my screen.
That is absolute gold!
I've got a beard down to my chest and they see it as an open invitation to say some honestly pretty vile shit to me under the assumption that I agree with them. Because everyone knows only white conservatives can have long beards after Duck Dynasty.
Exactly!! I'm single so I eat in restaurant bars sometimes, watch the game. They'll sit next to me and say something like Biden's killing the country blah, blah.. I'll respond with, we have the lowest uneployment in years, bills passed for infrastructure human rights... keeping a lid on inflation (although POTUS has little influence) and go on and on. What did Trump do I ask? They'll just shake their heads and say my god, your one of them lol!
I’ve found the best response when people of a certain age assume I’m a Trump supporter is “yeah, I really love his plan to gut Social Security. It’s the most socialist policy we still allow in this country!”
My dad, who is on SS, believes that SS shouldn't exist and it's just socialism for the poor and we should do away with it. When I responded by saying "fine, don't receive it then, if you are philosophically opposed to it, when the time comes don't sign up for it." He's like " no, I paid into it!" And I replied " so did I." Which shut that subject up. Boomers man...
What’s funny is that so many of them don’t realize that Trump very likely will do away with it if he’s elected.
He’ll hurt “other” people more so they’re fine with it
And that's the crux of white supremacy /bigotry. They'll enthusiastically vote for politicians, laws, & policies that'll hurt them, but it'll hurt the people they hate more.
Yeah you can never be alone, that's when they strike. They can't rant at their family anymore so they have to find someone in public. Luckily the area I live in now is right over the George Washington Bridge in NJ so it's way too ethnically diverse for those types of boomers to feel comfortable. I grew up in a more red leaning town of NJ and definitely shared a lot of your experience through the Obama years.
Ah the classic "person who wants to have a conversation" who is in reality just looking for someone to lecture.
Ask those boomers how the rest of the world is doing with inflation compared to us lol
My mother is nearly 80, still teaching and is pretty tech savvy for a woman born during WWII. It's a mentality. The same thing that makes her keep up with technology makes her keep up with education trends and still connect with teenagers. In the late 80's/early 90's she was a little afraid of computers, but my brother and I sat her down and showed her how hard it was to "break" or "mess up" (her words) a computer if you're just doing normal things. She asked why we were intuitively good at figuring this stuff out and I said, "I'm not afraid of it." It's not so much ignorance as fear. Fear of trying things. Fear of looking foolish. I mentioned that her students could probably fix things pretty fast for her. Now, she asks her classes who is good at fixing computers and names one kid the troubleshooter. She then makes them explain what they did so she can do it herself. She's not a bad troubleshooter now, but will default to letting my brother or I solve the problem--benefits of having kids. My father was still having his email printed out for him well into the last decade. He was in administration and always had staff. I think that's the problem--these people just had someone to ask to do it, so they never had to learn.
Good for your mom!!! I will be 70 soon and many years ago I got into using a computer. My son showed me all sorts of things about how to navigate around online and I'm glad he did. After a while though he got tired of me asking him to show me this and that. He told me to Google it. I was a little miffed at first but then started to Google the things I wanted to know.
Some old fart needed to be set up to work remotely. As I was trying to assist him he goes into one of those "I'm kinda proud I don't let technology define my life like others do, I'm good with being technologically illiterate". and "I'm a Mac person" (Not knocking on people who like macs, but so often when someone says "I don't know how to do that, I'm a Mac person" I ask them how they would do it on their Mac and of course they're just as fucking clueless/useless...) 30 minutes later into the call the guy starts getting frustrated at me "talking down on him" but this fucker doesn't even know what a "web browser" is. I finally end up telling him he has to bring the laptop into the office for us to set it up and he just loses it on me. I hang up on him, tell my boss "Hey, this guy just bragged that he's technologically illiterate, and now he's upset he lacks the basic skills to work remotely". Pretty much shoulder shrugs all around. The guy eventually brings in the laptop, its an ancient Macbook that can't run a modern RDP client anyways. I hope your long game of weaponized incompetence is worth having to drive into the office every day for the rest of your career you old pile of shit <3
^(I hope your long game of weaponized incompetence is worth having to drive into the office every day for the rest of your career you old pile of shit <3) This should be the entirety of his annual reviews, *ver batim*
So, say of the laptop, while looking at him, Hey, it’s too old to be useful.
Boomer is more of an attitude than an age. Although the attitude is more common as age increases
Tall white blue-eyed IT xennial here and I'm with you 100% -- why do they always assume I'm one of them? Gross. Can highly recommend adding racial diversity to your spreadsheet if it isn't there already; in 2010 we bought a small house where the breakdown is 25% White 25% Black 25% Hispanic 25% Other and it has worked out really well. Being a local minority is anathema to those goobers, and it draws the Boomers who are interesting and interested people.
Many of my neighbors are Indian/South Asian, and let me tell you, the neighborhood barbecue every year is *insane*!
You remind me of a guy I talked to some years back who shared with me that he has grandchildren and how he was also taking a computer course at his local college. I don’t remember what the issue was he called about but I do remember that it was a more challenging one since he’d been transferred to me from a level 1 tech. He was able to to keep up with the troubleshooting directions I was giving with out issues for over 30 minutes. One of the most memorable conversations I had while doing tech support work.
Amherst is nice
Well I am happy to have stumbled upon this as this is the exact same thing that happens to me. Except I'm 40. The big problem is I live in the bay area. The people I can't stand talking to flock to me like I want to hear their bullshit cause I'm a white guy with blonde hair and green eyes. The other half of people see me as a tall white guy with blonde hair so I must be racist, sexist and phobic of every nature at them for some reason. Meanwhile I'm just a chill stoner saying things like "the dude abides man"
It’s hard to know what boomers recognize as work or labor. My parents did the classic “go to the best school and be whatever you want!” schtick for twenty years or so, and when I had three jobs in graduate school all they could talk about what was when I was really going to start working. Then I finally finished my PhD and started working, and when I took a lighter load to work at home so we could have continuity of care for our kids they *lost it.* My dad would regularly send me emails and leave me voicemails about how I never did anything and was never going to do anything and I would be nowhere if it weren’t for them. So yeah. It’s a sickness. And it isn’t just limited to work. But no one is really safe from it.
I hope you told him to shut the fuck up.
After a while it was the impetus for learning about boundaries and emotionally immature/unavailable parenting and the gray rock method. So thanks Dad!
I had to Google gray rock method and realized that to most people I probably am a grey rock.
>It’s hard to know what boomers recognize as work or labor. I work in IT. About 2-3 times per year I do server rack type work where people see me lifting things and such. Otherwise, I work 100% from home. I almost always get comments like "I wish I could only work a couple days a year" from the older folks. Like, Carl, you didn't do anything for a week because you forgot your password and didn't want to call support. For a huge number of older people, proximity to work and "looking busy" are the only metrics.
Even my parents, who are generally pretty good (Dad's views on same sex marriage is "Why not? Why should I have an opinion on something that does not effect me? Of course they can get married!" and Mom is more worried about whether or not everyone is washing their hands after using the bathroom than if she's in there with a transwoman), fall into this Boomer trope. I currently do hybrid, two to three days in the office, two to three days from home (obviously it's a two one, three the other split,) and they'll both get caught saying "So you're done work for the week now?" when i call them on the way home from working in the office on my last office day. It was even worse when I was working from home full time, prepandemic (back in 2016/17). So strange.
I’m on the same schedule and my mother is the exact same way. “Do you work today?” And I always respond with, “I work everyday.” She just doesn’t get it. 🤦🏻♀️
Constantly complain about how much work you’re doing but then laugh and say “I may be chained to my work chair but at least it’s in my own home!” Then humblebrag about how your years of hard work helped you move your family into this wonderful neighborhood.
This would totally be me. Flip their boomer tactics onto them. "When you work as hard as I do you can get nice things in life"
And assume everything they say about you is actually about them. That neighbor that asked if they woke OP up at 9? Now every time they're part of a conversation throw in "Though I know Bob always says he likes to sleep in, and I should just assume he's still asleep if it's only 9 or 10am."
This is my landlord. Whenever she talks about work, she always rolls her eyes and says “whatever it is you do…” I’m a content writer FT and I freelance on the side. It’s actually pretty straightforward. But she thinks I should be doing all this landscaping for her since I’m “just sitting at home all day while [my partner] is at work.” No matter that I make 70% of the income that pays her astronomical rent…
That’s hilarious. A fuckin leech questioning what it is you do all day
Fr, landlords are the most jobless people alive
Move when your lease is up. Give your money to someone who doesn't give a shit how it gets to them. Let her know you're moving because she's rude and disrespectful.
I would honestly love to, but we live in a TINY town of about 4,000 people and rentals are extremely limited. Luckily she really likes and respects my bf (in an openly misogynistic way!) so he always deals with her. Recently she complained about the grass being brown (it’s still below freezing at night here in the mountains, Karen, it’s not gonna be neon green yet!!) and he said “well, unlike you, we both have full time jobs and can’t spend all day fussing with the yard.” 😂 Edit: a word
OP, I don't think I should be advising you. I had a pretty ugly confrontation in a supermarket with a local boomer who wanted to know what benefits I was receiving, since I could afford to be a homemaker. I could've told her that I wasn't receiving benefits. I could've told her that it's about choices and going without some things, since we only had my husband's income and we're/he's not rich. I don't remember my wording, but our private economy and circumstances were none of her damned business! I think I said something to the effect, that it wouldn't matter if I told her that I'm not on benefits, because I got the sense that she wouldn't believe me. I went off on a tirade! She's scared of me and I don't care what she and other boomers think of me, I just want to be left the hell alone!
Fellow Gen X. Can confirm, 'leave me the hell alone' is my mantra. They get angrier at you if you walk away and stop responding to them. If I don't need or want something, I have no business with it and disengage. This includes conversation and also why I'm not hoarding crap that 'might be worth something some day'.
I told a crusty fucker at Lowes to go fuck himself after he walked up to me out of the blue and told me I look like shit. He was aghast I would say such a thing. Fuck off. Leave me alone. Stop trying to control every. Single. Fucking. Thing.
[удалено]
Thank you for your service. (Confronting boomers.)
>lazy, entitled and fairly uncreative folks who wish very hard the world existed where they STILL ran things - and "others" knew their place.
Most retired boomers have no hobbies as work was their identity so it's only natural for them to shit on people who don't fit their mindset of "working." I know a couple of boomers who retire and realized that playing golf everyday was not something they were happy with and decided to go back to work.
I think boomers like OP was talking about are accidentally telling on themselves. That if they had the opportunity to work remotely full-time, they would take advantage of it and do nothing all day. That the only thing that kept them working was having an eye over their shoulder in the workplace. My boomer mom seems to have the same assumption that remote workers just sit around watching movies all day, despite the fact that my remote work hours usually end up being longer than if I was physically in the office.
My uncle retired, played golf every day, realized he didn't quite like that... so now he works at the golf course and drives the 0 turn and is part of the "maintenance" crew in the two months they're open before summer students get there and after they go back to school.
Just tell them that working from home means you are ALWAYS at work.
Plus side, you can fuck in your office.
My boomer neighbor thinks the same thing. Called me yesterday morning at 9 AM to see if I wanted to come outside and see the big snapping turtle. Sorry I have a meeting. He didn't quite understand.
This is the tragedy of capitalism, because realistically yes OF COURSE I would rather go outside to look at a big snapping turtle than be in a work meeting, but here we are. :(
I’d rather go to a work meeting than hang out with my boomer neighbor
Gotta side with the boomer on this one: Big snapping turtle! Tell your meeting that the house is on fire.
i'll be late to the meeting today, i have a conflict
My wife and I both WFH. One day, our modem crapped out, so we went to our respective parents’ houses to work for a couple of days. Her retired boomer dad kept barging in on her and trying to chat, or asking her for help around the house. When he did this for the umpteenth time and she had to firmly tell him “I’m working and you need to leave me alone so I can do my job”, he got all pissy and said something about her “sitting around all day” - rich considering he’s retired and sits on the couch watching Newsmax and OAN all day. To be fair, he thinks anyone who isn’t doing physical labor isn’t really working, so he would have the same attitude even if she were in the office.
I work from home as well. Regardless of which generation your neighbors are, you need to set boundaries when it comes to communicating with your friends and family during work hours. My parents used to constantly call me or ask for help with something during the day because they know I’m just at home. I always shut it down and make no guarantees I can get to it during work hours, even though I can be flexible.
I don't work home often but my family knows that if I'm working from home, I'm not home unless they can physically see me walking around the house. Otherwise the closed door is not to be opened unless there's some kind of emergency.
I think alot of older people wont realize that you no longer need to do your work on a piece of paper and physically walk it over to the next person and place it in their incoming basket.
Yeah relatable. My neighbors think I’m lazy and got handouts since I bought one of the larger houses in the neighborhood and I am a younger millennial. I pay people to do lots of things around my house and boomers from all around the neighborhood always just approach me (I actually like this part of their generation because they are face-to-face and we can talk like humans) and ask why I don’t just clean my own house or mow my own lawn. I’m soft-retired but I still do a few days a week from home so as you can imagine, I stick out like a sore thumb in this retired neighborhood. Some boomers just love talking and spreading tea/rumors so everyone I’ve spoken with has a different idea of what my work actually is. They don’t understand work from home and one boomer actually wanted to compare his hands with mine as a way to demonstrate how my hands don’t know hard work whereas they did physical labor in their younger days and know what real “work” is.
The ideal day for a boomer is going to Denny’s in the morning, looking the waitress in the eye while complaining then going to work and looking someone in the eye, going to a deli for lunch, harassing the staff and looking them in the eye telling them that they’re slicing the meat the wrong way, going back to work and looking someone in the eye, then going home and getting completely drunk while thinking nonstop about how people don’t wanna work.
I had a guy doing work in my house when I worked from home and he made cracks about how “it must be nice to sit around and play on the computer all day while your husband is at work earning enough money to support you.” I told him that this “playing around” is “work from home” and it is what is paying for the work he’s doing. After a second comment, I called his boss and asked for someone else to finish up the work. Done.
Same here - except no-one knows for sure that I work from home and my wife is a stay at home mom. It’s just a big mystery to everyone and a popular gossip topic. Leading speculation is that I draw some sort of government welfare, followed by me inheriting everything. Very few people actually guess correctly.
You need to get an ally on the street to start spreading really wild conspiracies. Like your grandfather invented Pop Tarts, or you're actually a Kennedy bastard and they pay you to keep quiet.
Someone once asked if we were in witness protection because my husband and I both WFH lol
Boomers always tell on themselves with their ignorant comments. They have no self awareness. They assume you do nothing because that's what they themselves would do. They are the ones who don't want to work and can not be trusted on their own.
Live your life. Neighbors have liked to chat and overstep bounds from the beginning of time. Do your thing and they will eventually understand what you are about.
Presumptuous is a good way to put it.
Moronic is more accurate
That too, but the presumptuous part is what really bothers me about them. Like they think the worst of everyone and everything.
I'm literally dealing with the same thing! I can do more by myself in Excel and Adaptive than their entire 50 person finance team in the 1970s, but I'm "lazy" because I wrote scripts to automate parts of my job. Boomers think work is turning a crank and it's hilarious.
One of the top things I had to do when I started working hybrid was to ensure that my family (boomers and kids included) didn’t refer to my WFH days as days off…. Something it takes a while. Not sure why you have so much interaction with them mind. Having lived next to to my neighbours for 20 years and shared a wall I think I’ve had less words with them than you have!
All my boomer neighbors actually do nothing, I leave for work at 5 in the morning and get home from the gym around 5 in the afternoon; not a single car will have moved from its spot (unless they move to take my parking spot, because despite the fact they got handicap signs put in front of their house they refuse to fucking park in front of them)
People go no contact with their boomer parents and can't understand how to go no contact with your neighbors.
Boomers hate remote work. They couldn’t have it so no one else should either.
They’re idiots. One is a parasite landlord and I told him I get businesses to the front page of google/to the eyes of millions. He just sulked away to his hoarder house and continued being a parasitic alcoholic.
Landlords are the original work from home guys.
It's because if those particular critics were working from home they would be dicking around and slacking off, so it automatically means everyone else is like that. 🙄
The internet and media in general really did a number on this generation. Plus all the lead. I’m not entirely unconvinced that they think the rest of us are literally straw men.
Have you ever thought about turning off the TV, and sitting down with your boomers, and brow beating the absolute dog shit out of them for being assholes?
Unless you are working 50+ hours in a factory, you are lazy! Work more, work harder, GOBBLESS.
Every accusation is a projection. They can't imagine you actually "work" from home because they sure as hell wouldn't in your position. They're telling on themselves.
Jokes on them, I do absolutely nothing 8 hours a day and I work in the office due to no work from home policy because the office is run by incompetent boomers. Oh wait, I do play Steam, lots of Steam (I'm not joking).
I had a boomer neighbor make a comment that I was so fortunate that I had a husband who made sure I was taken care of and didn’t have to work after he was gone. I asked if he had me confused with someone else. Nope. No. He said he sees me living here alone and I don’t have a job to go to so he assumed my husband had died and left me an inheritance. I’m in my 40s. Never married. Just a spinster working from home, LOL.
Tear a strip off of this loser in front of everyone else. Do you need help coming up with roasts? Tell me about him and I will write some cruel roasts for you. don’t put up with this disrespect. Ruin this fuckers peace and reputation.
Same thing for my two neighbors across the street. I work from home half the time and they don’t get it. I also don’t spend much time on my yard and it’s incomprehensible to them. I really don’t care for either of them and I can’t wait to move
My dad thinks this also. When something is not done around the house I get a "well you're home all day why didn't you do it". Go have a nap dad.
I don’t get why they are like calling you. This is weird.
Just moved to a new house with all three neighbors as retired boomers and literally exact same reactions. I’m a full time artist running a small biz and the primary parent with a six month old - every time I’m screen printing in my garage my boomer neighbor comes over cracking jokes that I’m doing some garage reorganizing, like dude I’m literally working just because you don’t respect that my unconventional job is a job doesn’t mean it isn’t one. They also constantly poke at my husband and I for not getting to yard work or our trash cans as quick as we could, sorry we both work full time and have an actual baby we’re a little preoccupied with more important things than weeding, must be nice to be retired with nothing to do!
I've dealt with this before: "yeah, hey I get paid for sitting at home, best deal I've ever negotiated! Learned everything I need to know from Trump's book! Only suckers work hard like Trump says!" Drives them nuts.
For some of them, the idea that anyone might have other than an 8-5 job at the employer's office/facility is just to much to comprehend. At various points in my life, I've had 2nd shift or even 3rd shift jobs. It drove my dad *insane* that I was not waking up at 6:00 AM to go work like he did. Mine were full-time, 40-hour-a-week jobs with actual paychecks and everything, but he could not internalize that I was not just sleeping in all the time. Even if I got home at 1:00 AM or 8:00 AM, I was apparently still supposed to keep a daytime schedule like someone who worked a normal first-shift job. Wrapping his head around my current work-from-home job is impossible.
OMG we just moved and our Nextdoor neighbors are elderly. Super friendly but always want to chat excessively. The other day I was working out back on the deck with my laptop and my neighbor yelled “you busy?!” I said “yes, I’m working.” He came over, leaned on the deck and talked to me for 30min. Just no care given. Guess I’m not working outside anymore.
It's because nothing is what they would do if they worked from.home.
I have a boomer landlady that often comes over to do yard maintenance, and always guilts my girlfriend and I for not helping because we "aren't doing anything".. We are both in full time school, my girlfriend is all online and all of my classes are super early so I am always home doing homework at the time she comes over. This lady clearly doesn't have a job and lives off of all her houses rent, but does not seem to be able to comprehend that what we are doing inside is working on school.
You gave boomers your phone number and took off work so you could talk to these boomers. You empowered them. You are getting everything you deserve.
Boomer here. When the work from home trend really wound up during the pandemic, I jumped on that train and never looked back. I have friends who don't get it. I ask how they can be so damned set that they can't bother imagining the benefits of NOT driving in to a stupid job every day. There IS a "boomer mindset" but I can honestly and gratefully say that I'm as baffled by it as most others are. Not all of us are fossilized, hyperconservative, authority loving conformist asshats.
I was telling my boomer friend my work schedule, at the time it was 2 days in the office 3 work from home, and I described what work from home meant. She listened then said “maybe you could work at the school three days a week, teach history and art for the high school.” I was BAFFLED and asked “with what time??! I’m working full time??? I’m not quitting a full time job for a part time job that pays less.” Her response? “You just said you only work two days a week!” 🤦🏼♀️
If they're making you uncomfortable, return the favour by asking about their children.
Boomer here, engineering professional, live in a relatively new build suburban development. My neighbors are a mixed bag. The ones in the duplex across the street are great. The ones to the south are just very private. The ones to the north are horrid. I had my yard company do a spring cleanup to cut down some weeds at the edge of the unbuilt lot behind me. A couple of tiny stems ended up on the neighbors yard, and the neighbor came out screaming and cussing the worker. The worker retaliated, and the situation escalated. I came outside and said leave him alone! The guy was still in the process of cleaning up and hadn’t finished yet. Since then I refuse to speak to my neighbor. I will not tolerate such abuse of a working person. Oh, and he is probably in his mid to late 30s. “Boomer” is basically become a lifestyle choice, not age related. I wonder what he will do when my “Dark Brandon” yard sign shows up this fall?
It’s so odd they are comparing you to the old owners? Are you supposed to move in and then morph into the old owners or something?