Avocado toast & the downfall of the American dream

When I hear the Boomer Pledge of Allegiance, that swears loyalty to blaming Millennials sipping lattes, insisting that the reason my generation can’t afford homeownership is laziness - I can almost feel myself turning a Hulk shade of green that would beautifully compliment my avocado toast. Jobs of the past naturally took longer to accomplish, lacking technology. The ability to accomplish high quality work, and often quickly, is something that is a gift to the Millennial generation, while also being a curse. Because we CAN work faster and accomplish more, we are pushed to do so.

Having bloomed just in time to experience professional life in the wake of 2008, we were constantly told “People with Harvard degrees are working at McDonalds to make ends meet”.

Freshly out of our overpriced education, we were told how unnecessary and useless we were. We took jobs that didn’t pay, to procure the experience that was now required for an “entry level job” (entry level shouldn’t ever have a requirement for prior experience) while the threat of being replaced by someone experienced enough to be our Grandparent was a heavy reminder to do more.

Be grateful for this exploitation, this exploitation is your life.

We put our heads down and worked harder, absorbing the narrative we were the least hard working and most self entitled generation to have cast a glittery low rise shadow over history. We believed if we worked unpaid hours, we would see the kind of rewards our parents promised. The amount of hours worked on average by a Millennial is 50 hours a week, average weekly hours worked by their Boomer counterpart is 45 (Source: Statista). While 5 hours a week may not seem like a huge gap in hard work, it accumulates to just shy of an entire extra year of work. That’s certainly substantial, but these statistics also aren’t accounting for the amount of “side hustles” my generation is enduring to still find themselves deeply in debt each month.

You can’t sign in to your phone without seeing someone hustling. He’s talking about crypto, they’re singing on social media hoping to be “seen” by the right person, she’s selling weight loss promises to the bottom of your morning coffee cup. What they’re really doing is trying to keep their head above water. What this isn’t is me hating on anyone trying to provide for their family or build a life they’ve always wanted. That would be incredibly hypocritical of me. This is an honest declaration, in a battle worn scream, that I am fucking tired.

I started working when I was 14. I don’t mean babysitting. I mean working as a paid actress on weekends, before leaving to go to my second job serving (under the table), dropping out of high school to nanny during the weekday. In my household of 3 I was, at that time, the only person working. The crushing weight of a households survival on a 14 year old can only be explained as soul extinguishing. A disease of the spirit. It had a profound impact on who I was as a still solidifying ball of human clay. It imprinted into my DNA that survival meant never slowing down. I would spend my formative years making ends meet through any legal (or non) means I could. An often under discussed side of exploitation is youth in poverty. Who lack options to not be underpaid, and no one is asking how they have the amount of excessive experience we do by the time adulthood is reached. I continued this hustle or die marathon, a shark never stops moving life mantra. I kept pace through single motherhood, a lupus diagnosis, and often running my body to the brink of literal death. Because slowing down meant the end or survival. It’s 2022, I’m nearly 34 years old…and I’m fucking tired. But when anyone my age brings up the necessary discussions of struggle, despite sacrifice of youth and the American Dream to the alter of capitalism, our elders meet us with a confusing list of entitlements, but also all the industries we’ve “killed”. Which is it? Am I buying too much Starbucks to own a home or are we collectively killing the top sheet industry and are solely responsible for the demise of Planet Hollywood by not spending?

How is it that an entire generation that bought their kit houses from Sears & Roebuck catalogs for $11,000 can turn around and sell us those grossly under cared for abodes for $850,000 and demand to know where we have the audacity of entitlement to want to not be exploited? What do we want? To fucking rest! When do we want it? 3 years ago. 90% of nurses are planning to leave their industry in the next 12 months (Source: survey conducted by Hospital IQ), Teachers aren’t far behind. After the accelerated exploitation of “Essential Workers” during the Pandemic, they reached their threshold of abuse. Exposure, ever changing requirements, refusal to give hazard pay, but hanging well placed signs ”We LOVE OUR NURSES”. What Millennials are, collectively, is burnt out. Over exploited. Underpaid. While enduring still being told by what SHOULD BE our elders and wisdom teachers to give up the small things that have replaced the actual meals we can no longer afford. Giving up Starbucks and avocado toast won’t increase homeownership, Judy & John, because they aren’t our financial missteps, they’re the only meal we can afford today.