On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about Generation Z workers.

The article reports:

Despite many of them having only just entered the workforce, Generation Z — those born from 1997 onwards — is already getting a bad rap at the office.

According to a recent survey of 1,300 managers, three out of four agree that Gen Z is harder to work with than other generations — so much so that 65% of employers said they have to fire them more often.

One in eight have let go of a Gen Zer less than one week after their start date, the study found.

The results ring true with managers across the US and in various industries, who report that young hires have been difficult to deal with, particularly when it comes to language.

“I feel kind of hamstrung on what I can and can’t say,” Peter, a New Jersey-based manager in the hospitality industry, told The Post.

…“I do think the pandemic had a big role to play in that because for all of them, this was their first job out of college and their last years were spent remote,” McDonnell, 28, told The Post.

Starting their careers during a pandemic may have stunted Gen Z’s office etiquette.

In fact, 36% of survey respondents reported poor communication skills among their young hires.

The article concludes:

Employers are also finding that Gen Z hires tend to be more easily offended on the political front.

In fact, a 2022 Deloitte survey found that, despite having only just entered the workforce, 37% of Gen Zers say they’ve already rejected a job or assignment based on their personal ethics.

“Our Gen Z employees dominated our culture with social justice fundamentalism,” Matt, the leader of a nonprofit in Colorado who withheld his last name, told The Post.

“What is initiated by the 25-year-old comms manager is then adopted by previously rational Harvard and Yale types who begin leveling accusations of ‘white supremacist colonialism.’”

Because Gen Zers are bringing their politics into the workplace, more and more employers report that they’re walking on eggshells — and even fearful of their own subordinates.

“I’m a normal human being and certainly not an angry racist or homophobe or anything like that, but I don’t know where the line is,” Peter said, “and it feels like with the younger generation, the line keeps getting redrawn every day.”

What did we expect? We taught them to be offended by everything. We took the guard rails off of what was right and wrong–it was all according to how you felt. We created a generation that can bully electronically and we taught them to try to compromise with a bully rather than to fight back. We are simply reaping what we have sown. How do we fix this? We introduce the concept of black and white and remove some (not all) of the gray. We give them rules and structure and tell them that being offended is not a card you can play to get your own way. We strongly encourage them to grow up!