Are young people really ‘marshmellows' who refuse to put work first? Yes. And it's great

The Guardian

05-02-2025

Breaking news: oldies want to talk about work ethic. Again. Young people have been getting jobs and simply attending them during their contracted hours and, frankly, the oldies have had enough.
'Meeting targets' is out. 'Great customer service' is nothing. Even 'saving lives' can't make up for rudely clocking off when the day ends. The only way to be great at your job is to exist there for as many minutes as humanly possible.
The most recent complaint is from a hospital administrator, allegedly responding to a junior doctor's rostering issue, who's claimed the future will be a 'workforce of clinical marshmellows' [sic]. I'm keen to know what makes a marshmallow 'clinical', or why this person doesn't recognise marshmallows as one of confectionary's hardest and most delicious workers. But more importantly: it's just. so. boring. This claim is as tired as the people making it (because they never go home).
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I don't mean that it's wrong. It's not. In my experience, each generation is less inclined than the last to put work first. GREAT. They probably don't have their entire identity tied up in what they do. Maybe they don't have panic attacks about being productive. I've heard rumours some of them don't even have email on their phones.
The problem is what older generations mean.
One hundred years ago, when these people were themselves young and making their way in the world, work-life balance was different. If Facebook nostalgia is to be believed, they started out their working lives serving milkshakes and having mum cook them dinner every night, only to graduate to carrying a briefcase and having their wife cook dinner every night. 'Work' meant dictating a single letter to a secretary, and 'life' meant watching Australia's Funniest Home Videos.
Even for me, a millennial – I am 42 years old – the 'life' part of work-life balance began with smoking bongs in the park and setting pass-agg statuses on MSN Messenger. When I got home from work in 2000, I ate Shapes and played The Sims for six hours.
But this is late-stage capitalism. Young people's bones have been ground to make Boomers' bread and 'work-life balance' is a grossly inadequate term to describe what they're actually doing. They're not clocking out – on time, not even early – to go to a warehouse party. No one pays them enough to keep up with cocaine prices anyway.
The 'life' part of 'work-life balance' is unrecognisable. 'Life' for someone in their 20s is actually just several other kinds of work peppered with watching MAFS on the toilet.
Today's young person heads off to work knowing they can't afford a home. Then they return to their eight-person share house where 'life' looks something like this: worry about their friends; panic about climate inaction; doomscroll; attend a ceasefire rally; wonder which country will nuke first; learn about tariffs; watch a TikTok about ADHD symptoms; decide whether to buy food or electricity; help a friend in crisis; breathe in black mould; get on a psychologist's waitlist; monetise a hobby; feel guilty about not doing enough to fix everything.
Without intending it, that hospital administrator is right on the money. A future of 'clinical marshmellows' [sic again] is a very realistic outcome of unprecedented existential threat. On the other hand, if the email does somehow motivate staff to work more, they could actually become stupider. It's a both-ways bet. Classic Gen X.
Of course, we know this isn't new. Generations have been fighting about who has it worse since before we invented generations. There's something comforting about it. Younger generations aren't lazy, they're just newer.
Today I read a 1920s agony aunt column complaining of 'lazy young people'. I read a 1954 letter to the editor, in which Julia calls herself 'one of those lazy young people you read so much about today.' And in another 40 years, if we still have above-water land masses, someone named Jayden will be shaking his sleeve tattoo at Gen Delta.
Until the economy improves enough to let anyone retire, we will be locked in a timeless stalemate – old people banging away on their smartphones, and young people being told how easy they have it.