《10到25岁》第三章(1)：代际冲突

A few years after Whole Foods CEO and founder John Mackey sold his company to Amazon for $13.7 billion, he gave a series of interviews in what amounted to a grievance-airing tour. He reserved his harshest and most unfiltered criticism for the next generation. These were the sixteen-to-twenty-five-year-olds who worked in the checkout lines and the stockrooms, and whose labor had built Mackey’s fortune. Whole Foods had a terrible time hiring and retaining them. And that baffled Mackey. To his mind, he offered a good wage and purposeful work. After all, Whole Foods’s philosophy was aligned with many of the values of the next generation, such as environmental sustainability and ethical sourcing of products. Mackey even developed a term—consctous capitalism—that would seem to appeal to the Gen Z workforce. Even so, “we’re really straining to get people hired,” Mackey lamented. “I don’t understand the younger generation. They don’t seem to want to work.”

在全食超市首席执行官兼创始人约翰·麦基以137亿美元将公司卖给亚马逊几年后，他接受了一系列采访，相当于一次倾诉不满的巡回演讲。他对下一代人进行了最严厉和最直接的批评。这些16到25岁的年轻人在收银台和仓库工作，而正是他们的劳动为麦基积累了财富。全食超市在招聘和留住这些年轻人方面遇到了极大的困难。这让麦基感到困惑。在他看来，他提供了不错的工资和有意义的工作。毕竟，全食超市的哲学与下一代人的许多价值观是一致的，比如环境可持续性和采购来源的道德标准。麦基甚至创造了一个术语——“意识资本主义”，这似乎应该吸引Z世代的员工。即便如此，麦基还是感叹道：“我们真的很难招到人。我不理解年轻一代，他们似乎不想工作。”

After interviews with Whole Foods employees, I’ve learned that Mackey got one thing right: he doesn’t understand young people.

在对全食超市员工的采访后，我发现麦基有一点说对了：他确实不理解年轻人。

A simple comparison of U.S. supermarkets on the job-review site Indeed.com reveals that Whole Foods is one of the lowest-rated employers in its category. Approximately 24 percent of retail employees give it the lowest ratings (a one or two out of five). Compared to several competitors, Whole Foods received twice as many negative ratings. One former retail employee’s review said, “No respect for any employees, literally could not care if you lived or died.” What’s happening?

在Indeed.com这个职位评价网站上对美国超市进行简单比较就会发现，全食超市在其类别中是评价最低的雇主之一。大约24%的零售员工给它打了最低分（一星或两星，满分五星）。与几家竞争对手相比，全食超市收到的负面评价是它们的两倍。一位前零售员工的评价说：“对任何员工都没有尊重，简直不在乎你是死是活。”这是怎么回事？

According to Mackey’s interview for ReasonTV, when he and others from the baby boom generation started out in the workforce, people expected to dislike their jobs for at least the first ten years. Pay was compensation for suffering. Mackey didn’t necessarily think people should expect to feel a sense of meaning or purpose or fulfillment at work. That’s what you spent your money on—or what you got in your thirties, if all went well. The relationship between managers and young employees was transactional. Thus, in the Mackey worldview, you waited to find meaning, purpose, and fulfillment when you were older. When you’re young, you put up with nonideal working conditions.

根据麦基在ReasonTV的采访，当他和婴儿潮一代的其他人刚开始工作时，人们预计至少在最初的十年里会不喜欢自己的工作。工资是对痛苦的补偿。麦基并不认为人们应该期望在工作中找到意义、目的或成就感。那是你花钱买来的——或者如果你一切顺利，在三十多岁时才能得到。管理者和年轻员工之间的关系是交易性的。因此，在麦基的世界观中，你等到年纪大了才会找到意义、目的和成就感。年轻时，你要忍受不那么理想的工作条件。

Mackey’s attitude neglects teenagers’ and young adults’ developmental needs for status and respect. What seemed to Mackey like a decline in the work ethic of “kids these days” could just as likely be a consequence of how Whole Foods was treating their young employees. Mackey sounded oblivious to the fact that, for the current generation and likely future generations, dollars are a poor replacement for self- respect. He offered a clear example of how our culture’s neurobiological- incompetence model could leave leaders bewildered and employees bitter—even CEOs who had a vested financial interest in motivating the young.

麦基的态度忽视了青少年和年轻成年人对地位和尊重的发展需求。在麦基看来，“现在的孩子”工作伦理的下降，很可能是因为全食超市对待年轻员工的方式。麦基似乎没有意识到，对于当前一代以及可能的未来几代人来说，金钱是自尊的糟糕替代品。他提供了一个清晰的例子，说明我们文化中的神经生物学无能模型如何让领导者困惑、员工怨恨——即使是那些有动机使用财富激励年轻人的首席执行官们也不例外。

If our society could solve the Mackey problem and stop retail jobs from being disrespectful dead ends, we could transform the industry and its workforce. Roughly 68 percent of adults in the United States have not completed a college education, and many of them work in retail. In the Global South, the numbers are even higher. That’s a lot of young people who feel like they don’t have a future in our economic society and who could possibly turn to more destructive means to reassert their self-respect.

如果我们社会能解决麦基问题，阻止零售工作成为不尊重的死胡同，我们就能改变这个行业及其劳动力。大约68%的美国成年人没有完成大学教育，他们中的许多人从事零售工作。在全球南方国家，这个数字甚至更高。觉得自己在经济社会中没有未来的年轻人有很多，他们可能会采取更具破坏性的方式来重申自己的自尊。

Mackey’s complaints serve as an example of a broader problem called the generational divide: older generations feel like they are constantly catering to the needs of young people, only to be shamed or blamed for not doing enough.

麦基的抱怨是一个例子，更广泛的问题称为代际鸿沟：老一辈人感觉他们总是在迎合年轻人的需求，却因做得不够而受到指责或羞辱。

Parents, for instance, describe feeling daunted by the emotional dramatics of their kids. One mother told me about reminding her teenage children to put on their shoes or grab their coat, only to get yelled at for daring to tell them what to do. Educators told me about young people who acted insulted at being asked to meet the minimum standard, such as coming to class, turning in assignments, and passing exams. Managers told me about times when they believed they used the correct terms for a hot-button social issue of the day, only to be told by a twenty- three-year-old that they were a bigot. Our fear of young people’s unpredictable volatility silences us, which leads to even more misunderstandings and therefore more shouting. This cycle seems destined to repeat itself, making our lives worse and worse with each revolution.

例如，父母们描述说，他们被孩子们戏剧化的情绪波动弄得不知所措。一位母亲告诉我，她提醒十几岁的孩子们穿上鞋子或拿上外套，结果却被大声斥责，因为她竟敢告诉他们该做什么。教育工作者告诉我，有些年轻人被要求达到最低标准，比如上课、交作业和通过考试，却感到受到了侮辱。经理们告诉我，有时他们认为使用了当天热点社会问题的正确术语，却被一个二十三岁的年轻人说他们是偏执狂。我们对年轻人不可预测的波动性的恐惧，让我们沉默，这导致了更多的误解，以及更多的争吵。这个循环似乎注定要重复，使我们的生活随着每一次循环变得越来越糟。

The cycle of finger-pointing, blaming, and shaming is so infuriating, in part, because we want so badly to avoid it. Parents go through existential crises when their children start adolescence. Just two or three years earlier, we had finally figured it out. Our kids were reading, riding bicycles, and putting on their own pants. They laughed at our dad jokes and mom jokes and mostly behaved well. Then puberty struck. Suddenly the same kids started acting like aliens. What’s more, they seemed to reserve their most outrageous behavior for an audience of other parents who judged us for having such disrespectful and ungrateful offspring. It’s humiliating and disempowering.

这种指责、归咎和羞辱的循环之所以令人愤怒，部分原因是我们非常想避免它。当孩子们进入青春期时，父母们会经历存在危机。就在两三年前，我们终于搞明白了。我们的孩子会读书、骑自行车、自己穿裤子。他们会对爸爸讲的笑话和妈妈讲的笑话发笑，常常表现得不错。然后青春期来了。突然间，同样的孩子开始表现得像外星人。更重要的是，他们似乎在其他父母面前表现出最过分的行为，这些父母会评判我们，认为我们养了这么不懂尊重和感恩的孩子。这让人感到羞辱和无力。

Likewise, educators usually enter the profession because they want to help kids. When every day turns out to be the opposite of how they imagined their lives as educators, they eventually start wondering whether they’re in the wrong profession.

同样，教育工作者通常是因为想帮助孩子们才进入这个行业的。当每一天都与他们想象中的教育生活截然相反时，他们最终会开始怀疑自己是否选错了职业。

Does this have to be our destiny? Or can we do something about it?

这必须是我们的宿命吗？还是我们可以做些什么呢？