Don’t Haze Me ‘Cause you Ain’t Me
In university I joined a sorority to make friends. While many of the American fraternity tropes don’t apply in Canada, a few do ring true. For instance, you don’t get to just “join a sorority”. You enter as a pledge and earn your keep over an initiation process.
Hazing is brought up constantly as the downside to Greek life. The few campuses that take it too far end up on the news, and movies make it seem like the only way to be part of the group is to humiliate yourself in public. The reality, at least from my experience, is much more subtle - think pop quiz instead of pushups. No matter the method, hazing is used as a way to force emotional bonds among the new recruits. The stress of not knowing whether we’d be let into the sorority was enough to connect us through insecurity. It's a manufactured sisterhood that lays the foundation for the next four years of bonding.
Hilariously, the “hazing” we went through was way less intense than your average internship.
Lest we forget that the women running sororities are between the ages of 18-22. Truly it’s a miracle they don’t take it farther than they do. I’m impressed at the recognition that, while we want new girls to bond, we also want them to sleep at night.
I can't say the same for some of my early jobs.
That said, there’s an attitude among Greek organizations that hazing is a rite of passage. New girls have to go through the same things that older girls did simply because that's the way it's done. Whatever atrocities you endured you can dish out to the next cohort.
In the workplace there's a similar understanding about paying your dues. The prevailing attitude is that gruelling work builds character and loyalty. You’ll feel like you earned the next job more one you’ve done your time doing coffee runs.
The nice thing about hazing is that you have an end date. No one is a pledge forever, and "Hell Week" is a finite experience. It's a temporary moment meant to be endured, which is oddly comforting.
In work the lines are less clear. You could be stuck as intern way longer than is necessary. There’s also an inherent problem in proving yourself in an entry-level role - if you’re too good, people don’t want you to leave, but, if you aren’t good enough, you’ll never get the reference. Either way, you could be forced into another entry role somewhere else, only to start the whole process over again.
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Everything You Own in A Box To The Left
Starting over, however, assumes that there are other roles available.
In the pandemic, entry-level employees were one of the hardest hit. The number of positions advertised as "entry-level" on Glassdoor was down by 68% in May. With so many experienced workers job hunting after mass layoffs and furloughs, the competition for any new role is unbelievably intense.
In COVID I should be grateful to have any stable job, not to mention one in my field. That said, I’ve been hustling for months to find my next step. I don't want my career to stop when it's only just gotten started. I'm trying to be indispensable, to be the pledge at the top of my class, but it's not as though my position would be hard to fill.
In fact, a computer can do it.
In an effort to be forward thinking, I’ve told executives at my company that my job can be completely automated. A software system can easily do 90% of my teams' workload if we invest in the right tools. The response is often, “how do we spot talent if they don’t have somewhere to start?”
It’s a valid question. The concept being we need borderline meaningless roles for people to be able to prove themselves. Stepping stone jobs are important to haze people into the workforce. As such, I’ve come to learn that cutting my teeth is part of the job. People don’t want to know about how my working conditions can be better, they want to see how I’ve risen above them. My tasks don't (and shouldn't) take a full work week, so the real job is in using those extra hours to get ahead and build my brand.
To be clear, I’m excited at the prospect of moving up internally. The endurance it takes to prove yourself is immense, but the payoff is, supposedly, great. The pandemic, however, has eliminated any promotion timelines, and fewer places are around to catch you if you bail. There's no clear path upward, and the last thing I want is for people to think I’m resolved to do this job forever. Instead, I push constantly. I run in place desperately trying to avoid complacency. There's a limit to how long you can live life as a pledge. Always saying 'yes' in the hopes of being granted access is tiring.
There's only so many times you can sing the Greek alphabet backwards.
While I'm antsy to to move up, I worry about those who weren't able to get a foot in the door at all. Student internships crumbled with COVID, meaning even less opportunities to find and impress potential employers. Of course, internships are problematic in and of themselves. Since 2010, there's been a huge uptick in the amount of paid intern positions available in an attempt to make them less exploitative. The progress that was made in making these roles accessible is now almost completely undone. Formal internship programs allowed for a diversity of applicants. Without these opportunities, internships may be heading back to informal arrangements found only through lucky connections and family favours.
How do you get spotted if you can't find the meaningless job that will give you exposure? Moreover, how do you standout among the hundreds of other applicants all looking for the same thing? You shouldn't have to be the most impressive person in the world to do data entry. The time to cut your teeth should be accessible and limited.
One of my best friends took on a position that has her working 12 hour days. She’s visibly burning out and stress radiates off her constantly. I hear her spouting the same lines I did as an assistant: This has to get done by tonight, I have to be up until 11pm waiting for this email. There’s no time in that chaos to explain how processes can be improved and showcase additional skills.
More importantly, there’s no one there to listen. It’s a ‘grin and bear it’ model, and, if you won’t do it, there’s thousands of new grads desperate for the opportunity. Every semester we get more pledges.
Anyone else find this oddly shiny?
Senior Send-Off
Alas, the struggles don't end after the first job. Mark's mom is retired, and she talks about stress from the opposite end of her and her colleagues' careers. Older workers are being forced out, and there’s blatant ageism in the workplace.
In the pandemic the pressure to retire early is huge. Beyond the initial safety risks of being an older worker, companies are downsizing at alarming rates. In the media industry, I hear ageism all the time. “The dinosaurs at the top” is a prevalent phrase, completely dismissing any expertise those dinosaurs may have. The common theme is that they can't possibly know what younger generations want because of their age.
The thought of trying to earn your keep your whole career only to be told you’re too old to stay is devastating. Starting out is hard enough, I don't want to be stressed on the way out too.
In the sorority we used to joke that hazing should be left for our graduating seniors. Why intimidate new girls coming in, when you could really unload on the girls heading out? For years that became a tradition called 'senior send-off'. We'd throw food and soap at our elders as a last hurrah. ‘Thank you for all you did, now chug this bottle of wine.’
The rationale was simple - hazing pledges is cause for concern and potential disciplinary action. Acting like idiots for a grad celebration is not. We could simply redirect the hazing fantasy onto our older members and create the full sorority experience in reverse. And, let me just say, it was way more fun that way. We actually looked forward to our senior hazing.
In the corporate world getting hazed on the way out is less appealing. A 30 year career shouldn’t be capped off with a vodka cooler.
Now, we all love a good Boomer joke, but not all older staff are out of touch. Moreover, there's no evidence that mandatory retirement policies help create jobs for younger workers. Instead, they only restrict the ability for older workers to thrive and contribute.
One of my mentors recently told me her company is telling senior staff to focus on “mentoring down” as a way to change the ageist narrative. If you can lean on a younger worker to show you the ropes from their vantage point, then maybe you can stay relevant a little longer. “Reverse mentoring” isn’t a new concept. Jack Welch, former General Electric CEO, is credited with inventing the idea in the 1990s. He actively encouraged his executives to find new hires who could show them the ropes of budding tech.
While I firmly believe in this kind of mentoring, leaving the workforce while you still have energy to offer may not be as bad as it sounds. I’ve always seen retirement as a way to settle down, but times are changing. Recently the prospect of a free schedule is yielding more and more senior entrepreneurs. In fact, the most likely age group to be self-employed in the US is over 65.
Entrepreneurially, older founders make sense. These people have experience, have seen areas of opportunity through their own careers, have connections, and, in some cases, have more funds to build their company base. As such, they are a less risky choice for investors compared to the 22-year-old hot shots scrambling to learn the business world.
Older founders also have an understanding of a huge and growing market. By 2050 the number of people over the age of 65 is set to double. More interesting, with that increase the senior population is projected to control 70% of disposable income worldwide.
Think of all the cash spent on cruises.....
Or, more optimistically, on senior-owned businesses.
The Circle of (Greek) Life
Unfortunately, nothing is as linear as it was in school.
For sorority members the milestones are laid out for you: Pledge becomes a Sister becomes a Graduate. It's a semi-safe and consistent environment to grow and evolve.
The life-cycle of a career is much more complicated. Corporate life is scarier because it comes with less instructions, more personalities, and the influence of our global climate. The company you work at today may be gone tomorrow. Your favourite coworker can be laid-off at any moment.
Safe to say that, even in a pandemic, pledges are being hazed and seniors sent off. A small comfort in this chaotic market.
