Duncan Wolfe / Policy Mic
Mic CEO Chris Altchek (right)
Millennials are no exception. They have earned a reputation for being somewhat lazy yet entitled, frustrating many of their older colleagues with their expectations of money and success without putting in much time or effort.
(Full disclosure, I am a millennial too.)
For example, in February, an entry-level Yelp employee wrote that she wasn't getting paid enough by the company. A 29-year-old woman read the 25-year-old's post on Medium and responded with a rant about how she seemed ungrateful, and it went viral.
Mic, a media startup run by millennials that employs millennials, knows all about the difficulties of managing young workers.
The post written by the man who told his CEO he was going to a funeral, then built a treehouse instead.
Altchek says he had an employee who asked for time off to attend a friend's funeral. Altchek replied that he should take all the time he needed.
But there was no funeral.
Instead, the employee was feeling burnt out and instead of saying so, he lied and took the week to build a treehouse, which he documented with photos in a Medium post and tweeted a link to.
Altchek saw the post and clicked in. The first line read, "I said that I was leaving town for a funeral, but I lied."
Perhaps more amazing is the fact that the man wasn't fired.
Altcheck was sympathetic to his feelings of burnout and gave the man one more shot. Although Altchek tells NYT he didn't appreciate being lied to.
The millennial is still employed by Mic. And he seems to realize the error in his ways.
"Of course it would have been better to honestly say I was burnt out," the man said on Twitter after the NYT article was published. "I didn't feel like I could do that."