A few years ago on Thanksgiving, my family missed our flight. 

Actually, we did not miss our flight, but rather we missed the recommended two-hour check-in period because mythical wife and I were parents new to two kids, had a boatload of cargo to haul with us, and had to check-in at a service desk, instead of just going straight to security as if we didn’t have all the extra crap.  And the only reason why we missed it is because ATL’s parking garage is the worst in the nation [fact] and the 15 minutes in which it took us to get from car to terminal was the difference between making it and not.

Being late, I can take responsibility for.  Airline travel these days is a stressful ordeal most of the time, multiplied by the fact that it was a holiday.  Add to the fact that parenting is hard, especially at the time, two kids under the ages of two.

What really bothered me about the whole situation was the fact that after we were told that we would not be getting onto our flight, was the fact that for the next hour and 50 minutes, while I was on the phone with Delta trying to figure out what our options were, was knowing that our aircraft was sitting there, still waiting for cargo to be loaded, still waiting for people to board, still, just fucking waiting.  Meanwhile, thanks to some uppity gate agents hiding behind the subjectively conveniently wall of protocol, my family was denied clearance, and I had to drop $700 on the spot for two new day-of holiday tickets in order to go to Virginia for barely 12 hours, all for being 10 minutes past a recommended check-in time.

Look, I know that rules are rules, and my family wasn’t there at precisely 2+ hours before departure time.  But I’ve witnessed in my rather copious flying experiences people in way more dire and illogical, and should-be-fucked situations emerge victorious, all because there’s a generous amount of discretion, grace and ability to read the room involved with being in airline customer support.

I was ten minutes late.  I wasn’t a dick or raised my voice or created a scene with the agent.  I also understand the needs of the baggage handlers and that their time needs to be accounted for.  I wasn’t asking for super special treatment, and to be escorted through security through special assistance.  I just wanted a little bit of grace and understanding for our parenting situation, and a little bit of leniency on the time, especially since there was more than enough of it remaining to make our flight.

But no, we were stonewalled, marked as no-shows, and not allowed to advance on our original itinerary.  The reasonable flights were refunded as credit, but that needed to be used immediately along with $700 extra dollars to book two new flights, and it led to a real shitty holiday travel experience.

All because a gate agent didn’t really feel like working, and used the wall of protocol to shield themselves behind.

It’s not lost on me that from a cold hard facts point of view, the agent did nothing wrong.  From a procedural standpoint, they did everything to the T, and when the day is over, you really can’t ask for much more from an employee.

Nobody is required or expected to go above their required duties, and I know there’s a lot of gray area when it comes to Office Space debates on doing the bare minimum versus trying to do more, but when the asks are not difficult or require little extra effort, but the result is the satisfaction and gratitude of helping another person accomplish something, why the fuck not give it a whirl?

I’m sure that there have been points in my life where I’ve hidden behind the exact same wall of protocol, but I’m fairly certain that if I did it, it was coming from a place of antagonism, and I was probably aware that my refusal to budge was going to be seen as an act of hostility, from whom I was being obtuse with.

Well that introduction went a little long, because what the whole point of this whole post is that I recently had a situation with a colleague, where I asked for some assistance with a project, and was met with a surprising amount of resistance, a deflection from a shield of protocol, and a conclusion where the task was not completed, and will have to wait an entire week for this person to come back from PTO before it gets completed.

Like the airline story, they’re not in the wrong with the course of action that they chose to take, but the ask I had for them was to convert two sentences and three bullet points into a smaller, digestible 2-3 sentence paragraph; a task that I’ve seen not just any copywriter, but this specific copywriter accomplish in less than five minutes.  I even vetted the ask with them over Teams before entering the request into Workfront, which was met with a response indicating how easy it would be.

But once they received it in Workfront, they responded to the group that the due date for the task was already past-due because our PMs are suspect in capability, and that it would have to wait until the following week due to their upcoming PTO, and that they recommended assigning it to another copywriter if it was urgent.

To this type of response, I scrunched my brow at the screen, and wondered why the fuck they had agreed upon its ease if they weren’t going to help out with it in the first place?  Furthermore, this all happened at like 10 am in the work day, there was more than enough time to just knock it out, then I could do my part, and we could close the entire project out, and that would be one less ticket looming over our workloads.

Aggravated, I decided to not reassign the task, and to make sure it remains on this copywriter’s plate.  It has the time, but it could have been done so much sooner, and on principle, I’m going to make sure that they still do it, and lord help me if they complain about their workload when they get to it then.

I get wanting to coast before a vacation, but I’m also the type who absolutely abhors the idea of anyone having to pick up or fill in or finish something that I started.  I’m a monster when it comes to trying to close out all my tasks, tie up all loose ends, and knock out anything that can be knocked out before I go radio silent.  To me, it just seems like common courtesy, but as I very well have learned throughout my life, nobody works harder than a Korean, and I feel as if I’m a step above the rest on top of it.

Ultimately, my mind immediately thought to the notion that this wasn’t just ordinary apathetic work avoidance, but rather more typical to Gen-Z work ethic, and no matter how nice and chipper and glowy of personalities a worker can be, the barest of bare minimums is to be expected, and that anything that might be construed as exceeding such, is absolutely out of the question.

Nice enough and chipper and pleasant as this copywriter is, they still turtled up behind the shield of protocol as if I were asking them to find the cure for cancer.  Shifting the request to the other copywriter was out of the question to me, because they’re younger and more apt to bitch about an additional request being made of them, and I don’t want to hear it.  But even in spite of all the remaining time in the day, they didn’t have the time to address my ask, but they did have time to get on the department Teams channel and wish a happy birthday to fucking Mariah Carey.

Perhaps the five minutes of doing such should be construed as five minutes of flagrant not-work time spent, and they should make up for it by spending five minutes on the task that I had asked them for.

Either way, I suppose complaining about the perceived work ethics of those younger than me qualifies as one of those things that justifies the fact that I’m old now.  Whatever though, at least I know I’m capable of getting shit done, even if others might consider such attribute as giving shit away.