When Gen X met the Millenials, it was murder.

I remember the first time we met. I was at a trends presentation in Dallas. You were on slide 19.

Years later, the details are a bit fuzzy. But I do remember you and your peers clutching trophies and banging on about changing the world. I also remember wanting to vomit.  

Last year you walked into my office looking for a job. You seemed humble and scared and nothing like the PowerPoint deck from Dallas. And you knew how to use Photoshop. So I offered you an internship; unpaid of course.

The first month you did everything we asked of you. And it pissed me off. I just knew you were snowballing us. I also knew that if I offered you a job, your notoriously obnoxious sense of entitlement would rear its ugly head and poison Mutt to its core.   

So I offered you a job.  

Weeks later, when you revealed you were living with your parents and that your mom was coming by to take you to lunch, I thought I had made a mistake. And when you returned from Pizza Schmiza with two large veggies for yourself and a kiddie-size pepperoni for the rest of the Mutts, I knew I had made a mistake. 

But slowly, as we learned to turn recriminations into questions and differences into debates, our relationship began to thaw. I liked it when you complimented me for playing Seals and Croft. And I was grateful when you finally checked your digital snobbery and taught me how to use I-Chat. Now, every time I drag a JPEG into that little rectangle and send it ripping through cyberspace, I think of you and your humble tutelage. 

I know we still have our awkward moments. Like today, when you tried to reason that a kickball match was more important than preparing for a new business pitch. But I do know that I’d be lost without you. And that, in spite of what I supposedly learned that day in Dallas, one should never judge a Millennial by a trends presentation.