A Generation Xed Out: Forgotten Again — Middle Aged Workers Wonder Where They Fit in the “New World” of Work

Managers are burnt out. Millennials are fed up. Boomers are commanding respect. And certainly, last but not least, Gen Z wants more — more feedback, more meaning, more purpose, more understanding, more work-life balance. And they are all entitled to those feelings, demands and desires. But guess who else wants more? Steadfast and self-reliant Generation X, the still forgotten “middle children.”

But we can’t always get what we want. Generation X learned this long ago, coming up in decades of disappointment and change.

We aren’t loud about what we need, though. We never have been. Even if we were, would anyone be listening?

Week after week, month after month, workplace articles and studies show younger workers’ discontent. Some people seem to say the solutions lie with us, the older generations. We had better get on board, adapt, and speak the new slang. Can’t we just go along and move along, people ask? We are, after all, known for being resilient.

Gen Xers know how to roll with changes. Technology? We went from Atari and the arcade to Apple and Wordle. Communication? We went from writing, typing (!), and mailing cover letters for jobs to learning LinkedIn profiles and Workday application systems. We once painstakingly corrected mistakes on paper (Liquid Paper, anyone?) and now hit a button to change a word on a Google doc in a second. Nothing is ever really done.

Home and family? We sailed through rising divorce rates, jostled joint custody duffel bags, grew up fast in single-parent homes and tried to navigate blended families. Physical fitness? We had no trackers, created our own rules, never measured steps and didn’t post wins online. We just ran around and made stuff up (and we were fine by the way)! We know all about having favorites, too — just like at work. Our PE teachers picked teacher’s pets to be Captains, and the Captains picked their friends for teams. Field Days in grade school had one red ribbon and one blue ribbon for each race. Not everyone was a winner. Recognition programs at work are not for us now, anyway. We are too senior, and too old.

We Gen Xers know how to live and work with ambiguity, but we value working toward clear goals and knowing expectations. As expectations shift all around us in professional life, we’re holding down our own forts at home, whatever home means now. Our kids are older. Our parents are older. And we are stuck in the middle, everywhere, in what often seems like a strange new land.

This article is not to whine, or complain, or look for sympathy. We just need a little more empathy, inclusion and respect. Generation X never truly burns out, but you don’t want us on the brink. We are the glue — the sticky beloved Elmer’s white school glue we used to drip onto our hands, watch dry, and peel. That’s how resourceful we are. We patiently made our own fun. It didn’t take much to please us.

It wouldn’t take that much now — just a little more. Many Gen Xers I talk to lately are struggling to have that patience in the work world. We don’t want to be a divided workforce. We want to be that bridge across all the generations. But I think we feel we are running out of time, much like the old days, when we played on the streets until we had to rush home as the sun went down and the streetlights flicked on. We are in constant motion, but not sure where we are headed. Again. Still. Whatever.