If you hate posts about the Slackoisie, then skip this one, even if its genesis is this article in today’s New York Times Magazine.  After all, it’s unfair to generalize.  It’s all the boomers’ fault anyway. Every generation thinks the next is a mess.  And Greenfield is just an old curmudgeon anyway.  But this isn’t me telling you to get off my lawn.

Once described by the trend-watchers Neil Howe and William Strauss as “the next great generation” — optimistic, idealistic and destined to do good — millennials, born between 1982 and 2002, have been depicted more recently by employers, professors and earnestly concerned mental-health experts as entitled whiners who have been spoiled by parents who overstoked their self-esteem, teachers who granted undeserved A’s and sports coaches who bestowed trophies on any player who showed up.

As they’ve entered adulthood, they have inspired a number of books on how unmanageable they are in the workplace, with their ubiquitous iPods, flip-flops and inability to take criticism. Stories abound about them as college students, requiring 24/7 e-mail access to professors and running to Mom and Dad for help with papers or to contest a bad grade. A consensus has emerged that, psychologically, they’re a generation of basket cases: profoundly narcissistic and deprived of a sense of agency by their anxiously overinvolved parents — in short, a “nation of wimps,” as Hara Estroff Marano, the Psychology Today editor at large, has put it.

That’s the editor at large of Psychology Today calling you a “nation of wimps.”  While the Slackoisie isn’t limited to lawyers, or more importantly, criminal defense lawyers, that’s my focus.  You can’t defend the accused if its all about your self-esteem, and the first dirty look will send you scurrying into a hole to cry about how unfair life is.

None of the excuses raised, not a single one, means a thing.  You can be 100% right about all of it, but it does nothing to make you any stronger, bolder, more competent or tougher.  If you’re a wimp, then go sit on the couch in the basement of your momma’s house and whine about the misery of your life.  You’ve got no business standing in the well of the court with someone’s life in your hands.  Heck, you won’t be there, because it would interfere with your tweet-up at Starbucks.  After all, the Slackoisie world is all about “me first,” and nothing goes better with “me” than a vente moca-coca-loca-frappucino.

This past week in Chicago, there was a panel on Gen Why?  A year before, I was on that panel.  A year later, the issue remained one of concern.  Accident?  I think not.  For those generational deniers, there’s a reason this issue keeps popping up on the agenda of SuperConference, not to mention the New York Times, Psychology Today and pretty much everywhere else.  It exists and it’s a problem.

Two reports have emerged on the panel, one from a newbie lawyer for whom twitter captures the essence of deep thought and another from a young lady who wrote that legal success can be achieved through “brilliant tweets” (while I couldn’t make this up, apparently Kash Hill did exactly that when pressed for an example of such a brilliant twit).

Both of the intrepid reporters came back with similar comments from the Chicago panel. Neither appreciated its significance.

“One of our young attorneys approached us and said,

‘I’d like to take a year off to live in New Zealand.  Can you hold the for job for me until I get back?’

“We went back and forth on it, but in the end we decided to grant his request and to hold his position for him.  It came down to the fact that he was a very talented attorney, and we didn’t want to lose him.”

How fun!  How wonderful that work won’t interfere with a year in New Zealand!  Cool!  Who wouldn’t want to take a year off while you’re still young and crazy enough to enjoy it?  But what if everyone in the office said, “what a great idea! Let’s all go to New Zealand!”  The phones would ring and ring, and there would be no one there to pick them up. Actions would be commenced but no answers served.  Questions would arise and languish on voicemail. 

Less obvious, however, is that the corporation allowed the lawyer to have his fun because he was “a very talented attorney.”  This is a warning shot across the bow of all you other lawyers who think you’re the best and brightest.  If brilliant Gen Y lawyers were a dime a dozen, as you collectively think you individually are, then there would have been no leverage to get the corporation to go along.  They would have replaced the lawyer in seconds from the vast stockpile of the unemployed.  Apparently, you’re not all that wonderful. 

The other statement that made it onto both reporters’ radar is:

An older baby boomer lawyer in the audience spoke up to say, “I wanted the same things as Jack, but I was not brave enough to ask for it… It was kind of ‘figure out for yourself.’

While the specific words differ between the two, the gist remains the same.  Boomers understand what you want.  You want everything in your life to be fun, rewarding, fulfilling and easy.  Who doesn’t?  Do you think boomers hate fun?  Well, you probably do, but you’re wrong.  We’re hedonists from head to toe, and have a whole decade of our own to prove it.  But we also have the words of one of our generation’s great philosophers, Mick Jagger; You can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need.

As each narcissistic little slacker actually expects his world to be recreated to suit his personal preference, we run into some problems.  You’re too high maintenance.  You’re not worth the trouble.  There’s not enough world to go around.

I know, I know.  We boomers have screwed up the world, sucked up all the fun, including yours, not to mention whatever disposable income you might have had after your student loans were paid off to cover the cost of our jet-propelled wheel chairs and viagra.  So what do you plan to do after putting mommy and daddy on a sled and leaving them in the middle of the forest in winter?

Eventually, the Cheetos will run out and the electricity will go off in your parents’ house.  How will you recharge your iPad then?