Yesterday’s News
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 2, 2014

The three of us, former work buddies, were ensconced in a Mexican cantina in Northbridge. It was so dark we couldn’t tell our duck tostadas from our chicken tortillas. But no-one cared. We were absorbed in a discussion about generations.

One of my girlfriends, a senior executive, was recounting how a week earlier, she’d called an underling into her office for some constructive criticism, only to have the young woman burst into tears.

We two listeners were taken aback: “She cried in front of everyone?”

“Yep! All the girls in the office were hugging her and I was suddenly the Wicked Witch of the West!”

“I don’t ever remember crying at work,” I announced. “I’ve fled the newsroom and sobbed in the loo. I’ve cried in the car park. But I’ve never let anyone see me upset in the office. I wasn’t into career suicide!”

“That’s the point,” said my other friend. “We were always trying to prove we were just as good as the blokes. We weren’t about to handicap ourselves by crying!”

We decided office protocols must have changed and we’d failed to notice. Maybe we’re entitled to a group hug and a good howl at the coffee station when the boss berates us for missing a deadline? We launched into a muddled debate about whether the coming generation has been over-indulged. We traded stories about our pampered young colleagues, born in the 80s and 90s. Are they more driven, harder working, more ambitious than we were at their age? “Impossible!” one girlfriend said.

At 46, I’m old enough now for the next generation to dismiss me as yesterday’s woman. But from now on, I will co-exist, (uneasily I expect), with those up-and-coming aspirants I never dreamed could one day supplant me.

Sliding towards 50, it’s sobering to realise that more of my life is behind me than in front. I can look back and see the turning points in my life, the happy accidents, the mistakes averted, not because I was smart or prescient, but by dumb luck.

As a skittish Uni student, what if I’d never sat down next to that beautiful woman in the library cafe? She told me her husband was the boss of a radio station. What if she hadn’t urged me to try out for a voice test? Rigid with nerves, I flunked the test with my breathy falsetto. I swallowed my pride and agreed to mind the switchboard instead.

In 1988, when Gen Y’s were playing Donkey Kong on their Game Boys, I was making endless cups of Maxwell House for disc jockeys with voices like velvet. I put my hand up when they needed a barrel girl to draw the weekly winners. I was told to act ditzy. (There was no acting required). I practiced rustling envelopes at home. And then the boss called me into his office again, and I figured my envelope-rustling career was doomed. But instead he said: “The newsroom’s looking for a cadet reporter. Wanna give it a shot?”

Two decades later, I’m sharing my line of work with newcomers who think they know it all. Just like I did once. To me, they’re kids; such eager recruits with their sharp fashion sense and the smarts to match. I admire them: they already know what they want. I was 30 by the time I’d grown their kind of confidence.

Will those Gen Y’s look down on my generation the same way I’ve pigeon-holed my mum and her friends? She still teases me about the day I was cradling my first-born son and I said to her: “I won’t do the wooden spoon or the naughty chair – I’ll just talk it out quietly and calmly with him.” How did she restrain herself from laughing out loud? Instead she replied: “Never say never to the naughty chair! You sure spent enough time on it!”

I wrote last November about how women are tormenting themselves trying to ‘have it all,’ aiming for perfection and arriving at frustration. In response, I received a polite letter from a woman in her seventies, a mother-of-five who’d worked for forty years as a school teacher.

“Do you really think you’re the first women on earth struggling to manage work and children?” she wrote. “For goodness sake, you young ones need to get over yourselves!”

In the Mexican darkness, we middle-aged youngsters hailed a waiter, put generational rivalry aside and spent five minutes trying to divide the bill.

We waved each other goodbye and I walked to my car, wondering how history will paint my generation. As uptight overachievers? Or overworked and underrated? And then I remembered there’s no loo paper at home and we’re out of milk.