Snowflake Intern Petitions for More Informal Dress Code

Alison Green provides for general amusement the story of a millennial who was fired from her internship for writing a proposal for a more flexible dress code.

I spoke with my manager about being allowed some leeway under the dress code and was told this was not possible, despite the other person being allowed to do it. I soon found out that many of the other interns felt the same way, and the ones who asked their managers about it were told the same thing as me. We decided to write a proposal stating why we should be allowed someone leeway under the dress code. We accompanied the proposal with a petition, signed by all of the interns (except for one who declined to sign it) and gave it to our managers to consider. Our proposal requested that we also be allowed to wear running shoes and non leather flats, as well as sandals (not flip-flops though) and other non-dress shoes that would fit under a more business casual dress code. It was mostly about the footwear, but we also incorporated a request that we not have to wear suits and/or blazers in favor of a more casual, but still professional dress code.

The next day, all of us who signed the petition were called into a meeting where we thought our proposal would be discussed. Instead, we were informed that due to our “unprofessional” behavior, we were being let go from our internships. We were told to hand in our ID badges and to gather our things and leave the property ASAP.

We were shocked. The proposal was written professionally like examples I have learned about in school, and our arguments were thought out and well-reasoned. We weren’t even given a chance to discuss it.

Read the Whole Thing.

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Ace is among the older people chuckling over this.

Now as foolish as the girl was this is really a failure of her educators and parents. She was only repeating what she had been trained to do and rewarded for all during her snowflake education. She truly did not see that she had no standing to complain and that her narcissistic activism would be disapproved of so strongly. And from her letter in the article it doesn’t appear that she has learned very much from the experience either.

But of course young people have always been a bit self-focused and prone to do all the stupid, foolish things that young people are wont to do though the exact menu of which stupid, idiotic things are chosen from varies from generation to generation. So I’m not surprised that there was a person like the letter-writer making a fuss over the dress code the way she did. Usually people like this just get severely embarrassed or let go and all the other newbies have a smirk at their foolishness and also learn a lesson from the example.

But what stands out here to me is that all but one of the interns signed the petition. Which means that all the signers ran the petition-signing scenario through their future-world consequence prediction machine and decided that yes – this will work out great! This common high level of unfounded self-esteem mixed with a complete unfamiliarity with how the real world actually works may be a unique trait of young millennials that is over and beyond all the traditional youthful stupidities.