Gen X Grind vs. Gen Z Boundaries: Who’s Right?

During a recent Freedom Friday podcast, our host, Chris Stewart, pointed out that we are living in a time when four, sometimes five, generations are working side by side, exposing fault lines around toughness, trauma, and what “safety” should mean at work.

As a proud member of Generation X, I am realizing that what we called “professionalism” looks a lot like unspoken pain management. But younger colleagues — millennials and Gen Z — name what we endured, and ask for psychological safety out loud. 

Sometimes, older generations meet that request with eye rolls, especially when “safety” becomes a means to dodge accountability, deadlines, and timeliness. 

Critics love to drag Zoomers and millennials as “soft” or “entitled,” but the jokes obscure a real question: How do we build workplaces where people can do hard things without accepting harm as the cost?

Punctuality is (Not) Optional

I remember a millennial coworker who told her supervisor that pointing out the many grammatical errors in a public-facing PowerPoint was unnecessary, even a form of “whiteness.” Another millennial — who routinely arrived late to meetings, stopping for coffee and conversation on the way — scoffed at the expectation of being on time, even as he loudly championed Black excellence. 

When I encounter these mindsets, I think about my parents and teachers I’ve had. Excellence in the classroom was an expectation — the minimum standard. My parents, meanwhile, did a good job instilling a sense of timeliness in me. Fewer things grind my gears than hearing, “We’re on CPT,” a.k.a. “colored people’s time.”

I also grew up memorizing and internalizing a passage from a book by Vernon Brundage Jr.: “Excuses are tools of incompetence used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness, and those who use them seldom specialize in anything else.” We were inspired by Haki Madhubuti’s insistence that “all that is good in the world takes work; everything else is jive.”

Those words shaped how many of us understand responsibility, follow-through, and what it means to be serious about our people.

The Grind vs. Self-Care

My generation grew up sandwiched between the grind ethic of Baby Boomers and the culture-shifting impatience of millennials. Many of us learned early on the job not to talk about what hurt. You powered through, stayed loyal, and proved your worth by what you could endure. 

When we entered the workforce, toxic behaviors — from short-tempered supervisors and racist colleagues to impossible workloads — were framed as “paying dues” or “having a strong work ethic.” By the time Gen Z arrived, naming microaggressions, setting boundaries, and rejecting certain conditions altogether, some of us were so accustomed to the poison that youngsters’ refusal to consume it felt like an insult to our resilience.

But they are not wrong to want something different. 

Millennials and Gen Z came of age equipped with language for trauma, mental health, and identity, a lexicon that simply did not exist when my generation entered the workforce. They witnessed entire industries demand loyalty, then use people up. They understand that no job is worth chronic harm. 

No Naps During the Revolution

When younger generations ask for wellness benefits, flexible schedules, culturally competent leadership, or clear anti-racist policies, they are not asking to avoid work; they are asking to avoid unnecessary harm so they can actually do the work.

At the same time, I worry that the pendulum could swing too far in the other direction. Real change still takes real work: intellectual rigor, honest effort, and a willingness to do unglamorous, sustained labor. There is a difference between self-care and self-absorption, and we blur that line at our collective risk.

I say that as someone whose own formation was shaped by adults who did not romanticize rest. If we kids said we were tired, the elders around us — people actively fomenting revolutionary thought and action — would ask, “What would Harriet, Malcolm, Fannie, Ella do if they were tired? Take a nap during the revolution?” 

Still, my generation has learning to do. Maybe the real work for Gen X is to maintain our sense of duty and discipline while learning to build movements that do not grind people into dust. That tension is where I try to live now: honoring the elders who taught me to keep working and listening to the young people teaching that how we work matters just as much as what we are working for.

Creating a New Normal

So how do we move from “you’re soft” versus “you’re toxic” to something more honest and useful? By telling the truth about what each generation was trained to believe about work, safety, and conflict—and then asking what we want to keep and what we need to let go. By designing practices that honor both accountability and care. Setting clear expectations and feedback, paired with norms that make it safe to say, “I’m at capacity,” before damage is done. 

It might look like Gen X leaders modeling what we were rarely offered: taking time off without guilt, addressing bias directly rather than swallowing it, or apologizing when “toughness” spills into harm. And it might look like younger colleagues recognizing that change work is a marathon, not a sprint, and that elders have earned curiosity and respect.

We must build a workplace culture where worth is measured not by how much harm we can absorb, but by how willing we are to create conditions where everyone can contribute, heal, and grow. That requires both the discipline my elders demanded and the boundaries younger generations insist on. It requires us to honor the people who never took a day off from the struggle — and build a world where our descendants will not have to destroy themselves just to keep that struggle alive.

Sharif El-Mekki is the founder and chief executive officer of the Center for Black Educator Development. The Center’s mission is to build the Black Teacher Pipeline to achieve educational equity and racial justice. El-Mekki is a nationally-recognized principal and U.S. Department of Education Principal Ambassador Fellow. He’s also a blogger on Phillys7thWard, a member of the 8 Black Hands podcast, and serves on several boards and committees focused on educational and racial justice. 

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