A story in last Thursday's newspaper tells about a mother who is upset that her 30-something daughter is panhandling.

Apparently, the daughter has been unable to get pregnant and wants her husband to undergo a $10,000 medical procedure to improve his fertility. Even though the couple has a combined income of $80K per year, they have no savings to speak of.

They are now unabashedly seeking donations from friends, family, and unknown sympathizers to pay for his elective procedure.

Some might see nothing wrong with this. Others find this sort of behavior brazenly insolent and gauche.

Count me among those in the second category.

I can’t say that I don’t get it. I do.

It just flies in the face of the way that I, and most of my baby boomer—and even Gen X—contemporaries were raised and how we think. We'd have to be on our very last can of Who Hash before we'd swallow our pride enough to ask anyone for a handout.



Millennials, on the other hand, have grown up in an era when the traditional ‘work—sacrifice—save until you can afford’ method of acquiring goods and services has been leapfrogged by a new crowdsourcing/kickstarter/hat-in-hand mentality to get what you want, but can’t afford.

Soliciting donations from friends and family to solve an infertility problem may not be quite the same as standing at the corner of a busy intersection with a cardboard sign reading “anything helps.” But it’s an even farther cry from taking on a second and even a third job, sacrificing non-essentials like smart phones, dining out, and cable television to pay for it themselves.

SEPARATING EFFORT FROM REWARD

In my 2002 book, Employing Generation Why, I predicted that America’s 80-million post-Generation X’ers would continue to seek new and creative methods of separating effort from reward. Perhaps I should be the last to be taken aback by these new methods of 'alternative financing', but stories like this one tend to wake up the old "get off my lawn!" geezer that resides within me.

OPTIONS

When you see this kind of mentality rear its head in your workplace (or even in your own home) you have two choices:

1. Give in and donate.

2. Refuse to participate.

If you go with option #2, help to revive work ethic in America by taking a minute to explain why. Fight the urge to rant or criticize. Instead, explain that your charity dollars go for those who are victims of disasters or circumstances beyond their control. Let them know that you are a fan of individuals who exemplify personal responsibility, and that you have the highest respect for those who work hard, live within their means, and save for unexpected emergencies.