A Millennial’s Open Letter To Santa

Dear Santa,
2015 was a pretty good year considering that I was able to land my first “real” job since graduating from college. The pay is not what I expected but after 18 months of getting nowhere, I was willing to compromise. And hey, this isn’t a long-term gig, just something to tie me over until the job market gets better.
I’ve been living at home since leaving school and working 30 hours per week at Starbucks. I enjoyed working there and made some really cool friends. I guess they were happy with me because they asked me to continue working a reduced schedule. I was cool with that and now help out 10-15 hours per week.
My folks think its time for me to move into my own place and I agree with them but between car payments and student loans, I’d be stretched pretty thin carrying my own rent. Besides, I’ve been saving money for my winter ski trip and in summer Jim and I plan to visit Spain.
Santa, I know you get a lot of letters from kids asking for all kinds of toys. I don’t need any toys but maybe you could help me find another job at a swag company. A couple of my friends are working at technology and media companies and they are telling me that they couldn’t be happier. They tell me that the atmosphere is really laid back and their work hours are flexible. They also get to pick the type of computers that they want to use. I’m hacking away on some 10-year old Dell that’s a real embarrassment.
I’m not really a morning person but my boss expects me to be in the office by 8 am. If I could start an hour later I’d probably save 15 minutes due to the traffic congestion.
Come to think of it, a new boss wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I’ve been working here for 11 months now and I have no idea if I’m doing a good job or not. I asked him once and he told me that we’d discuss my performance in my annual performance review. What’s with that? Does he think that I can’t take the feedback now?
If there’s one thing my boss likes to do is have meetings. It seems like we have three- a- day and nothing gets accomplished or resolved. I tried to give him my POV on all of these meetings but he got really mad and said I was disrespectful. That blew me away. I was just suggesting a way for our team to become more productive and he blows me off. What a jerk!
I got a text message from Lilly yesterday. She was all excited because her company is sending her on a 6- month assignment to London. How cool would that be? I don’t think I’d ever get the opportunity to do something like that at this company. If I went to my boss with that he’d laugh me out of his office. He’d probably tell me that I haven’t put in enough time to be considered for an overseas assignment.
Don’t get me wrong, Santa, I am happy to have this job. I’m just saying a few things could make it a lot better. If I can’t have a different boss, maybe you could get me a good mentor. Joel told me about a guy in his company who is mentoring him. He’s an older guy, could probably be his grandfather but really supports him. In fact, they meet for lunch at least once a month and this geezer shares with him all kinds of interesting stuff, like mistakes he’s made with customers or presentations that he’s bombed on.
By now you must be thinking that I’m a real Grinch. It’s not that at all. It’s kind of like last Christmas when Aunt Jane gave me a sweater that I knew I would never wear. I told her that it didn’t fit but really it was the yellow color and I hate to wear yellow. So I exchange it for a nice blue one. It was the perfect fit and a grear color. She was happy and so was I. I’m looking for that blue sweater company!
Have a Merry Christmas and thanks for all you do!
Tom