It’s a case of the coworker who cried wolf.
An assistant manager has launched an online debate about a workplace habit that has triggered an epidemic of eyerolls among Gen Z.
An exhausted corporate cog named Mei Ryan claimed her inbox is constantly full of requests that are marked “urgent,” calling its usage in office correspondence a marker of generational divide.
“Most, if not all, of my ‘urgent’ emails or ‘corporate rush’ come from the older generation,” Ryan told the Daily Mail.
“I receive at least 30 emails a day with the subject line ‘URGENT PLEASE HELP,’” she said.
The assistant manager from Florida shared that the Zoomer generation finds it demeaning to receive emails with “urgent” in the subject line.
“Whether it is consciously or subconsciously, I feel as though they have a superiority complex towards Gen Z/younger millennials,” she said.
“They think themselves and their tasks, no matter how significant, are more important than anyone else’s, therefore must be done immediately.”
She said that completing the work isn’t the issue — it’s the unwarranted pressure that is fueled by constant false alarms.
“It’s almost like the boy who cried wolf; if you’re saying everything is urgent, how could anything be urgent?” Ryan questioned.
She said that these emails just result in “extreme” exhaustion for employees.
“With the constant fires the older generation set up for us to extinguish, it’s no wonder all we have the energy to do after clocking out is sit on the couch and turn on Netflix,” she said. “Being mentally drained feels physical.”
Ryan said when young staff members push back against the urgency of the demands, they’re often called “lazy” — but she claimed it has nothing to do with that. Rather, Gen Z wants to have enough energy to have a life outside of the office.
“The older generation is stuck in the mindset that work is life and no matter how miserable you are, as long as you’re pumping out numbers, you’re doing great,” she noted.
“It’s not that my generation doesn’t want to work. We just want to be able to still have energy left in our tank to experience life and the world outside of the four walls of the office; we’ve come to realize that is not life.”
Ryan hopes that as the younger generations climb up the corporate later, the workplace culture could experience this change for good.
“I hope that in the near future my generation will shapeshift the corporate culture and overall happiness of society,” she said.
But it’s not just Gen Z who finds this habit to be overkill — the Daily Mail reported that workers of all ages find the “urgent” emails exhausting.
“These people will miss holidays and weekends to meet artificial deadlines that they themselves created,” one person said.
“If you are not saving lives, then it is not urgent,” another pointed out.
One person joked, “I only put ‘urgent’ on an email today because I wanted to know who on my team wanted to go out to lunch.”
Another noted that an urgent request is usually the result of poor time management.
“The worst thing is this urgency is down to poor time management — often by managers who cascade that panic,” they said.
