My Boss Wants Me to Clean the Conference Room

Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.

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Dear Bev,

I graduated college last May and recently started working for a small advisory firm. Prior to that, I spent a few months in a bigger financial firm and didn’t enjoy the culture. The lead advisor at my firm is a Boomer and has a firm view that everyone should work for their opportunities. But to him this means staying late every single night, coming in on weekends and basically doing lousy jobs that no one else wants to do, like cleaning the conference room after late-night meetings.

Is there a way to get through to this generation that things have changed and it isn’t the same for us as it was for them?

H.U.

Dear H.U.,

The ongoing challenge in our industry – firms wants more diversity in many forms, yet many people don’t want to have to shift their behavior to accommodate the diversity. I hear complaints from many people at your stage of life about this issue. I hear complaints from the older generation from their vantage point too. There is an ongoing lack of willingness to see things from someone else’s seat.