Older Workers Need to Stop BelievingStereotypes About Themselves

The article I chose is about stereotypes in the work place. This article didn’t cover the typical everyday stereotype based on racial identity; this article covered the discrimination of the elderly workforce. The article starts off by talking about the most widely experienced stereotype in the office, which is against age. They talk about the positives of older workers but then go into the stereotypes and difficulties they go through. It talks about how co-workers visualize them as being less motivated, more resistant to change, not as trusting, etc.

It also went into how they struggle with ever changing technologies and they require more training then the youth to keep up with the technological advances. The article went into talking about how valuable these older workers are with their experience and knowledge and how we need to avoid these stereotypes and keep them in the workforce and different ways we can maximize their skills and contributions.

The article relates to the key term by discussing the most common stereotype people come across and that’s age discrimination.

Unfortunately, it is something that I myself do at my job at Papa John’s. We have this driver and her name is June and she is probably the oldest delivery driver we have but after learning about this in class and reading this article I understand now that I am guilty of doing the same kind of discrimination and I am guilty of stereotyping her. By no means is June some sweet old lady because she is not.

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To be honest with you she is more of a Grinch all year round but that still doesn’t delete the fact that at times I think of her in the same way the people thought of their co-workers in the article. To me, at many times, she seems lazy or unmotivated to do something. And everyone just picks up her slack without saying anything to her because she’s older I feel. She tends to be a little bit slower of a driver and not to care and we just caulk it up to her being old which is completely wrong.

However, she also doesn’t have the “knowledgeable” work experience that the article was talking about and if were being completely honest it is just Papa John’s and having knowledge about this field isn’t particularly valuable. Now I’m not saying fire her or anything but sometimes stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. I’m not saying discriminate or anything but they’re just something’s June can’t do because she’s older like lift heavy things or work the computers because she physically can’t or doesn’t learn fast enough to keep up with everyone. However, we all have equal rights and when we’re picking up her slack it can seem like she just assumes were going to do it for her because she’s old, which to me seems like a double standard and there’s just nothing we can do about it.