New Grads' Entitlement Bruised By Reality

Bankers aren't the only people whose sense of entitlement is taking a beating lately. College students feel pretty entitled too, if a post in the Daily Beast is any indication.

In that posting, AOL Money & Finance Editor Zac Bissonnette - who is a college sophomore himself - cites one recent grad's lament, "I'm applying for jobs now that I wouldn't have even considered when I started this thing." That young worker was "understandably disappointed" to land in "a cubicle-drone job that barely pays minimum wage," Bissonnette relates - only to tumble still further down the career ladder and end up substitute teaching for "even less."

What's telling about this passage and its dismissive labels is that those two jobs paid $10.50 and $10 per hour, respectively. The national hourly minimum wage is $6.55.

Continuing in this vein, the author looks down his nose not only at traditional recession stopgap gigs like retail sales-floor work and bartending, but federal government jobs as well (which even bankers are warming up to lately).

The sense of entitlement - and unreality - ramps into high gear when Bissonnette quotes Generation Y guru Lindsey Pollak, the author of Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World. Setting out to land your first post-college job in one of the top five investment banks "might not happen," Pollak reveals. Then she adds helpfully, "It doesn't mean you won't end up at a company like Goldman Sachs, but you might have to start somewhere else and not unnecessarily limit yourself."

On the other side of the tracks, Pollak does advise that a new graduate won't be faulted by future employers for accepting work as a barista or office clerk for failure to find anything better.