Can we talk about Generation Y, the "Millennials", Americans born between 1979 and 1994?
The Internet will tell you they're the Boomerang Generation, leaving home, then coming back to live with parents into their early thirties.
These were the "Trophy Kids", the web says. They grew up when the trend in competitive sports (and other pursuits) ensured no one ever lost at anything. Trophies went to anyone who showed up. These individuals had their individuality affirmed.
Now some employers who hire the newbies complain Millennials expect a bit much. They want to shape their jobs to fit their lifestyles instead of adapting themselves to the workplace, bosses say.
Unrealistic, self-centered, irresponsible––if that describes this new generation in full, the rest of us might come up short depending on them. It's enough to keep you awake at night.
But try resting your worrier instead, because all Millennials don't fit that description––not around here anyway. Two recent incidents (both incidentally at Jasper's Kroger) document modern teens (yes, Millennials) performing as solid citizens.
Kroger employee, Devon Parks, (age 16) of Talking Rock, was returning carts from the parking lot to the store as new business owner, Vin Infanti, finished his shopping and headed to McDonald's. Infanti soon realized something was missing: his bank deposit bag, holding cash, checks, and the keys to his store and cash register.
"I got all the way to McDonald's and realized I left the bag in that [shopping] cart," Infanti said. He rushed back to Kroger, contemplating repercussions if the bag were not recovered. He began searching through carts in the parking lot. "I was like freaking out," Infanti said.
"I was pushing carts in, and he pulled up," Parks recalled. "He was freaking out 'cause he'd lost it [the deposit bag]. He asked me if I had seen it in any of the carts. I hadn't seen it, but I told him I'd look for it."
Both continued the search. Parks soon located the deposit bag and then the owner. "I hunted him down and gave it to him, and he was excited and happy to have it back," Parks said. "I was just glad to get it back to him."
"That kid saved my life, man. He really did," Infanti said. "Everything was in that bag," he said, thinking of what he stood to lose. Having just opened Church Street Subs near Freds, Infanti might have had to re-key his whole shop––something he could hardly afford while already shouldering start-up costs.
"Not a penny missing," Infanti said. "That was one honest kid."
Infanti said he offered Parks a modest reward. "He said, 'I can't take this. I can't take this'," Infanti recalled. "I said, you take it. It's better than losing everything."
Oddly enough, a similar thing happened at the same place just days later. Kroger employee, 17-year-old Jonah Chizmadia, found a bag of jewelry, six rings, in the Kroger parking lot.
"I was just pushing buggies into line," Chizmadia said. "I found the rings sitting in the top part of one of them and figured they were important to somebody and brought 'em up here [to Kroger management]."
"It wasn't really even a thought to do anything with them [besides turn the rings in]," Chizmadia testified. "I just found them, and they weren't mine. I brought them in."
In this case, finding the rightful owner was a challenge and required some sleuthing. Each ring wore a paper tag bearing a different name. The bag that held the rings also contained a business card from Elite Jewelry, a shop across Highway 515 from Kroger.
Kroger management took the rings to Elite, hoping Elite personnel would recognize the jewelry and know the owner. That is when Elite's Marchael Pugh became involved.
Combined value of the rings amounted to about $5,500 Pugh said. "They had been found the night before in the [Kroger] parking lot by this young gentleman," she noted. "He worked there. He turned them in."
The found rings fit the hand of a woman, and one ring was a University of Georgia class ring, Pugh said. The class ring had a woman's name engraved inside. Assuming this was the maiden name of the ring owner, Pugh contacted the UGA Alumni Association and came up with the owner's present name and contact information.
As it turned out, the lord of the rings was an elderly lady who had tagged the treasured keepsakes with names of loved ones she meant to receive them after her demise.
The Elite business card packed along with the rings was about a year and a half old, Pugh said. The owner placed the card with the rings that long ago when she came into Elite for an estimate on a repair to one of them, Pugh explained. But that work was never done, so the owner's name did not come up in Elite's computer.
When the rings turned up, the owner had not yet discovered they were missing, Pugh said. That made Chizmadia's action all the more important.
"He could have very easily pocketed it, and she wouldn't have had a clue where she lost them," Pugh said. Pugh is the person who brought the whole jewelry caper to the attention of the Progress.
"I wanted to make sure he [Chizmadia] got acknowledgement for his conduct," she explained. "It's the right thing he did, and that's why I wanted him to have the acknowledgement, I guess––and to say all of our kids aren't bad."
Chizmadia said after the return of the rings, the owner tried two or three times to contact him at the grocery store, but he was in school each time. She finally left him a note and a reward, he said. Later their paths crossed at a check-out lane.
"Are you Jonah?" he remembers the lady asking. "Thanks so much," she told him. "Those rings were family heirlooms and worth more to me than they're actually worth." Pugh said one of the recovered rings was a diamond solitaire that once belonged to the owner's mother.
Chizmadia downplayed any honor deserved. "It wasn't anything big really," Chizmadia commented. "It's just what I've always done. That's just how I was raised up. It's the way I've always been. I'm not gonna take something that's not mine."
Parks gave similar testimony. "That's the way my parents raised me," he said. Honest work is the way to success, he maintains. "You respect it better if you earn it," Parks said. "I'd rather earn the money than win it or have it given to me. You appreciate it more if you earn it. That's the way I was raised."
Chizmadia said he has been working somewhere since the age of 13. Parks' job with Kroger is his first. Both young men are high schoolers aiming for college. Chizmadia hopes to study at Georgia Tech. Parks said he doesn't know yet what college he will attend or what he will study, but he's going. I asked him about his favorite subject in school. "I like history," Parks said. "History's my favorite."
I couldn't help wondering if Parks had ever read about Abraham Lincoln walking some distance as a storekeeper to right an error he made making change. Perhaps Parks has, being a Millennial gentleman of similarly demonstrated character. |
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| PHOTO BY JEFF WARREN |
| Jonah Chizmadia rolls in a line of carts from the Kroger parking lot. His honesty restored some heirloom jewelry to its rightful owner. |
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