Parent Urged to Not Call Teen Daughter's Boss Over Pay Raise: 'a Snowflake'

A mother has taken to Mumsnet to ask if she is being unreasonable for wanting to contact her 16-year-old daughter's employer. Eighty-four percent of 1,275 Mumsnet users voted that the mother was being unreasonable in her desire to get in touch with her coffee shop her daughter was working in due to their refusal to give her a pay raise.

In the post, user Bunnyfuller explains how her daughter recently got her first job as a barista in a coffee shop, "She was given her contracts to sign a few weeks ago, and given an employee handbook. In it it says pay should go up once 'customer trained' and again when barista trained. She's definitely completed the assessments for both of these, and when she asked the shop manager about the raise as laid out in the handbook, the manager said 'oh, I think that's wrong, that book is from last year'. Nothing since. I've said to DD to ask for the most current handbook, but immediately got bellowed at for hassling. She just says she'll quit if her pay doesn't go up."

She explains she would like to get to the bottom of it to try combat the "widespread exploitation of these kids starting out, her friend got similarly underpaid by a chain garden center, and she just quit."

Despite the high percentage of people supporting the mother, many users urged her not to follow through with her fancy. User HamiltonFan1 commented, "YABU. Please don't do this to you DD, how embarrassing for the both of you." Another user Quirrelsotherface said, "And this is why we have a whole generation of snowflakes."

Will the rift between baby boomers and Generation Z's ever be fixed? It would appear not. Generation Z is the name for people born between 1995 and 2012, according to the Pew Research Center, while baby boomers are those born between 1946 and 1964. It would seem that it is a popular notion that the younger generations want to do less for more, complain about their situations and demand benefits, with less respect for hierarchies that previous generations, hence the term snowflake suggesting that they are overly sensitive.

Opinion widely differs on whether snowflake is a legitimate term for younger workers, while the Office of Communications in the U.K. last year added the term to its list of offensive words, a study from 2019 found that 'Generation Snowflake' are allegedly more flaky than their older counterparts.

The study, undertaken by researchers at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, the study included more than 1,000 university undergraduates and 724 other people from a range of age groups and found that older generations teenagers and young adults both "believe and react negatively" to the idea that they are more entitled and self-absorbed than other generations.

User Doingprettywellthanks said, "Has it occurred to you op that your daughter hasn't passed the assessment. Hence the 'bellowing' at you when you suggested contacting them."

User PinkiOcelot commented, "I totally get where you're coming from and why you want to call, but you can't really. It's down to your DD to sort."

User DenholmElliot1 wrote, "YABU - Your role as a parent is to teach HER to deal with things, not deal with them yourself."

Newsweek was not able to verify the details of the case.