The emperor is nekkid. I don’t wish to be unkind, but I don’t believe that Generation Y is any more special than anyone else who came before. (Okay, I’ve come out and said it; send your hate e-email! Akismet will catch it!)

At the same time, I’ve encountered several situations in which a Boomer excused the misconduct or poor performance of a Generation Y’er with an apologetic “He/she’s young.” Since when is age an excuse for failure in the workplace? We all make mistakes, and when anyone errs, they need to be held accountable, they need to fix it, and they need to learn from it and move on, not be excused with an apology about their category.

I’m wondering why I don’t see more “How to Manage Women” posts? More “How to Manage Your LGBT Workforce”? Or “How to Attract and Retain your Asian Employees?” Why not? Well, for starters, many of us in those categories would find such articles insulting and offensive. But for some reason, talking about generational differences feels safe and benign, while forays into gender, culture, and ethnic differences feels like shaky ground. Why is that? And does it make any sense?

But if you think about it, there’s not much difference; both approaches involve generalizations, lumping people together in large categories which may not fit the individual. So: I’m female, generation X, bi, foreign-born: do you have a category for all that? I imagine not, because I’m me, an individual, not a box or a category or a label.

Let’s all stop looking for a simplistic solution and start treating people as people rather than as categories, whatever those categories might be.