Trevor Laffan: TikTok generation should walk in our grandparents’ shoes...
I have enough interaction with social media as it is, and I didn’t need any more. I kept telling him that, but he persisted, and, in the end, he wore me down.
I am now a fully-fledged member of the TikTok community, but I have no idea what I’m doing.
While fooling around with it the other day, I came across a video of a young woman complaining about her work-life balance after she got her first 9-to-5 position in New York since leaving college.
She was clearly upset and, speaking through the tears, she complained about how her long daily commute to and from the office was leaving little time for anything else. The video went viral on the app, racking up an impressive 47 million views.
The woman suggested that working remotely would solve her problem, as would affordable rent closer to her office. “If I was able to walk to work, it’d be fine,” she said, adding later: “Nothing to do with my job at all… Being in the office 9-to-5, like, if it was remote, you’d get off at 5, and you’re home and everything’s fine.”
Instead, she described her normal commuting day: “I get on the train at 7:30 and I don’t get home till, like, 6.15 earliest.”
After her commute, she doesn’t have the time or energy to cook dinner or work out. She also wondered: “How do you have friends? How do you have time for, like, dating? Like, I don’t have time for anything, and I’m like so stressed out.
“There’s no way I’m gonna be able to afford living in the city right now, so that’s off the table.”
Not all those commenting on her situation were understanding of her plight.
One guy wrote: “Oh, princess… I’m sorry you had to commute and work and have a job and everything - it’s like so extra!”
Another one commented: “Recent college grad has breakdown over working a job. We’re doomed.”
Another wrote: “Gen Z girl finds out what a real job is like.”
That story is in sharp contrast to another article that caught my eye recently.
It concerned a lady called Margaret (Maggie) Lynch, from Glenflesk in Co. Kerry. She was described as a matriarch of her time, a powerful career woman, mother, wife, and community leader.
She worked as a national schoolteacher in Kerry from 1911 until 1956, and between 1914 and 1934 she and her husband William had 17 children - 12 boys and five girls.
Their offspring would create their own unique position in life, with one son becoming a priest, three joining the Christian Brothers, and two daughters opting for life as nuns.
At one point, six of her children were in her class.
Maggie never complained and treated each day as its own separate challenge. In all kinds of weather, she would walk the three miles to Knocknabro every morning, with whatever child was of school-going age.
When she was teaching in Raheen - 10 miles away - she left the house on Sunday in a pony and trap and returned the following Friday evening.
Maggie was an amazing woman, to have all those children while still working. There was no maternity leave or career breaks in those days either.
She delivered hundreds of babies during her lifetime in an era when life wasn’t easy. She actually met my wife before I did because she delivered her too.
My grandmother worked from the 1920s through to the late 1960s, and in those early years she had to get a launch from Spike to Cobh whenever duty called.
It didn’t matter what the weather was like, when she got the call, she had to travel. I imagine there were times when she had to negotiate rough seas, high winds, and torrential rain.
She would have received many soakings until she moved to Cobh where life was a little easier.
She still carried on with her work while at the same time raising seven children.
My grandmother was a tough lady and my memory of her in her later years is that of a stern, formidable woman.
We don’t know the exact number of births she attended during her long career, even though she recorded details of them all in a series of diaries. She noted the days and times of the births, the conditions at the time, the weight of the babies and who was present.
They would have made interesting reading today, but unfortunately, they didn’t survive.
My mother told me that my grandmother was in dispute with a government department later in her life over pension entitlements. The exact nature of the dispute was never made clear to me, but it must have been a serious issue for her because at some point, in a fit of pique, she took the cover off the stove in the kitchen and chucked all the diaries into the fire.
My grandmother worked for more than 40 years, and she obviously had a grievance with how her work was being valued by the State.
Setting fire to the diaries was the action of an angry woman, and it took a lot to get her gander up.
Imagine the hoo-ha if the lady in New York had to use a pony and trap to get about.
App?
