Talking across the gap | Generations chat about stereotypes, cluelessness and cleavage

Now that the country has four generations of women in the workplace, the stereotypes are piling up faster than to-do items in an overworked middle manager's inbox.

According to the latest lore, today's youngest workers are a bunch of midriff-baring, self-entitled whiners who demand constant praise. By contrast, their midlife counterparts are workaholic technophobes unlikely to hold open for younger women the doors they had to beat down themselves.

To hear what those in the trenches think, we invited eight Seattle area women ranging from age 26 to 63 to lunch. Excerpts from their conversation follow.

Meet the panel:

Chrystal Santoyo, 26, Seattle, administrative assistant, Art Institute of Seattle.

LaQuinda Williams, 26, Seattle, assistant financial planner for a major fashion retailer.

AnaLuisa Orantes, 30, Tukwila, computer records specialist, Seattle University Law School.

Natasha Jones, 35, Seattle, communications manager for King County.

Julia Sheppard, 40, Bellevue, senior technical writer at Vidiator, a high-tech startup.

Elizabeth Moberg, 45, Seattle, a principal at Mercer Human Resource Consulting.

Cindy Domingo, 53, Seattle, community activist, chief of staff for King County Councilmember Larry Gossett.

Ann Jarvis, 63, Edmonds, vice president of safety and education, Associated Builders & Contractors of Western Washington.

They say the stereotypes aren't all bunk ...

LaQuinda, 26: I agree with some of the stereotypes but not necessarily in a negative way. For example, I worked with this older woman, whom I loved, and I found myself always being very eager and driven. And she was just like, "In time, all good things come." And so I had to learn how to work with that. Because we're taught now in school, "Go for that information, seek it out, and when they say there is no more, dig in."

Natasha, 35: I've been the eager beaver, and I still am. But you do have to figure out how to work with different work styles. I usually discount it as that, rather than, "God, what an old bag. She's holding me back."

Chrystal, 26: I think there is competition at times between generations. But I think it depends on what field you're in. If you're in a field where you're constantly competing, you're not going to help other women.

They bare all on the matter of office attire:

Elizabeth, 45: Sometimes younger women don't get certain things. You don't wear sweats or flip-flops in the office. "Business casual" doesn't mean what you would wear at home.

Chrystal: Coming into the workforce I thought you've got to be dressy, you've got to look really put together and polished. I liked wearing my heels. I would always do my makeup, like full foundation, powder, the whole thing. It's the things that you would do if you were going out on a date.

Elizabeth: Sexy instead of office-appropriate — That's what I see in a lot of younger women who are just starting out.

Chrystal: ... what got me to change ... it was just the comments I would get, catty comments from other women. Like, "Oh, those are some really tall heels! Oh, are you going to be comfortable in those?" ... For me and my friends, we like looking cute. We have the energy and the time to do it, and we would like to do it. But a lot of times we can't do it because people say, "You don't need to look like that." For us, it's boring.

Natasha: I'm kind of straddling the generations. I have felt like I'm the prude sometimes with our younger employees. I'll go home and complain to my husband, "God, what is the deal with the hooker chic they're wearing?" It's this whole Cosmo magazine "You can wear this to work or out, just by changing a necklace." And I'm like, "No, you need to pull your skirt down." It's like, I have way too intimate a knowledge of your cleavage.

Some say younger people demand praise for every little thing ...

AnaLuisa, 30: They've always grown up with a lot more feedback, getting praise, getting a lot more hands-on. Whereas maybe Gen X was left more to their own devices while their parents were like, "That's cool, we're going to follow our bliss."

Ann, 63: They would do something and say, "See what I did, see what I did!" They're doing what they're supposed to be doing and doing it well, but why every five minutes do we have to have this "see what I did!?" ... It just wears you out after a while.

...but when it comes to techology, the clueless shoe's on the other foot

Chrystal: I work with three women. One's 35, one's 49 — which is about my mom's age. The other is 47. When it comes to technology, I feel like they ask me for a lot of help: "How do you work Excel? I'm trying to download this. Can you scan this? What's a PDF? What's a JPEG?" It's almost like I'm mentoring them.

AnaLuisa: In a previous job that I had, (one) woman was like, "Why do we have to change? Why? Why?!" There's that kind of emotional reaction to change, whereas my age range and a little bit younger, we're used to technology changing, to change for change sake, or evaluating a system and seeing what's going to work better. I change my phone my every year. Like, "Oh, this can do this now? Sweet! I want it!"

Ann: I do not accept change for change ... It's like, "Wait a minute. Let me understand why you think this is such a wonderful, big thing." And then I'll either accept it or I'll maybe — probably in their eyes — dig in my heels and stay stodgy.

Speaking of mentorship...

Julia, 40: I've always attached myself to an older woman in the office. Mostly because I've worked in a lot of really politically charged technical environments and older women seemed to know how to sail through that more calmly ...

Cindy, 53: In the type of community activism that I was involved with, there wasn't an older generation of women that I could ask, "How would you do this type of work?" The older generation was much more politically conservative. It was kind of like, figure out your own life, figure out how to do it yourself and figure it out with your other peers.

And then also in terms of my job, it's such a highly politically charged atmosphere (with) competitiveness and a lot of confidentiality, that it's hard to go to other people to open up.

Both younger and older women need friendship to be good mentors or colleagues ...

Cindy: Even just terming it "mentorship," it wasn't really that, it was a friendship. Then out of the friendship grew a relationship out of which the younger woman could ask for guidance ...

At one point there was a formal mentorship program (at work). And it just didn't work because there wasn't that friendship ... I have two children, I have a full-time job, lots of obligation. And so that friendship has to mean something to me for me to say that this is a young woman that I'm going to invest my time ...

Julia: I get a lot of my pleasure from my friendships at work. I don't think it's a matter of, "do I have an obligation to anyone else?" But I do like helping other people so I can have a good relationship and maybe they'll help me. And I think that is because we're women.

Is it up to older women to hold the door open for younger women?

Ann: I don't know that it's necessarily up to us. I think it's hard-wired in our genes to make things better as females, whether we're in the workplace or we're at home. As far as the men are concerned, they've had mentorships forever. They have been told from the time they were little boys how they were going to do this, how they were going to work, and guided. Women were — at least in my generation, and I think still in some of the other generations — you're going to be nurturing, you're going to play together, you're going to help each other. Which is a little bit different than the way boys are raised. I don't know that it's good or bad. I think that's just how it is.

Cindy: I think especially for women of color, it's important for other women of color to open new doors for them ... . It's still a big struggle — I see in high levels of government — for women of color to get there. Even in a liberal — well, especially in a liberal town like Seattle — there's still on our floor of legislative aides ... hardly any people of color. But I also worry about young African American males (lacking those opportunities) ...

Besides, male mentors have certain drawbacks...

Chrystal: I prefer to have a woman because there is that stigma that if you're close to a male coworker, it's, "OK, what's going on there?" I've had things come up where I went out to lunch and people raised their eyebrows and I had to slow down the relationship with that male mentor. This was after the heels.

They differ in their views of work/life balance...

Elizabeth: I think that the women who are entering the workforce now are a little bit more grounded and more realistic in terms of setting boundaries between work and life, and I admire that. I think for a lot of women in their forties like me, and older, (it was) like, "You've got to be a supermom and a superworker and better than the men and have bigger shoulders ... "

Julia: I started with a succeed-or-bust kind of mentality. ... . I missed a promotion because I stayed home for six months with my daughter, and (my manager) was explicit about it: "We're not going to promote you, you took six months off.' That was a real eye-opener for me. I worked really hard for that promotion, and I really deserved it. She didn't have kids at the time ... She had twins about three years ago, and she said, "I can't believe I treated you the way I did." ... I was a single mom for five years, and it cost me a lot to not have gotten that promotion.

LaQuinda: In my group of friends — they range from 22 up to 37 — we're all starting to realize that you can't do both, as previous generations thought. Something's got to give. And so I'm starting to see a lot of my friends are just choosing their careers (over motherhood). And they're married. And their husbands are fine with that.

It's great that you have the opportunity to do all of those things, but can you actually do them and be successful 100 percent of the time — especially when a lot of people now are single mothers and trying to do it on their own?

Cindy: In our little section (at work), the thinking's kind of the opposite. I had my children late in my life at 36 and 38, but the young women that work with me want children now at 30 or before 30. And the conversation always came back to if you had a support network. I was fortunate because I had a large supportive family ... I think it is possible to have both, but I think it's (a question of) "what are your expectations of both?"

Which brings up the question, how do you define success?

AnaLuisa: Work can't be everything unless you work in something that you're absolutely passionate about. I work to pay the bills. I enjoy what I do, but it's not necessarily my passion. And for me to feel successful, I think I'd want to be successful in my passions, as well as have a family at some point.

Natasha: I'm a Gen Xer, so I'm right between the Boomers and Gen Y. Early in my career, I was very career-driven. Now that I'm older, I've reached a realization ... I'm going to work hard, you're going to get 110 percent out of me. But I'm not going to kill myself to do it because I know if I drop dead you're going to be like, "Hello, temp service? Yeah, can we get somebody in here to take her place? Great, thanks. OK, can we move her body? Thanks."

A job helps you pay the rent and buy your food, but it's not who you are, which is the way that I feel that it was for the earlier generations.

Ann: For the Boomers, it was.

Elizabeth: It can feel like a weakness to admit "I might need some time off to take care of something personal." I think that is a little bit more of a generational thing. You had to be successful, or you were nothing. Some of it's just having to claw your way up the corporate ladder and knowing that if you missed some meeting you're not going to get the good assignments and that's just going to trash your career for 10 years. It is very, very hard to step back and say, "It's OK to not be number one — you can be number 30." Because it just doesn't feel like number 30 is an option.

Natasha: Whereas my generation is like, "Who's counting? Who cares where I am on the rungs of the ladder?"

Michelle Goodman, author of "The Anti-9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube," can be reached at www.anti9to5guide.com