This is a story that has spawns headlines in Australia for some days.  And you can really get an idea of what happened just reading those headers:

Day 1: Gen Ys have an “inflated” sense of self-importance and are no longer willing to do unpaid work, the boss of Muffin Break says.

Day 2: The world has reacted after claims emerged from the boss of Muffin Break that Gen Y are too obsessed with social media to work for free.

Day 3: Muffin Break GM Natalie Brennan has apologised for comments about Millennials and unpaid work that went viral over the weekend.

So, what were the comments? Here is an excerpt from the first article on news.com.au
Natalie Brennan wrote:

“There’s just nobody walking in my door asking for an internship, work experience or unpaid work, nobody,” Ms Brennan said. “You don’t see it anymore. Before that people would be knocking on your door all the time, you couldn’t keep up with how many people wanted to be working. In fact I’d run programs because there were so many coming in.” Last year she had one intern in marketing and “that was it”. “I can’t even remember the one before that, six, seven, eight years ago,” she said. “In essence, they’re working for free, but I can tell you every single person who has knocked on my door for an internship or work experience has ended up with a job. Every single person, because they back themselves.”

Ms Brennan, who has been with franchise giant Foodco for 18 years, says that kind of passion is lacking these days. “One fellow I hired, he was underqualified, completely not the right person, but he rang me every two weeks for six months,” she said. “He said, ‘I will do anything, I’ll start at ground level.’ After six months I hired him, because you can’t teach passion and enthusiasm. He worked for five or six years and moved on to a high role in another company.” These days, she notices candidates often walk into interviews “thinking they’re better than the job”, immediately asking, “How long before I get my promotion? When is the first payrise?”

“I think everybody thinks social media is going to get them ahead somewhere,” she said. “There’s definitely that inflated view of their self-importance because they have X amount of Instagram followers or this many likes. That’s dangerous.” And that flows through into performance management. “It’s like, I’m your manager and your mentor but not your cheerleader,” she said. “Even giving people constructive criticism about how they can learn or improve, it’s like someone is ‘unfriending’ them. It’s like a personal attack. This ability to learn and grow through working in an environment, people don’t want to do it anymore.” She feels like young people want to be applauded or named “staff member of the month for doing their job”. “Great, you did your job, so you get to keep your job,” she said.


During the weekend as this became viral many summarized her views as basically saying people are entitled because there are not as many willing to work for free and bringing up that people waking up to value their work and expect being paid for it is actually a good thing. apparently also some digging revealing possibly underpaying. So the GM had to issue an apology and clarify some things regarding what she was saying:

Natalie Brannen wrote:
“I don’t expect anyone to work unpaid and Foodco Group policy is, and has always been, that all employees including interns, employed either directly or through our brands are paid according to relevant awards.

“The unpaid work I referred to was supervised programs run through schools, TAFEs or universities, which provide valuable gained experience to people before they enter the workforce full-time. I want to apologise for any misunderstanding or upset caused by my comments.”