7 Things That Will Ruin Your Day

(originally posted on postgradproblems.com) Our generation (that is, of the Gen Y persuasion) gets a lot of flack for being self-absorbed, entitled, and addicts of instant gratification. Fair enough. I’m not going to defend any of those stereotypes – not today, anyway. In fact, I’m going to expose our dark side even more with this list of things that can, will, and have ruined a lot of millennials’ days.

Instagram won’t refresh or fails to upload your new post.

You worked really hard on filtering the shit out of that picture – if you do how I do, you ran it through two photo apps, minimum. Not only that, but don’t even get you started on the astonishingly clever, one-liner caption you wrote to go along with it. When Instagram decides to act like a testy teenage girl who won’t reload or “fails” to upload your picture, you want to chuck your phone across the room and give up on life altogether. You can’t focus on anything else. Nothing is nearly as important. You won’t be able to function until Instagram stops torturing you. What is life without instantaneous likes and appreciation for great filtering?

Your Facebook status gets no likes.

Could there be anything more embarrassing? Here you are, an avid ‘booker, just doing your part to keep the interest and fun alive for your fellow ‘booker “friends,” and you get NO likes? Or worse, maybe TWO? Sure, you know it’s not your best work – nothing will ever surmount an “it’s official – moving to Chicago!” or “we’ve been married for a year and are already bored and got knocked up!” announcement, but your new status is FUNNY and INSIGHTFUL and you’ll be damned to see it go unappreciated. So, you do what any normal, egotistical and insecure person would do and delete it. Duh.

Gchat is down.

Oh. Holy. Jesus. This situation truly will send any stereotypical millennial into a deep state of depression, desperation, and helplessness. A day at the office without Gchat is what you’d imagine the isolation cell in a prison to feel like, or worse, forgetting your phone at home (THE HORROR!). So when Gmail fails us (which, to be fair, is so incredibly rare because they’re perfect), they fail everyone everywhere. Getting into work and signing into Gchat happens at the same time as or maybe even before you open your work email. And, sure, if you were to consolidate the actual minutes that you’re actually having an actual conversation with a Gchat buddy, it may be an hour of your day. Usually, it’s a broken up stream of consciousness that involves an equal amount of “brb, meeting” and “hang on” from both parties. But just knowing it’s there and your friends are instantly accessible makes life worth living M-F, 9-6 (I work in advertising).

Gchat isn’t an option.

Nope. This could almost be worse than Gchat just not working for the day. Because it’s right there – your iChat buddy list or minimized Gmail screen are fully active, beckoning to you. The iChat icon bops up and down 12 times, displaying 12 red notifications. The minimized Gmail screen flashes incessantly: “emmasthing says…” WHAT? WHAT DOES SHE SAY? I CAN’T CHECK BECAUSE MY BOSS IS SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO ME IN THIS MEETING. This, my friends, is true agony. You try to slyly check it and type back, but your slow, methodic, awkward typing draws more attention. Plus, if you’re anything like me and have no control over your facial expressions, you’re bound to blow your cover by reacting to something your friend just wrote you. But if you don’t read their messages and write them back immediately, you’ve missed your chance to be in the “now” of their lives and will most likely never speak to them again. Ever.

Group texting.

When you’re in a great mood, you’ll read and respond to every single person’s thoughts and jokes via the group text. You’re engaged, you’re listening, and if it weren’t for this group text, your day would be meaningless and deafeningly quiet.

However, when you’re not in the mood, there’s never been a worse concept in the world than group texting. You are forced to put your phone on silent and even do away with the vibration alert. Between the never-ending parade of pointless and counter-productive meetings, you run back to your phone only to find you’ve missed 86 texts. 86. And worse than that? Not one is from anyone outside of that group text. All 86 came from your bored, terrible friends.

But, of course, being away from your precious phone baby for at least an hour and coming back to zero texts is just as painful. Thusly why, when the mood is right, you embrace the group text with loving thumbs.

Fresh groceries gone bad.

We’ve all done it. Go to the store having just been paid, and load up on an appealing and large amount of groceries. We stockpile fresh produce like we’re actually going to stay in every night that week and create dishes Ina Garten would approve of and maybe even consider making for Jeffrey. But, as the week progresses, we quickly conclude that we weren’t thorough in our thought-process, and are too busy to make use of any of the food items we invested in this week. So, come Sunday, we chuck lettuce with pinkish hues, soggy and slimy cucumbers, and full half-gallons of milk that we swore we’d use for cereal every morning this week.  We’ll always have enough pasta and other dry goods to feed a small city, but the chances of having fresh anything to pair with these are slim (note: week-old pesto is doable. You’ll just fart… a lot).

The Internet being down as a whole.

Forget it. Done. Worst nightmare come to life. Don’t expect much from us in this situation, other than panic and confusion. Just hold us and only talk to us to let us know it says “LTE” in the upper left corner of our phone.

God, we are so sad, aren’t we?