Flounder Mag Issue #1

FLOUNDER Every fail has a tale

Millennials are mad

as hell...

April Issue

...and they're not gonna take it anymore

FLOUNDER Is the realisation that failure should be celebrated.

That good can be born from the existential journey.

From the naff job.

From missing the bus, getting dumped on a Monday, and choosing egg and cress.

A magazine exploring real life in all its distressing, average glory.

Follow us on socials: @flounder_mag

Contributors; Polly Angelova, Harriet Argent, Rebecca Astill, Ellie Ball, Chloe Coules, Jack

Cousins, Laura Dazon, Jess Downey, Jack Fittes, Jacob Moreton, Anoushka Nawaz-Khan, Tereza Nováková, Josh Ong, Ellen Redman, Eve Rowlands, Matt Taylor, Annie Wheatland-Clinch, Kellie Williams

Our inability to perfect the art of life has been presented on a giant pandemic-shaped platter.

Whether you have inevitably failed to dominate the world by 30, killed most of your houseplants, harboured an army of unmatching socks, stuck a pancake to the roof or used a bus stranger like an agony aunt - failure is universal to the human experience. But where is it in the media? Where is it on socials? Failure has been hidden like a dirty taboo. It is about time that stopped.

Starting with the relentless tide of toxic productivity, carbon copy influencers and the unrealistic expectations of social media - our mission is to rewrite the narrative around failure.

So get ready for an unfiltered deep dive into the world of botching it up and a handbrake turn away from our goal-obsessed society.

This is a space to not only feel free to fail, but to celebrate it; at the end of the day, we’re all just floundering our way through life anyway!

Ellie Ball

CONTENTS

Dear Reader,

4

The team that can’t or F s i F A-Z: er d n u o Fl

6 10 bDid I learn to ak e?

lda e Z w fail Ho o t e 12 taught m

13

What a way to make a living

18

il, Work, Fa at pe e R , k r o W

20‘Bad’ bisexuals ny Ago t Aun

22

The team that Can’t ANNIE Wheatland-Clinch

“I can’t do the worm.”

ELLIE Ball

“I can’t drive.”

JOSH Ong

LAURA Dazon

KELLIE Williams TERRY Novakova

CHLOE Coules

“I can’t speak any foreign languages.”

JACK Cousins

JACOB MoretoN

BECCA astill

ANOUSHKA Nawaz-Khan

HARRIET Argent

EVE Rowlands

“I can’t ice skate.”

“I can’t bake.”

POLLY Angelova

MATT Taylor

JACK Fittes

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JESS Downey

FRE Q U E NT FA I L S

Great Flexpectations

Vegan Baking

The food bloggers of Instagram will have you convinced that vegan baking is a piece of cake.

They will try and trick you into thinking that on your first attempt you can turn plants into a cake that looks like it was made in Paris’ finest patisserie. This could not be further from the truth.

Vegan baking is a minefield. You must skilfully substitute most of the staple ingredients in your recipe, and through trial and error, determine how to adapt your favourite recipes. In reality, this leads to more unrisen sponges and soggy bottoms than you can count.

I have been a vegan for a few years

Words by Chloe Coules

and baking my whole life. Like many new vegans, when I made the switch, I thought baking would be easy with all the substitutes on the market these days.

After many trials and tribulations, I have concluded that easy vegan baking is a myth.

Only in writing this article have I

“

Vegan baking is a minefield

discovered that my cakes weren’t even vegan after all thanks to one ingredient that you won’t believe isn’t herbivorefriendly: sugar.

How is sugar not vegan you ask? Well, some brands decide to use charred and powered animal bones to make their white sugar, whilst others put egg white in their icing sugar.

So, it’s back to the drawing board as I attempt to make my first 100% vegan cake.

The only silver lining is that I get to start the whole trial and error process again, and that means I have a legitimate excuse to eat all the cakes that are too ugly for the world to see.

shiny and new. But do not be disheartened! There is hope for them (and you) yet. At this parole hearing, I am going to scramble through the ways that you can revive your houseplants as a weak attempt of redeeming my own self worth.

For goodness sake, pay attention.

What the self-proclaimed internet professionals say: Put that plant on a diet!

HOW TO...

Revive your malnourished green friends Anoushka Nawaz-Khan shares her most professionally approved methods for reviving dying houseplants

I

am a serial plant killer and I’m ready to change my ways.

Let’s be real, there is no feeling more gratifying than bringing a new leafy companion into your living space. Full of the inspirations of life, we believe we will nurture our new babies to their most vibrant forms. In the same way that we make these promises to ourselves, we often fail spectacularly. Cue the forlorn gaze upon a rather limp, sallow and underwhelming sprog that we love a great deal less then we did when it was

(Do not overwater) According to Good Earth, this is the number one cause of death of our plants. It seems that in our initial bid to keep things green, we end up, in fact, making them yellow, limp and a bit mouldy. Hang your head in shame! If the soil is damp and there is excess water in the plant pot, you’re going to need to repot it in dryer soil and trim off any swollen and angry looking roots. Get down to your local park and get digging. Experts also recommend ‘misting’ your plants instead of pouring water directly over them to avoid first-degree murder. So just empty out that bottle of £5 bathroom cleaner you never use and poor some watery goodness in that!

Don’t be needy, let them go!

(Needs a bigger pot) Sometimes you just have to accept that these plants need room to grow - we all need space sometimes. If the leaves are getting crispy and fall off when touched, check the roots aren’t growing densely around the soil. If they are, get a bigger pot.

Not too big though because that will make them die too. You know, just bigger.

Trim those leafy boys!

(Time for a pruning) The oldest trick in the book. Cut off any dying or withered leaves and stems to allow room for regrowth. Nobody knows why it works, but it does. I bet your Grandma’s told you to do it a dozen times.

Failing all of this, just talk to your plants’ spirits. Very reliable internet sources advise this and the plants seem to love it.

Google it.

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E L ‘F’ is for K J R Q P S Y X W V U F E D C AB L K J I H G R Q P O N M X Y X w

In the spirit of celebrating life in all its chaos and coffee spills, here is your A-Z guide to get you laughing in the face of failure Words by Elle Redman

uccess is good, but failure is better.

When we are young, we are taught to avoid the ‘F’ word. From flopping a test or falling off a bike, to botching a job interview or fumbling over words on a first date, we are all familiar with the concept of ‘failure’. Yet somehow, the word remains off limits – dirty, dreaded and maybe even feared.

On our worst of days, fuzzy wishful thinking whispers ‘failure is a natural ingredient to success’.

And while the phrase evokes an ironic eyeroll or a shudder-down-the-spine, what if there’s an element of truth to be found in its meaning?

What if failure itself was something to be inspired by? What if facing failure head-on led us in the direction of discovery?

Failure, though unavoidable, often costly and sometimes embarrassing, has a discrete and unassuming way of making life a little better and brighter. At least, it certainly creates a great story or two.

By laughing at life’s redirections, hiccups and mishaps, we can learn to wear failure as a badge of honour and like how it looks in the mirror. We can learn to make room for error and give up the suffocating idea that faultlessness is the only route we can take – as if we’re never going to

make a mess every so often, call our managers ‘mum’ by mistake (we’ve all been there), or find ourselves stuck in between the office revolving doors on our first day of work.

Now, this doesn’t mean setting out to fail, anticipating the worst or giving up before we’ve begun. In fact, it doesn’t even look like raising our hands and abandoning hope for success. Instead, it means being okay with the experiences that make us human – welcoming all that is fragile and unfinished.

While the Cambridge Dictionary plainly defines failure as “a lack of success”, on a more uplifting note, we can think of no shortage of entertaining alternatives. Therefore, in light of celebrating life in all its slip-ups (and in the spirit of not taking it too seriously) here are 26 new ways of saying the word we know so well.

Here’s to the ones who trip over their own feet in their quest for perfection; to the ones confidently pushing the doors labelled ‘pull’; to the ones standing at the intersection of ‘total mess’ and ‘work of art’; to the self-doubters and self-help naysayers… to the ones who are failing and trying again.

Put your feet up, grab a coffee and while you’re at it, try not to spill it.

FRE Q U E NT FA I L S

Flounder C

E

F

Belly up

/ˈbɛli ʌp/ - Hopelessly defeated. The idiomatic expression is based on the idea of an animal lying ‘belly up’ and is often used to describe financial failure. The first known use of the phrase was in 1880.

B

D

G

A

Glitch

Awry

/əˈrʌɪ/ - When things don’t happen the way we planned. The word is said to date back to the late 14th century and means ‘away from the usual or expected course’.

H I

Couch potato

/kaʊtʃ pəˈteɪtəʊ/ - Created by a 1970s comic artist who drew lazy characters he called ‘couch potatoes’.

Today, perfectly illustrating the reality of our lives in lockdown.

Debacle

/deɪˈbɑːk(ə)l/ - A sudden and ignominious failure. A fiasco. Deriving from French débâcle meaning downfall and disaster. In literal terms, the phrase refers to breaking up ice on a river.

J K

Epic fail

/ˈɛpɪk feɪl/ - The highest form of fail known to man. As eloquently put by the Urban Dictionary, a mistake of such monumental proportions that it requires its own term.

L

/ɡlɪtʃ/ - Deriving from Yiddish and stemming from glitsh meaning ‘glide’ or ‘slip’. The word began as technical jargon among radio and television engineers in the early 1940s. Today, the term refers to unexpected setbacks and short-lived faults.

Hiccup

/ˈhɪkʌp/ - Possibly the politest (and most British) phrase for failure.

Implosion

/ɪmˈpləʊʒ(ə)n/ - An instance of something bursting. In its early use, the term, modeled on ‘explosion’, referred to the effect of deep sea pressures.

Jumble /ˈdʒʌmb(ə)l/ - Untidy, confused, and messy. The history of this word stretches back to the 1520s and is said to be a form of onomatopoeia, linking to ‘stumble’ and ‘tumble’.

Kagagalan

The Sundanese translation of ‘failure’ and simply a very funny tongue twister.

Lemon

/ˈlɛmən/ - “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” is a saying coined by American writer, philosopher and artist, Elbert Hubbard, and is used to inspire optimism in the face of misfortune, difficulty or failure.

Flounder

/ˈflaʊndə/ - While many know Flounder to be the happy yellow guppy fish from The Little Mermaid, the word ‘flounder’, originating from Old French flondre, means to struggle clumsily in mud or water, to move awkwardly or to experience great difficulties.

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Misslyckande In case you’ve ever wondered how to say ‘failure’ in Swedish.

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F R EQUE N T F AILS

N

O

P

Q

R S 8

Ne’er-do-well

T

/ˈɛpɪk feɪl/ - The highest form of fail known to man. As eloquently put by the Urban Dictionary, a mistake of such monumental proportions that it requires its own term.

U

Odpoved

To ‘quit’, ‘cancel’ or ‘fail’ in Slovenian.

V

Palaver

/pəˈlɑːvə/ - A nautical slang word used by sailors dating back to 1733 and referring to a long talk or tedious discussion (‘palavering’). The word originates from the Portuguese palavra meaning ‘to speak’ and is now used in English to describe a ‘fuss’ or ‘bother’.

W

Quibi

Trump

/trʌmp/ - Because it’s hardly possible to talk about failure without mentioning the expert.

Ukwehluleka The Zulu translation of ‘failure’.

Vika

Imperfection, wrinkle and stain in Finnish.

Washout /ˈwɒʃaʊt/ - Originally referring to ‘calling off an event due to bad weather’. From 1902, the word was used to describe a ‘disappointing failure’.

The American video platform that crashed and burned barely six months after its launch in April 2020.

Rike

X

A ‘technical failure’ or ‘fault’ in Estonian.

Y

Schadenfreude

Z

/ˈʃɑːd(ə)nˌfrɔɪdə/ - Meaning ‘damage-joy’ in German. A gleeful moment of guilty pleasure and enjoying the mishaps of others (think You’ve Been Framed, Total Wipeout or slapstick comedy energy). As Brits, laughing at other people’s slip-ups is as much part of our culture as drinking tea and talking about the weather.

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Xilof As well as being a type of water lily, ‘xilof’ also translates to ‘fail’ in Uzbek.

Yуңышсызлык We double dare you to pronounce ‘failure’ in Tatar - a language of the Turkic family spoken in west-central Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and China.

Zombie

/ˈzɒmbi/ - Simply put, a failed human. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a zombie is someone who has no energy (how we all feel during 9am Zoom meetings).

F R EQUE NT F A ILS

Botched Buildings: Office Blocks Derelict and distasteful, Anston House is not an edifice to be proud of. So why is it that no one in Brighton can manage to tear it down?

Words by Jacob Moreton

B

righton's Anston House is famous for all the wrong reasons. The late-1960s office block is the ugliest building in Brighton, according to readers of the local newspaper.

Take one glance and you can see why: its distinctive red brick has long since faded and many of the windows are smashed through. It's an egregious late modernist blight on the neighbouring Preston Park, Brighton's largest green space.

Most sources state that Anston House was finished in 1969, although an edition of the government periodical The London Gazette suggests that by 1968 it was in use by the Sussex River Authority. By 1987 it was empty and derelict, and has been ever since.

In a 2004 poll from The Argus, an overwhelming majority voted Anston House as the city's ugliest building.

At the time the building's owner, who lived in Monaco, claimed he had plans for a £140m development, but reportedly did not follow through due to what he saw as the council's prejudice against major projects.

Throughout its history, developers have had no shortage of grand ambition for Anston House. In 2007 plans to turn the block into a multi-storey car park were refused by council planning officers.

The Br ighto

n off i c e block in need of a gl ow-up

Later that year it was bought by Brighton-based developer Bridgetown Properties for £10.5m, The Argus reported; but the controversy continued. Workmen reportedly acting on behalf of Bridgetown were caught bulldozing protected oak and beech trees on the site, said to be hundreds of years old. In 2008 further plans to remove trees were met with anger from locals. Protestors camped out on the site for seven months, until a fire broke out in one of their caravans just minutes before they were due to be evicted by bailiffs.

In 2013 another proposal, this time to build a 160-foot high tower block on the site, was rejected by the council. Since 2016 developer First Base has been seeking to demolish the block and replace it with three 15-storey towers. This time, it seems

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the council might well approve the project, despite First Base stating they intend to make only 30 of the new flats affordable, rather than the council's benchmark of 90. It remains to be seen whether this latest chapter in Anston House's story will be the last.

In our new era of remote working spurred on by the pandemic, office blocks like Anston House that used to dominate city skylines across the UK seem even less relevant than ever before. But perhaps the building serves as a reminder that what seems oppressively permanent at the time will one day become a relic we are all too ready to forget.

9

sa t L ! e d er a h a n c B C e k No a B r I u o di S D ar?

Ye

O D gs d in s an th land p g ow t u oin ve R e g d yE to ne rds b n o o io ery W t na f ev te? i e o th n pos ed sio p rr lo e o u p h sp ex e t s n it ha if a qu ic t m ha do e w o nd ut n t a p .B uo s o e Th ing s y h t ur sp Kneadless to say your bread-making photos are stressing me out

W

e have been busy in 2020. An unexpected notion during lockdown. With a surplus of never-ending time on hand, people seized the opportunity to use their newly stagnant lives to spice things up by learning new skills: languages, baking, jewellery-making.

Optimism was in the air, and motivation was soaring - so said the internet.

As real life was traded for virtual reality, we had front-row seats into the lives of friends and colleagues and their marvels and milestones achieved with this newfound time. For me, it was quite the opposite. The urge to do anything had perished, along with a tolerance for blanket optimism.

As I scrolled through Instagram in bed on my one day-off from the call centre job that had ceased to give my life any meaning and divide between work and home, I was met by a sea of virtual go-getters.

It made me nauseous.

At only 9:38am, my day successfully began with black coffee being flung over the crisp, white bed set I'd bought from Ikea a week earlier for a painful £40 in an attempt at 'adulting'; a concept I was far removed from,.

“

So, instead of making haste and bolting to the washing machine, I stewed. And scrolled. One friend had arisen at 7am to complete a 10k run. Posting her afterglow and Strava route paired with a motivational caption, I double tapped the screen. Glancing briefly at my sad, pristine trainers by the door, I resumed scrolling.

Another acquaintance - who had not previously flaunted a talent for baking - had freshly prepared cinnamon buns for breakfast with no visibly charcoaled edges. I was salivating, and jealous. I couldn't even muster up the energy to make a smoothie with my probably (rusted) NutriBullet.

Then, my screen illuminated with the pièce-de-résistance.

The most lockdown pastime to ever lockdown: sourdough.

Accompanied by hand churned butter and succulent tomatoes from their home grown vegetable patch, no doubt, it was only mid-morning and the couple in question had already prepared lunch.

The more I scrolled, ogling at pinnacles of productivity, the more negative I became. It was The Social Dilemma manifesting, dragging me into a hole of self-loathing and annoyance at those who were grabbing life by the horns and doing. Why? Because I wasn't.

It is okay to feel mad at the world

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SANITY SO L UT I O N S

Lose your phone in your duvet and try these tips:

Couch to 5k, minus the 5k #fitspo

Kudos to them for getting a seemingly successful head start on the day, month, hell, even in life. But this productivity dangled in front of my face was not encouraging; it became a catalyst. I burrowed into an everdeepening hole of 'I'm not doing enough.'

That toxic anxiety then snowballs into 'I wwdo not have the right to feel bad.'

Since the pandemic began, this thinking and pressure to do more is something many of us have fallen prey to.

Talking to Glamour, Results Wellness Lifestyle nurse Emma Selby says, "Ultimately, it's an unachievable goal; no matter how productive you are, the result you are left with is a feeling of guilt for not having done 'more'."

So, it is okay to feel like you're failing because you haven't completed your Five for 5k or baked a mangled version of sourdough yet.

It is okay to feel mad at the world. It is okay to not do anything monumental, productive, or even average. Because being is still doing.

However, my one piece of advice: if you do spill coffee on white sheets...run. To the washing machine. As fast as you can. Then you can count that as your exercise for the day.

1) Rest. Set aside time in the day to go for a walk - without any technology or distraction.

2) Take an hour to do what you want to do, not what you think you need to do.

3) Take a break from social media. Social media spirals us into a vicious cycle. Seeing what others are doing > feeling like you should be doing something > feel bad > downward spiral > back to Instagram for that dopamine hit > seeing what others are doing, and so on. By removing yourself from the equation (i.e. viewer/liker/ poster) you will not feel the need to compare yourself to others who seem like they have got it all together.

4) Write your feelings down. Poetry, Dear Diary, write the next number one single... too much pressure?

5) Talk to friends and family. Explain how you feel. Open up.

6) Download a meditation app and 'Om' away.

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SAN I T Y SOLUTI ON S

How One Video Game Taught Me To Handle Failure

F

ailure isn’t my strong suit. Anything remotely challenging triggers my fight-or-flight response, and in most cases, I will fly rather than fight. This mindset is not only detrimental to my wellbeing, but it also prevents me from progressing at things I’m interested in. To this day, only one tool helped me tackle my inability to handle failure healthily: video games.

We all deal with failure differently. There are as many stories about overcoming personal challenges through video games as there are people playing them. For that reason, some will find competitive games stimulating while others cannot handle the pressure. In particular, one game takes the focus out of winning and can help you change the way you handle failure: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

“

Breath of the Wild changed my life, giving me the freedom to do things in whatever order I wanted and still call it progress.

BOTW is a vast open-world game for Nintendo Switch, and in my opinion, it is the ideal environment to experiment with failure. When you start the game, your character is so weak and vulnerable to attacks that any enemy can defeat

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Image: Nintendo Co.

In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, players learn to try, fail and try again Words by Laura Dazon you in one hit. On top of that, the game doesn’t provide you with in-depth guidance, so it’s up to you to figure out most mechanics. For an inexperienced player like me, this was soul-crushing, and after a dozen tries to kill a monster with no progress in sight, I started to get fidgety and frustrated.

I was about to call it quits when my partner asked why I wasn’t exploring another part of the game before coming back to this one since it was visibly too hard for me at the moment. After all, the game didn’t ask me to follow a linear progression. It was up to me to decide where to go and what to do.

Breath of the Wild changed my life. It afforded me the freedom to do things in whatever order I wanted and still call it progress. Where most games (and many things in life) require you to sit through failure after failure to overcome a trial, BOTW’s mechanics encourage creative solutions to problems rather than rewarding formulaic gameplay. It also doesn’t use failure as punishment, making it a consequencefree environment to learn at your own rate.

As someone who struggles with failure, BOTW helped me accept three facts: - progress is not a linear thing - failure doesn’t mean I’m doomed to be unsuccessful forever. Failure is just telling me I’m not ready yet, and that it’s okay to come back when I am - there is more than one solution to every problem. As someone who suffers from mental health issues, this helped me accept that if route A is visibly making me struggle more than most, I’m legitimate taking route B. There are no rules.

As long as I don’t hurt myself or others, what matters is I reach the end-goal Video games can help you fail at your own pace, without the consequences of failure in real life. Studies about the beneficial impact of video games on mental health are slowly but surely emerging. They show games can be beautiful pieces of art and powerful tools to guide you through your struggles. In 2020, Oxford University’s study revealed that experiences in games could play a major role in the wellbeing of players. If lockdown and the world are just too much for you to bear right now, why not give games a go? They could genuinely improve your life.

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What a Way to Make a Living

How socially conscious millennials are starting an office revolution Words by Annie Wheatland-Clinch

C A R E E R TOLLS reamy, oversensitive, self-indulgent. For years, the image painted of millennials in the workplace has been wholly negative.

The stereotype made millennials out to be underachieving and unworthy workers.

However, recent research by Deloitte has revealed that these characteristics, which were once seen as failures, may be far more critical to the modern workplace than once considered. As noted by the president of the British Academy of Management, “The millennials have it right. It’s the older generation that has it wrong.”

The Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2020 has revealed what issues are most important to those born between 1981-1996.

Surveying on working life, what keeps them up at night alongside areas of improvement, they have been able to gain a firm grasp on the impetus behind the shifting millennial mindset.

From their results, there lay three common threads: mental health, the environment, and individual responsibility. These tell a compelling story for what’s to come when, or if, workplaces return back to normal.

Equally, as children and survivors of unprecedented economic and societal challenges, Deloitte also claims that millennials have thus far been able to “roll with the punches.” These have only been reinforced by the coronavirus pandemic, where positive and progressive behaviours have entered into the mainstream millennial mindset.

“

And, as figures show millennials are set to make up almost 40% of the global workforce by 2025, it’s no surprise that employers are intrigued by what keeps them ticking over. While we explore the morals and values behind this newfound ethos, we find that accommodating and embracing this change hasn’t been so easy for employers.

Your mind is a palace

According to Deloitte, 44% of millennials were stressed all or most of the time, with half of the respondents saying they believe stress is a legitimate reason to take time off from work. Mental health charity Mind released a statement last November calling for action on the “mental health emergency” brought on by the pandemic, which is having a big impact on the workplace.

According to Deloitte, millennials were the most inclined to consider mental health problems as important and stress in the workplace problematic.

Millennials crying in the toilets at work is no longer a laughing matter

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Meanwhile, Business Insider reported that, “Because of longer work hours and stagnant wages, millennials suffer from higher rates of burnout than other generations.” The walls between office and home life have simply faded away during the pandemic, leaving room for the ‘millennial burnout’ to consume the home as well as the mind.

Rachel Connery, leader of mental health support group Mad Millennials, elaborates on just how dangerous burnout can be. She says, “Such a large proportion of a millennial’s time is spent in the work environment, sometimes this outweighs the time we spend with partners and loved ones.”

As a consequence, Rachel believes it’s now more important than ever that millennials feel supported at work.

The fact is, the image of ‘snowflake’ millennials crying in the toilets at work is no longer a laughing matter.

It is indusputable that burnout is real, and yet the pressure on working millennials is only rising. In 2018, an HSE report found that 15.4 million working

days were lost to work-related stress, depression or anxiety. Despite these staggering statistics, in 2020 only 44% of millennial workers were comfortable enough with their bosses to openly admit the reasons they needed some time off.

So what is the solution?

The hope is that as mental health awareness becomes imperative to our society, it will become imperative to employers as well. No, we’re not talking David Brent acting as a “friend first, boss second.” We’re talking real wellbeing policies that are incorporated in all aspects of the workplace dynamic, from the HR offices to the production line.

Thankfully, big businesses are starting to value their tech savvy, university educated millennial employees. Two months ago, food solutions firm Unilever introduced a four-day working week to their New Zealand offices in an attempt to address toxic productivity, after employees raised concerns about feeling overwhelmed when working from home.

The pandemic has not only unearthed the mental health emergency that

plagues our society, but also how this plague has overrun our offices.

It seems the last 12 months have acted as a wake-up call for board rooms across the globe. As the burden of millennial stress in the workplace becomes normalised by those in charge, we can finally embrace our previously shunned moments of weakness.

It’s not easy being green

For years, millennials have been considered the ‘changemakers’ who will save the planet. The baby boomlets who just can’t stop blaming climate change on their elders and question why the state of the planet is so dismal. But as it turns out, Generation Why were onto something with their incessant curiosity. Becoming more eco-friendly is now one of the leading goals for businesses who want to keep their employees engaged and their PR spotless.

Deloitte’s survey revealed that 28% of millennials name climate change and protecting the environment as their top concern, while 61% of respondents claim “reducing its impact on the environment” is one of the things their employers are doing well.

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We can finally embrace our moments of weakness

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C A R E E R TOLLS “This number was 22% higher among those who intend to stay in their jobs five or more years than those looking to leave fairly soon,” claim Deloitte researchers, which they say is “a further indication that environmental stewardship influences job loyalty.”

Having an environmentally friendly working space seemed unobtainable for the last couple of decades, brushed off by the Karens of the world as idealistic and unproductive. Before the pandemic, 50% of millennials felt it was too late to repair the damage caused by global warming, but now things have changed.

A light in the darkness

According to Deloitte’s pulse survey, this figure dropped in the height of the pandemic. This suggests that the environmental impacts of the pandemic, such as lowered energy use and therefore lower levels of pollution, have given millennials hope that there is still time to save the planet.

As Zoom culture started to set in, many began to realise that driving to the office for one meeting may be unnecessary. Greener thinking when it comes to transport and time away from the traditional office environment has given building designers time to rethink the sustainability of their office spaces.

Joseph Allen, director of healthy buildings program at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health said, “Covid-19 has accelerated our corporate client’s interest in health. This is inextricably linked with work that is better for the environment.” The change incited by the pandemic has made room for millennial environmental concerns to be considered constructions start, ready for post-pandemic offices.

We hate to say I told you so, but it was bound to happen at some point.

Social justice warriors Deloitte’s report found that a strong sense of social responsibility is a growing trend amongst millennials. In fact, “75% of millennials surveyed stated that the pandemic had highlighted new issues for them and made them more sympathetic towards the needs of others in their local community and around the world.”

For a long time, millennials preaching equality and racial justice were seen as self-indulgent and delusional. However, as the world wakes up to racial injustice and begins to move towards a more equal society, millennials are pioneering these movements and raising awareness in the workplace.

In a study released in 2019, The Case Foundation revealed that, “Millennials are willing to be active about issues that affect them directly, along with being able to see themselves in the shoes of others who don’t look like them, speak the same language, have the same education, or come from the same background.”

Set to become the leaders of the global workplace by 2030, millennials are now starting to bring their social awareness into office culture, creating new standards for diversity.

Speaking about the role of the millennial in maintaining an empathetic and diverse working environment, Cindy Ikie, campaign manager for Black Lives Matter Wales, said, “Millennials have been actively campaigning within BLM Wales for greater respect of different cultures, the celebration of Black history more consistently and zero tolerance of racism in the workplace.”

Cindy believes that through engaging with activist causes on social media and connecting with people from different

“

Millennials have grown to become a more compassionate and tolerant generation

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cultures, millennials have grown to become become a more compassionate and tolerant generation than their ancestors. This filters into what millennials expect from their employers.

A 2019 PWC report revealed that, “47% of millennials prioritize diversity when considering organizations as a future employer and roughly 40% of millennial workers report diversity as tantamount to creating the ideal workplace.” The fact that Deloitte found 71% of millennials feel that employers are doing well at creating a diverse and inclusive working environment proves that their demands for a more socially conscious and inclusive workplace are slowly being met.

In the past nine months, the world has woken up to the need for a more inclusive and diverse working dynamic.

We hope that as social warriors and future corporate leaders, millennials can change the way industries approach social issues and use the lessons of 2020 to build a better working world.

Career Tolls

Discover your dream job

There’s no better time to have a quarter-life crisis than during lockdown

Start here What's your top skill?

Mansplaining

You could write a book "for Dummies"on...

Sweating profusely during a public speech

Updating LinkedIn once a year

Postman You find people scary, so you'll excel at knocking & running

through dating apps

Your future employer should offer...

You procrastinate by...

Not eating your lunch before 11AM

How do you network?

Mindlessly scrolling

Pretending to work

Breaking lockdown for a quick vacay

Online shopping

Half-day FriYAYS

What's your ideal work lunch?

Good old-fashioned nepotism

Your dad's receptionist

You'll quite happily eat your mum's packed lunches and watch others graft

Squashed cheese & chutney sarnie

..You really just want a Greggs

Government advisor

Indie cafe barista

You need someone more intelligent to write your speeches and this shows when you muck up

You love to fit an aesthetic & will find yourself in your mediocre latte art

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Scheduled crying breaks

What's your life motto?

Get in, get on, get out

Obituary writer You just want some cash and your lust for life will spice up the section

Do it for the Gram

Influencer

You are quite simple and fragile, which will make a great YouTube documentary

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Images, clockwise from top right: Fox 2000 Pictures, StudioCanal, Warner Bros., Orion Pictures

C A R EE R TOLLS

Work Fail Work Repeat The worst first days in movie history

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S

tarting a new job is just the worst, especially on your first day. It can be tricky to settle into a new place with new people, and there’s always a weird knot in the pit of your stomach that absolutely refuses to go away no matter how many deep breaths you take. Still, for most of us the day goes by without a hitch – and besides, things could always be worse, as these movies go to show.

Paddington, Paddington 2 (2017)

Everyone loves Paddington (apart from Mr Curry, that is), but the little bear just isn’t cut out for London’s working world. In order to earn some money to buy a birthday present for his Aunt Lucy, he gets himself a job in a barber’s shop. Cue razorbased shenanigans that result in poor Paddington accidentally shaving a customer’s head, trying to stick the loose hair back to said head with marmalade, and inadvertently causing the sprinkler system to drench the whole shop before he’s fired on the spot. Not an ideal start to the young bear’s working life.

2/5 burnt kernels

Andy Sachs, The Devil Wears Prada (2006) Andy’s first day at Runway fashion mag may not be the worst on this list, but it’s definitely the most relatable. New boss Miranda Priestly is an utter tyrant, absolutely refusing to get Andy’s name right and ridiculing her constantly for her lessthan-stellar fashion sense. She also seems positively offended

by Andy’s choice of footwear (which, in fairness, is a horrible pair of slip-ons), and even goes so far as to call the poor girl fat – despite her being stick-thin already! If Andy didn’t have an inferiority complex when she entered the office that morning, she certainly did on her way out.

3/5 burnt kernels

Bill Cage, Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

What’s worse than one bad first day? Thousands of them.

Military public relations officer Major Bill Cage suddenly finds himself demoted and forced onto the front line of a war against a race of alien invaders. Oh, and he has no prior combat experience. And is killed almost immediately. And then wakes up at the beginning of the previous day, and is forced to relive his death over and over again with no end in sight. Poor Bill: as bad as some first days at a new job might be, I think we can all agree that repeating them endlessly makes for a much, much worse experience.

5/5 burnt kernels

Alex Murphy, RoboCop (1987)

It’s hard to imagine a worse first day than being out on a routine police patrol in a new city, following a gang of criminals to an abandoned industrial site, being slowly and brutally shot to death, then being reconstructed as a cyborg with no sense of your former identity. And yet that’s what happens to poor Alex Murphy on his first day as a Detroit police officer, setting in motion a battle to reclaim his soul before the police force is bought out by a national conglomerate.

It’s not every day you leave for work a human and come back home a cyborg; pretty rough, all things considered.

4/5 burnt kernels

Words by Matt Taylor

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My boyfriend asked for a threesome

The Myth of the “Bad” Bisexual From the big stereotypes to the little comments, we rounded up some things that make people feel like they’re failing at being bisexual just People I'm assume t straigh

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MISSE D C O NNE C T I O N S

M

uch like unicorns and pixies, bisexuals are beings of legend, whose existence among us is unseen at best, and questioned at worst. Bi people seem to slip through the cracks, erased from the collective consciousness quicker than the Silence on Doctor Who. And, to add insult to injury, when we manage to be seen, it’s rarely a rainbow walk in the park.

Often, people rush to tell you how you’re wrong about your own sexuality. How foolish of you to think that you know what you’re into better than your housemate’s friend’s boyfriend.

If they do believe you are bisexual (mindblowing, you can see how anyone would struggle with the concept), you’re guaranteed at least a handful of thoughtless comments whenever you come out to someone.

In what I’ve dubbed the revenge of the “failed” bisexuals, I invited some fellow bi millennials to air out their grievances with society’s attitude towards their sexuality.

Here’s the stereotype roundup:

Either way, he’s cracked the bisexual code. All we want is a threesome, then we have reached our highest purpose.

The Confused One

This particular sub-genre of failure stems from bisexuals being seen as either not gay enough, or not straight enough. We just can’t win! I wonder if that’s to do with the fact that we’re just like everyone else.

Maddie shares a great example of this trope in action. “I once had a lesbian girlfriend tell me I just seemed really straight,” she says. “I kind of internalized that and went back to dating men because I was embarrassed.”

Fair enough Maddie, I would have been put off by that comment too. It’s a shame though that your ex didn’t offer any pointers on how to seem less straight.

Vicky has also had people police how gay she is. “I’ve had a lesbian tell me that I’m not taking my friend home, claiming I wasn’t gay but obviously straight, despite the fact that my friend and I had been making out all night.”

However, considering that said lesbian then proceeded to try it on with Vicky’s friend, I feel there may have been ulterior motives behind the proclamation.

Emma, meanwhile, shares that she gets called confused a lot. “Especially having a boyfriend, people just assume that I’m straight, or are quite dismissive of my bisexuality.”

Don’t worry Emma, I can guarantee that if you had a girlfriend, they’d still be dismissive of your bisexuality. No matter who we date, it seems we’re always failing at being bi.

“

I once had a lesbian girlfriend tell me I just seemed really straight

The Promiscuous One

The good old hedonism trope is the most common of all stereotypes about us naughty bisexuals.

“I got called greedy as I came out as bi,” says Emma, and she’s not alone. Straight and gay people alike throw this stereotype at bisexuals, seemingly not understanding that just because we like a wider range of people doesn’t mean we want them all.

Sophie, who has recently joined the out-and-proud crowd, shares: “When I came out to my mum, she asked me if that meant I want to have sex with my female friends.”

They’re onto us guys! No one is safe.

Vicky, a seasoned bi warrior, reveals her own battle stories.

“Discussing my sexuality with straight partners in the past has been difficult,” she tells me. One opportunistic boyfriend, however, was quite excited by the prospect to get involved and satisfy his own sexual desires.

His response was, “that’s cool, we can have a threesome then if you want to experiment,” recalls Vicky.

Note that “experimenting” with girls doesn’t count as cheating if you’re dating a man. One wonders, would the gentleman have taken the same view if Vicky wanted to “experiment” with guys.

The Flighty One

This one is probably a bi-product of being both confused and promiscuous, but we just can’t seem to hold down a relationship. At least, not on TV. Shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19 have repeatedly depicted bisexuals as cheating on their partners with someone from the opposite sex to their other half, so it’s no wonder that society sees this as gospel.

Emma, for instance, tells me that her family members had said if a woman came along she’d leave her boyfriend for them.

Interesting how no one suggested if another man came along she’d swap them out.

Luckily, you can’t actually fail at being bisexual, dear reader.

So just live your truth, and let society think what they want.

Chances are, they probably don’t even believe you exist.

Disclaimer: some names have been changed for privacy.

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FR EQUE NT F A ILS Dear trust-fund baby, I am really sorry to hear about your troubles. Truly - this space could have been used to advise someone else who has real problems.

DEAR...

Unfortunately, it seems like the situation is beyond repair. Even if you hadn’t provoked a social media outrage, your family has successfully bred you to be a spoilt brat, and there’s really no coming back from that.

AGONY AUNT

However, if you do somehow recover from this monumental faux pas without losing all your followers, there are some drastic measures you could try. Next time you get tired of Joe Wicks’ workouts, soaking in your marble bathtub and drinking matcha tea as you gaze at the sea through your french windows, try and actually make yourself useful.

Dear Agony Aunt,

Instead of clapping for the NHS, get in your favourite Range Rover, drive to Waitrose in your haute couture face mask, and do the shopping for some of your self-isolating neighbours. You know, the ones who have been stuck in their houses for a year and scramble like mad to get a Tesco delivery slot so they have something to eat.

Over the last week or so, I’ve been the talk of the town. The media have been rude and unfair for no reason at all. One person on Twitter called me a ‘psychopathic entitled git’ yesterday, and I don’t know how to fix it. I’m not even entitled; daddy only paid for two of my four Range Rovers.

I was struggling at home to keep myself upbeat. My job is to inspire people and help them stay positive. I couldn’t do that from home. So, I did what any right-minded person would do: booked myself a seat on the earliest flight out to the UAE for some peace of mind. It was in my best interest to go to Dubai so I could help people, and give them something positive to break up all of the negativity on their feeds.

Now people are calling me names, saying I’m bending the rules.

I take the pandemic seriously, and it hurts me that people think I don’t care. I was the first on my street to clap every Thursday at 7pm. I have 19 matching masks to go with my various outfits for trips down my local Waitrose.

What do I do now? I don’t understand what I did wrong. It was self-care.

Amy, 23, Instagram influencer

I doubt you’ll find this helpful, but who knows, maybe some of it will stick.

Quick Fire Q’s Q: Why don’t my TikToks get any views? I try really hard.

A: Why do you even care about being TikTok famous? You might want to reassess your priorities. Leave the trends to the children, you sycophant.

Q: Why do supermarkets keep substituting stupid items in my online shop?

A: Telepathy. I often find that when I order a bunch of bananas, I actually want some banana-scented face wash.

NEED HELP FROM OUR AGONY AUNT?

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