I'm a millennial but this reminds me of when I first got into the work force and was stuck in an office full of boomers with me being the youngest. I remember the boss would take turns taking shots at different people during meetings, making insensitive racial jokes about people. I eventually got tired of doing the uncomfortable fake laugh so I just sat there stone faced during his jokes. He halted the entire meeting to a stop to ask me why I wasn't laughing. This is the extent to which office culture must be obeyed and how insecure they get when you don't go along with it. It's so pathetic.
SighBapanada
As I've grown up and learned more about the world, I've learned that it's not so much that no one knows what they're doing, but more that most people don't have clarity about why we do what we do. We're disconnected from our work and we don't receive it's benefits personally. Instead we exchange it for currency, so we don't know if we've "hit the mark" or not. Is my work accomplishing it's intended purpose? Who the hell knows. I just try to do this thing and keep my boss/teacher happy. We live in a hyper real world where the appearance of accomplishment is a standin for the real thing, so it's like we're throwing darts blindfolded at a target. And don't get me wrong, we might be doing everything correctly and benefiting the world, but at the end of the day what we see is not it's benefits, but it's supposed equivalent currency. We're all going through the motions and just hoping it's "right", and that can feel indistinguishable from "I don't know what I'm doing"
Ohhh yeah, there was that too, I can definitely recall one of my male managers making comments about a woman's body when she wasn't in the room. So gross.