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Age discrimination – a reality?

Yesterday was a big day for me. It was planned to be the start of my working life. As a teen I decided that I should find a job which suits my interests, therefore, after seeing a lot of them on television, I decided to become a Golf Caddy.

Now the prospect of carrying around someone’s clubs for them, cleaning them and repairing divots didn’t seem too appealing, however it certainly beat stacking shelves in the local supermarket or standing behind the counter all day. Better still I had heard that the pay for a round of golf (around 4 hours) was £20 ($35) plus a tip which could range from $10 to in some cases $100, depending on how well you did your job! I can definitely say that the entrepreneur inside me was ecstatic with the fact that I could be earning quite a lot of money to reinvest into my online business.

So I woke up at 8.30 in the morning and headed down to the golf course as instructed by the caddymaster, who is responsible for helping caddies to get hired by the players. After greeting him and going to sit down with the other caddies, I realised that I was the youngest person there, with the majority of caddies being aged between 30 and 40.

Then was the wait…after about an hour of sitting on the bench, I had not been booked for a job and quite a lot of the older caddies had been called up by the players. I started to get angry at the fact that my age seemed to be the factor separating me from a few hours on the course and a decent wage. This made me ask myself whether there really is age discrimination in business?

As I regularly play golf, I know that I could have easily handled the job in hand, probably a lot better than the older caddies and yet, the players seemed to have pushed me to one side, including the caddymaster himself who even seemed to forget that I was there.

My conclusion is that many of the elders in our society think they have more skills than the younger generations, solely because of the fact that they have been around longer. As a result, us youngers hoping to earn money and build up our reputation are unable to get onto the “employment ladder”, and unable to rise up through the ranks according to our abilities.

The reason why I like working on the internet so much is because many people are not able to judge you on age, appearance or nationality. Instead, entrepreneurs and moguls can compete on a fair playing field, each one starting at the bottom and having to build up their reputation through their writings and through their general online conduct. Here at Blogtrepreneur I don’t mind people knowing that I am a teen, so long as I attempt to be polite and understanding whilst providing a solid service to all of my readers and subscribers.

I know that I may have just had a bad experience, and that I might be over-reacting, however, I think it is time to move on in society. Gone are the days when the elders always knew more than the young children. The internet is helping so many young and hopeful entrepreneurs in particular achieve their goals, and I think it is time that this was carried forward into the real world and into the world of work and business so that all can compete against each other without being looked down upon because of age.

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