I work in a cigar shop, so I may be more inundated on a daily basis by Boomer Activities than the average person, and after my last post, I realized I wind up ignoring a lot of it and 'letting it go' because Boomer intrusiveness is now something I'm sadly used to.

But WHY do they demand that anyone younger than them sit there and listen to their endless talking about nothing, their 'stories', their 'jokes', while also trying to engage in political debate? All the while, they act like we know nothing and they know everything.

Even better, if you draw a boundary, they get angry.

Shit Boomer men have tried to force me to do while I'm on the clock at work:

-Listen to their endless talking and engage with it like I'm a baby sitter. There's a guy that comes in that talks obsessively about his favorite music for literal HOURS. But I can't just half-ass listen. He wants me to engage with him as if he's a toddler that I'm babysitting. He says things like, 'Name, look up the lyrics to this while it plays! No, don't just listen. I want you to read the lyrics to this. Do it while the song plays. Don't read ahead!' I said no to this literally a dozen times before he got angry and realized I wasn't doing it. He does NOT stop talking. When I come back into proximity, it immediately triggers his talking, as if he's a motion-activated Halloween decoration just yelling into the void.

-The quizzes. The fucking QUIZZES. 'Do you know who this is singing?' 'Do you know how the buffalo ACTUALLY died off in America?' 'Do you know Frank Sinatra's middle name?' 'No looking at your phone! Do you know what year John Wayne was in his first movie?' 'Do you know why Echo and the Bunnymen has the name Echo in it?' Brother, I do not give a fuck.

-Demand I eat or drink with them. A guy brought me a 'surprise' of several candy bars and two sodas, and got angrier and angrier throughout my shift that I wouldn't eat or drink it. I kept telling him thank you, but I'm just not hungry right now, and I'd eat it at home. No, he wanted to SEE me eat it. He wanted to SEE IF I LIKED IT. After several hours of him glancing at me from across the lounge, Boomer huffs, THROWS THE CANDY GIFT INTO THE GARBAGE, and leaves. He later complained to management that I created an 'unwelcoming atmosphere.'

-Tell them all of my personal information. You've got personal information, and you WILL give it to Boomers when asked. What's your age? Where were you born? What's your ethnic background? Do you have kids? Why don't you have kids? What religion are you? You're not one of those queers, are you?

-Discuss Trump with them. They WANT you to be offended. Every nerve in their body is tingling, ready to 'offend the snowflakes.' If you say you don't discuss politics, they respond, 'Oh, so you ARE a liberal!' If I didn't have to hear the name 'Trump' come out of one more slack-bottom-lipped man's mouth again, I could die happy.

-Listen to endless stories about how they were hot shit back in their day. They all seem to brag like this. They were all the wildest, toughest, most manly, hard working men when they were younger. Apparently, every single story about their nights of drinking getting slightly wild needs to be retold as if it's the fucking Iliad. They are also obsessively horny over war stories, and will try to force their most battle abused Vietnam buddies to tell me the worst war stories. Meanwhile, these Vietnam vets don't want to remember a damn thing about it. In these stories, I don't know who a single character is. It's great that you remember your drunk friends fondly, but I don't give a shit.

-Demand I agree that I'm 'young'. This one is just a pet peeve. I get that 37 years old is 'young' compared to 70 years old. But I'm 37. I have a mortgage. I have a 401k. I'm at the age where because I don't already have children, it's looking like it's either becoming too late, or my partner and I will need to decide between using medical intervention or starting to ready ourselves for becoming foster parents instead. The endless dismissal by Boomers because they say, 'Oh, you're too young for that,' 'You wouldn't know that, you're young,' 'You don't have much experience because you're young.' When I tell them that I am younger, not young, they get angry. 37 is not old, but acting like I don't know who Robert Plant is because 'I'm too young' in inane bullshit.