TRYING to believe you’re still youthful until you’re forced to interact with these mere children playing dress-up?
Hospital doctors
A GP, yes. You’re just grateful to see one and they’re probably training. But a surgeon in a hospital and they’re a decade younger? They may have studied medicine and have knowledge and experience, but you Googled your symptoms five minutes ago and believed the first result, which was an advert for a VPN.
Shop managers
When you demand to see the manager you expect an older person, businesslike, polished shoes. Not someone younger than the girl you’ve just been dealing with and no less insolent. It’s as if the thankless job of dealing with the dwindling population of disgruntled out-of-touch Luddites who don’t shop online is criminally underpaid.
Uber drivers
How can a young person believably drive you somewhere? All they’ve got to guide them is a high-precision satellite navigation system no better than the one on your phone. And they navigate by the buildings that are there, unlike you who gives directions by ‘those luxury flats that used to be Debenhams’ and you’re only 28.
The prime minister
Prime ministers should be Dumbledore-like figures; greying, doddery, weighed down by years of wisdom. Like John Major, except he was 47. You can’t trust freshly-minted prime ministers bouncing along like they’re headed to the sixth-form Mathlete finals. They do less damage when they take an hour to wake up.
Students
Back when university was free, students were radical intellectuals who spoke truth to power and fought for progressive values. Nowadays they think they have all the answers and need a few years in the real world to learn some life lessons. An opinion you genuinely hold even though you graduated in 2011. The stupid, carefree bastards.
