Ageism: How to Counter the Bias

People are just biased in general about a million different things. When does an opinion end and a bias begin? It's very hard to say. You know, who's not biased against a 51-year-old? Another 51year-old. You know, if the person hiring is 25 years old, then yeah, they may look down on you because you're 51. You know what I'm saying? If the person hiring you is 70 years old, they could potentially look down at you because you're 51. But a 51-year-old is usually not going to have a bias against another 51y old because that person is 51. You know what I mean? The only thing that I know of that you can really do if the person's mind isn't totally closed is you can proactively bring up some of the stereotypes associated the negative stereotypes or traits associated with a 51-year-old. Right? I believe this is a bigger problem in the United States than where it is where I am in Canada because for example in the US there's issues of like if you have to go away on disability companies pay that right they pay for you to go off on disability whereas in Canada that's all paid by the government so the companies don't care as much so they're not as biased uh so as far as that issue goes in the states they have that added problem People are biased against older workers, especially like in skill trades and stuff because if you've been working for 50 years and it's all been in an unergonomic environment and they think you might have like an injury due and they don't want to hire you cuz you're an older worker. They think okay you'll we'll hire you and then 6 months later you'll have a injury because of 50 years working you know in a unergonomic way. We're the ones left holding the bag essentially. So like for example, what are some of the other common complaints about older people? I mean I I don't consider 51 old. That's like younger than I am. You're not trainable. You don't have a desire to learn new things. You resist change. You um are stuck in your ways. You only want to do things the old way. You might have problems communicating and working with younger people. Uh you know, things like that. like whatever the, you know, the common complaints are about over older people, you proactively address those. Like you can say them in interviews. It's like, look, you know, I'm actually big on learning. I've I like to learn for fun and I'm quite interested in the latest computer systems and stuff. I think that the last sort of like it changes that have happened in the last 5 years are very exciting. They're automating more and more. That's allowing us to do more and more in our jobs. we don't have to like do all the grunt work, all this manual work, entering data and stuff. I think it's cool that, you know, they can do all that automatically and we're just we're more like supervisors or managers of, you know, what this IT systems are doing rather than being like data entry people. I think that's great and I'm actually excited about, you know, where they're going to go with this, you know, something like that. And then they get the impression, okay, you're not someone that's like, you know, stuck in their ways and resistant to change. you're proactively showing that that's not you. And then if they're still somewhat open-minded about it, then they don't fall into these biases like agism where they just assume you're going to have all these problems. The only other thing I recommended just go where they appreciate you, you know, and that doesn't relate to just aism. That relates to anything where people look at you and they think, "Nah, you can't do it for whatever reason. " Obviously, you know, you want to leave these people behind and go to where like find where people are open are open-minded to you, you know. So, like that advice, that general advice applies to agism. That's how I recommend dealing with it. But that's just me. Uh I've seen agism work both ways. I see it work both ways equally. I see it biased against old people and I also young people equally. Like I've said before, I don't see very many uh 21-year-old CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. You know, does that need to be addressed? I don't know. Uh I also don't see very many 95-year-old cocktail waitresses. So, you know what I mean? Like it runs both ways. So, it depends what you're trying to do. Remember this. I adjust my camera and then the sun comes out. That's wonderful. I told you since the dawn of time, man has longed to destroy the sun. And maybe with some recent developments in AI, maybe we just might