Edition: U.S. / Global

A Part-Time Job? How (Un)Cool

Published: January 12, 2001

To the Editor:

A Jan. 8 front-page article describes affluent teenagers' contempt for low-status jobs. My daughter recently summed up her 14 years' observation of the upper-middle classes: ''I don't know yet what I want to be, but I know that I don't want any part of what I've seen so far.'' She was referring to the nonstop celebration of acquisition for acquisition's sake.

I felt at her age exactly as she does, and quite a lot of interesting things came from those feelings and from others who shared them. Perhaps our Gilded Age will turn out to have a golden lining: a reaction against its excesses and stupidities by the successor generation.


Berkeley, Calif., Jan. 9, 2001