Cangenuity: Generation X

Pure stereotype of Gen Xers. I worked hard for everything I got; nothing from anyone and I am far from a slacker.

Me, born 1968, a very atypical Gen Xer.

Ditto here. Raised as a welfare kid, started working at 13, have not looked back.

But to be fair Coupland's characters in Generation X did all have jobs -- albeit menial in nature. Yes, the book was off base on a lot of levels, but compared to the self-centered opuses that defined the Boomer cohort (Catcher in the Rye, On the Road, etc.), it's fair to give that the book Generation X at least made an effort to capture some of what defines Gen Xers.

Specifically, I think it did a decent job of capturing the shadow of the Boomers that Gen Xers grew up under. At the risk of starting a generational battle here, it's safe to say Boomers were characterized by more than a bit of selfishness. To wit, they were children of people who had grown up under the hardships of The Depression and the children of people who did not want for their kids what they grew up under. They came of age during one of the largest periods of economic prosperity ever. By accident of history, Boomers grew up a very privileged cohort.

At the same time, they redefined a lot of societal norms by focusing on individualism. This was good on a lot of levels, but caused some issues for their kids. Because generations tend to reject the values of their parents' generations, the childhoods of Xers was marked in a lot of ways by the rejection of the nuclear family Boomers grew up with. A Gen X zeitgeist is that we were "experiments in family life" for Boomers, a feeling born out by numbers: 80 million Boomers; roughly half that of Xers. And as a kid in the 70s and an adult now, I have exactly two friends my age who did not grow up going through at least one divorce.

And the menial, service-industry nature of the "McJobs" for the characters in Coupland's book were more a reflection of the angst Jeff Gordinier, author of X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft But Can Still Keep Everything From Sucking, opines in a Time Magazine interview:

"It grew out of a time when I think Gen-Xers were feeling colossally invisible. All the mass-media oxygen seemed to be sucked up by baby boomers and millennials. The baby boomers were turning 60, and that's all you heard about. How the boomers were turning 60 and they were still sexy and they're hot and they're launching their second acts...

And at the same time, there's this media monotony, this bombardment of Lindsay/Paris/Britney... Lindsay/Paris/Britney ... Lindsey/Paris/Britney — the Buddhists have a term called "samsara," which is this sort of hell-cycle that you can never escape from until you meditate your way out of it. And I thought, my God, we're in some sort of Us Weekly samsara."

I never really worked a McJob since I always loved nursing but I've worked all my life and expect to die working. No freebies, no prom, no parents coddling me- nope, I've been on my own all my life in more ways than one and I'm not an orphan....

I grew up as a member of the "Latchkey Kid" generation of the parents that were the WWII babies ( my parents were WWII babies, not boomers) and when divorce was becoming destigmatized and was a child of the 1970s and came of age in the apocalyptic 1980s.

A atypical Gen Xer.

Technically, that makes you "Generation Jones"which (as evidenced by your comment) identified both with the Baby Boomer and Gen X cohorts.