A lot has been said about how many Millennials don't feel like adults because many of the markers of adulthood we were brought up to expect were unrealistic in the years we entered adulthood.

But-

I've seen less said about how many of us have had to make do with infantalizing work environments. With being micromanaged, excessively controlled, digitally monitored. The technology marking our lives have altered our working conditions.

I'm SURE asshole, controlling bosses existed before 2000. I am not pining for work culture of yore.

But I am saying that my entire team of licensed mental health professionals were regularly treated like naughty children whenever not engaged in making someone money for 5 minutes

For not being on call on cell phone and email at all hours. For not logging our every movement.

I have a masters degree, and was treated with suspicion for using my sick days.

The horrible work conditions of lower-income employment have stretched up and up into a wider array of industries. So many of us got so used to taking whatever job was available, we got used to tolerating the ridiculous, and tech gives employers shiny new ways to be ridiculous.

How would it be strange for adults to feel like children when they are treated as poorly behaved children in their workplaces?

American work culture MUST move away from expectations of constant monitoring and control. It's bad for creativity, causes burnout, is bad for cognition, and is bad for society.

See how so many jobs could in fact be done remotely?

All that money paid for space, for supplies. And for what?

I was in management for a few years. I wanted to let my employees do their paperwork from home. Many of them were students.

I was told they would be lazy, that I had to watch them work, to control them.

Unfortunately, I think many of my generation have accepted this attitude as normal. I hope that's reversible. This system only makes sense when you view employees as easily switched out and replaced parts of a machine. As disposable.

That's really not how I'd like society to be run.

My industry, by the way, is counseling. I'm a therapist. (and in my own private practice now, thank God). These professionals should KNOW how the brain works, how interpersonal systems work, the effects of stress.

If nearly every work environment I've had ignores information about productivity, burnout, power etc, what is going on in other industries? How bad has the standard gotten?

This recession isn't going to help matters.

It starts in our police-patrolled, punitive, pipeline schools and never really stops for a lot of us.

Unless, like me, you can build a therapy shed in your back yard and not have bosses or managers anymore.

That's not gonna work for most careers.