I work with millennials every day. Yes, they quite often drive me crazy. However, I think it’s time we give millennials a break. After all, aren’t they just a product of the prosperity that the generation before them enjoyed? They have the luxury of pursuing their futures (sports, education, arts, etc.) at the expense of not learning how to grind through the daily minutia of life: chores, summer jobs, paper routes, etc.

Is that their fault? If nobody asked them to get a job or nobody asked them to do chores, can we really blame them for not having those skills or ambitions? They live in a world where they’re told they need a college education to succeed, but the world they live in is increasingly more competitive and a college degree is more expensive; and for the most part the salary that follows isn’t proportionate to inflation.

Ask any parent today and they’ll tell you how competitive the world is. They want their child to benefit from every advantage they can. The question is how are millennials supposed to learn the appreciation of their advantages and opportunities if they don’t experience the labors of life?

How can we expect millennials to be loyal when they’ve seen the loyalty of previous generations not get rewarded, but instead get laid off? And… how can we lump all millennials in the same category when nobody in a previous generation would appreciate being squeezed through a single pigeonhole … except for perhaps the “Greatest Generation.” (I’d love to be lumped in with them.)

Perhaps the fact that millennials don’t stick with anything is a healthy adaptation to the environment they live. Within their lifetime TVs have gone flat, computers have gone mobile and lightbulbs have gotten smart. In the coming years cars will drive themselves and the mail will get delivered by flying robots.

It might be sad to consider that with automated cars the next generation will never go through that right of passage of getting a driver’s license and driving to school on their 16th birthday. However, we shouldn’t forget that previous generations experienced life struggles that we never had to take into consideration, such as a young boy’s first hunt for food.

I say, let’s give millennials a break and accept that they live in a different time, culture and place than any previous generation—and that can be a good thing. What we do need to do is consider how can we best prepare them for the world they’re entering and what skills they will need because life is still demanding.

So as I tell my millennial student-athletes, “Go get a job.” A job is more than a paycheck. A job offers lessons that are earned and learned through communicating with bosses and customers; clients and vendors. A job provides an education beyond the curriculum of the classroom and sports field. A job delivers hard truths that being the best isn’t always rewarded with a spot atop the podium. Life isn’t always fair and a job helps provide that insight. Most of all, a job can offer us a sense of pride… especially when we take pride in a Job well done.