I think the World War II crowd has been given far too much credit of late, especially ever since Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation. The younger generations can't seem to stop lavishing praise on the one that won the war, got out of the Great Depression and created America's middle class. But is it deserved?

Well I'm here to set the record straight. The World War II generation sucks! They do now, anyway. I know them in a way most of you don't: I work in customer service.

I work in a cell phone call center. Some of these 1940's types will call in and say, "My phone is telling me I have to dial the area code! Am I being charged long distance?"

No, it's common these days to have to dial the area code. You're not being charged.

"You mean I have to dial the area code every time I make a call, even if it's just across the street?"

That's right.

"Well, that's an inconvenience! I've got a good mind to send this thing back!"

Dialing a three-digit area code is an inconvenience? Hey, didn't you defeat Hitler? Would dialing the area code have been an inconvenience on D-Day? When the hell did this generation get so lazy?

Then you tell them that to save their address book or photos they'll need to connect their phone to a computer. "A computer?! I don't know nothin' about computers!"

Let's get this straight: knowing how to back up your address book or photos is not "knowing computers," just as knowing how to use Google or e-mail is not "knowing computers," though many old-timers seem to think so. Knowing computers is knowing how to program in C++ language (which has nothing to do with what I got on most of my report cards), or create a Java applet from scratch. Buying something on Amazon does not require that one "know computers."

How did this "great generation," so lauded for its reputed self-reliance and no-nonsense worldview, get so slack?

It's because it only had to rough it from 1933 to 1945. After that it's members lived in the most simplistic, high-service society in history.

Think about it: There was a shoeshine man on every corner. Carhops roller-skated your burgers right to your window. You could go to the movies without ever leaving your car, and fuck while the movie played. Grocery stores would take your order by phone and deliver it to you within minutes. A real, live bank teller handed you your cash at the bank, phones had rotary dials, and no one had a voice menu. There were only three channels on the TV and one knob to find them with; hard to screw that one up.

Now we have a society where we have to do for ourselves: ring up our own purchases, get our own money at the ATM, figure out our own 200 digital channels of TV, the Blackberry, the Blu-Ray and the upload/download, burn-rip-sync-Google. Now that we live in a do-it-yourself world that requires some deductive reasoning, well...that fortitudinous great generation doesn't have so much fortitude after all.

It may be an age thing, too. Fifty-five seems to be the cutoff date to having any sense, from my observations. I notice that, though even some 23 year olds seem to have Alzheimer's, 55 is the age where people across the board seem to lose contact with planet Earth. I'm only 17 years from that myself, so...so.

I just hope when I'm 55 I'll have enough sense to know I don't have any sense.