Meet Gen Xer. Trying to predict how he will come dressed for work is like trying to forecast the weather for three weeks from Tuesday! It’s impossible. One day, he’ll walk in clean-shaven, wearing a suit and tie, his Kenneth Cole briefcase in hand ready to meet with the “big client.” The next day he’ll strut into the office wearing a Dave Matthews Band t-shirt and jeans. Schizophrenic? Yes. Disrespectful? No. He just doesn’t see the point of dressing up to spend a day alone in his cubicle.

He starts his day with an all natural Echinacea tablet and green tea. His work space is perfectly in balance according to his Feng Shui manual and a “Save the Rainforest” poster hangs just behind his laptop. His slacks are weighed down with a Palm Pilot, pager, cell phone, and sports ticker, each in its own plastic holster. He no longer writes in standard English cursive but rather in Palm graffiti.

If Xer has to attend one more meeting about a meeting about a meeting, he is going to slash every Successories poster and throw the boss’s mission statement out the window. He is a family man and has no problem postponing a meeting to see his 5-year old daughter play her first t-ball game of the season. Xer dreads the company picnic and is waiting for the day the annual get-together is replaced with personalized gift certificates. He roams the halls calling everyone from the intern to the CEO “dude” out of friendship, not insolence. Xer often bombards co-workers with questions about everything from internal politics to products in the lunchroom vending machine. While his business books gather dust on the shelf, he enthusiastically pages through magazines: Fast Company and Wired. Although he prides himself on being ultra-techno-savvy, he continually looks out the corner of his eye at the incoming Millennial who has taken every tool on his techno-tool belt and rolled them into one device smaller than his tin of Altoids.