Everyone loves this story on Kids Today, and their crazy pie-in-the-sky ideas about working for a company that isn't mean to them, or the planet, and lets them work from Starbucks. Some say they're brave and right and true, etc., and others bark surprise that these tots expect to be coddled in this economy. Hell, in any economy.

These demands seems at odds with the mopery you find in some quarters, where underemployed youts are posting LOLcats with "I can has teh jobz?" pictures as they wait for hiring to pick up in 2013. Perhaps I just hail from a generation more inclined to brown-nosing and sucking-up easy acceptance of the trade-offs inherent in the world of employment, but I'd no more start asking these questions in the interview than I'd ask the interviewer for a double mocha latte with no-fat foam. Because that seems like a good way to make sure your next job consists of other people asking you for a double mocha latte with no-fat foam.

No, the idea is to get the job, burrow in, and then start doing all the things you want to do after it becomes apparent it would more of a pain to fire you.

I understand the desire to work from any place except an office; they can be grim, soul-crushing machines that grind your tender soul to pulp between the gears of banality and conformity. On the other hand, sometimes they are donuts. On the other hand, I like working from different locales, and if you can get away with it, fine. But I wonder how much of this comes from a generational shift in attitudes towards other humans - if you grow up accustomed to dealing with people in "virtual" environments (don't like the term, but it's that or "cyberspace) as often as the real world, they become interchangeable. The comforts of the former are more appealing than the discomforts of the latter. Why not sit at home and do it all on Google Wave?

Because when the time comes to start firing, you don't want to be in the group of people who aren't around very much.