‘He was uploading penis photos to our company Dropbox’: Millennials’ worst career mistakes

“HE WAS drinking wine and uploading his penis photos to our company Dropbox in the name of ‘needing more storage space for Grindr’.”

WHEN R. Couri Hay looks back on his decades-long career, the PR guru who heads his namesake firm recalls many good years of young eager beavers who worked on the cheap.

“I love millennials — I’m always saying, ‘Get me a 20-something at $20,000,’” laughs the Upper West Side resident, who has his own in-house intern and a mentoring program inside his townhouse office.

“They are so eager to work, so over-educated,” he continues, “and because of the climate, they’re more realistic than they were in the past. They work for so little to get their foot in the door.”

But for all the industrious newbies making a beeline for the Big Apple, there are always a few bringing bad behaviour.

A melee recently erupted between one of his interns and her supervisor over Hay’s Instagram feed. The manager didn’t feel the student was doing a good job and locked her out of the account — and the millennial turned mean.

The college-age student got the password of her supervisor’s cellphone and wiped it. “The whole phone went black,” says Hay, whose staffer reported the intern to her school. The student fessed up and resigned before Hay could fire her — though he was forced to change the office locks and social media passwords.

“It was my own Sony scandal,” jokes Hay. “I had to talk a staffer out of reporting her to the police.”

PR guru R. Couri Hay likes hiring millennials because they are generally hardworking, but recalls one recent bad experience in which an intern wiped a staffer’s phone.

Call it the tyranny of the 20-somethings, the millennials, Generation Y. Constituting about one-quarter of the population, the infamous generation, defined as those born between 1982 and 2002 and raised by so-called “helicopter parents,” is likely at an office near you — and, with 80 million in the work force, probably even sitting right beside you.

A 2014 study by Elance-oDesk — a site where businesses come to find freelancers — found that 68 per cent of hiring managers say millennials have skills that prior generations do not. However, the same study found they’re 80 per cent more narcissistic than the Gen Xers who came before them — and there’s no shortage of horror stories.

“I would say the wildest experience at a prior job was one [millennial] who quit when a new version of a video game came out, so he could play it all day,” says a Manhattan-based contract attorney who asked for anonymity, citing professional reasons.

“This is a person with a law degree ... What made it worse was that he graduated from law school and likely had $100,000 in loans. He was temping because he needed the money!”

The lawyer hasn’t been impressed with other whippersnappers, either. “There was a woman who billed 12-hour days — six hours playing on the computer, the other six hours doing work. She was 26,” he says in disgust.

Still, representatives of the much-maligned generation rebut their bad rap.

Kathryn Minshew, founder and CEO of TheMuse.com, believes millennials “can be very hardworking, but it’s easier to tell the story of the ones who are entitled.” (Picture: Erica Gannett Photography)

“Every generation thinks, ‘These kids don’t know how to behave,’ ” says Kathryn Minshew, founder and CEO of TheMuse.com, which provides career guidance to the young work force. At 29, she herself is a millennial.

“[Millennials] are raised to believe they can grow up to be anything they want, that there’s no stopping them — but the downside is that to be president, it’s an incredible amount of hard work,” she adds. “Millennials can be very hardworking, but it’s easier to tell the story of the ones who are entitled.”

It’s a sticking point among employers who must straddle the need to hire young guns on the cheap and also weed out the bad apples.

“I am part of a number of CEO groups in NYC, and hiring millennials is perhaps the most popular pain point,” says Alan Cutter, CEO of AC Lion, a digital media recruiting firm.

“It’s a love-hate relationship. [Companies] love them because they are inexpensive, willing to take risks, have grown up in the new world of technology and can adapt to change. They hate them because they feel entitled and need constant attention. You can never know if they are communicating with a client on Facebook, or checking the latest status updates.”

Lisa Mattson isn’t sympathetic to millennials — having witnessed too much boohooing from these crybabies. “I interviewed a millennial candidate for an entry-level position this past summer,” says the marketing director for a West Coast winery.

“When he didn’t get the job, his dad called me multiple times to demand why.” Mattson was honest about having found shirtless pics of the youngster during a routine online search for him — in addition to receiving work samples of him sans shirt.

Bryce Gruber-Hermon, founder of lifestyle blog the Luxury Spot, recalls a former employee who uploaded his nude photos to her company’s Dropbox in the name of “needing more storage space for Grindr.”

But even non-corporate settings — with a laid-back, millennial-friendly attitude — can backfire. Bryce Gruber-Hermon, founder of lifestyle blog the Luxury Spot, recalls inappropriate behaviour from a new staffer a few years ago.

“A former employee, who was 23, was drinking wine and uploading his penis photos to our company Dropbox in the name of ‘needing more storage space for Grindr,’ ” says a disgusted Hermon.

She started looking for a replacement a few weeks later, but before she could fire him, he quit to work at a magazine — giving Hermon just two days’ notice instead of the requisite two weeks’. (Not long after that, an editor at the magazine called Hermon, saying she fired the employee.)

Workplace vets point to signs that can help weed out potential bad seeds before trouble starts. “I will say that in some cases, they might be in more of a hurry to move ahead — because they live in a time when people do realise instant fame. Sometimes you sense their impatience,” says HarperCollins editor Lisa Sharkey.

“Anybody who isn’t really disciplined won’t cross my threshold. Anybody who’s interested in book publishing is deeper than someone who wants to be a YouTube star.”

This article originally appeared on New York Post and was republished with permission.

Originally published as ‘He was uploading penis photos to our company Dropbox’: Millennials’ worst career mistakes