So, I'm watching Young, Dumb and Living off Mum on the BBC iPlayer. The program is about 6 or so completely spoilt 16-25-year-olds put in a house together, with no one to cook for them, or clean, or pay their rent.

In the first episode, they're put to their first real day of work. It's gone dreadfully.

One of them is the heir to a prosperous nightclub business. Never had a job, parents pay for everything. First day, he's meant to be cleaning a hotel room, with another spoilt brat. He fails to stock up certain things, such as toilet paper, biscuits, whatever, because he believes they're out of them.

The hotel manager, who's come in to inspect the room, asks if they asked the housekeeper, their immediate boss. They say yes, he offers to call her, and they suddenly realise the people they've been calling 'housekeepers' are chambermaids. It's a simple misunderstanding, not even their fault. If the other chambermaids say they're out, then they believe it. They didn't know to check, they can fix it. But, no, he chooses to throw a tantrum instead. He starts screaming at the manager, telling him not to raise his voice, that his parents would never hire him, and blahblahblahblah. Then, in a clip afterwards, he claims that the manager doesn't deserve his job, and that he, the nightclub heir, will be far more successful and make more of himself than "that asian" (I'm pretty sure the guy was Italian, actually).

It reminded me a little of some customers I had once. Seventeen-year-olds, at that stage in their life where they truly believe they're special and untouchable. Old enough to be out alone, but young enough to have mummy tucking them in every night and teling them how great they are. This kid told me that, by the time he was eighteen, he'd be earning far more than me (highly doubtful in this economy, since I'm on quite a bit more than minimum wage, and nowhere else is hiring). The kid also claimed that franchises didn't exist, at all, and that anyone who believed otherwise was an idiot who needed to go back to school.

So, I really feel for that manager. I hope the BBC compensated him well. Who is this self-centred, spoilt little brat who dares to look down on him, a man who works hard and does the best he can? Does that idiot really believe he'll ever get a decent job that's not bought for him, with that work ethic?

I hope his parents are proud of themselves, and realise they've raised a son that they wouldn't employ. I hope they have the balls to ream him out for his behaviour. But, then, they've let him get to this stage, so maybe not.

That might be a bit unfair though. The impression I have is that his parents are hard-working people, who probably didn't come from wealthy families, and so wanted to give their child the childhood they wished they could have had. Sad, really.

Then there's the 25-year-old who says her mum is her best friend - and yet, she complains about the things her mother is kind enough to cook for her, reckons her job is getting money out of her mother, and generally treats her like a slave. That's not friendship. She claims she doesn't work because it makes her stressed and tired. She seems to think this is somehow unusual.

I think what really gets me is that some of these people come from quite wealthy families. They don't have to work their way up from the bottom - they could go to school and study whatever they wanted at their leisure, and then grease their way into a job they really want, while I have to struggle my way through a job with no respect to pay for my degree, and then work even harder to get a low paying job as a teacher. It really isn't fair.

You know, when I was a kid, it was considered a bad thing to let tv raise your children.