A Boomer translator for Gen Z.
I’m Michael Sommermeyer. Boomer. Thirty years in newsrooms and government communications — the kind of jobs where “let’s take this offline” doesn’t mean what it says, “circle back” isn’t a promise, and the person who inherits the corner office is almost never the person who most obviously deserves it.
I’ve watched a lot of talented Gen Z and Millennial people get passed over. Not because they weren’t good enough. Because they didn’t speak the dialect.
Pull Up a Chair is a Sunday newsletter for the person tired of watching the wrong hire get promoted. Every week, one phrase your Boomer boss says on loop, decoded in plain English, with your exact next move.
No filler. No LinkedIn motivation. No “here’s what I learned from my dog.” Just decode + play.
I also wrote a book: The Boomer’s Chair — a 71-page succession playbook framed as a corporate espionage manual, with all 42 of the most common Boomer phrases decoded in Chapter 11. It’s what a lot of these Sunday emails are drawn from. If the newsletter is the appetizer, the book is the meal.
Find me on Instagram at @boomer_whisperer, or reply to any email — I read every one.
Boomer Whisperer
