Every year, Havaianas, the popular flip-flop brand from Brazil, hosts Make Your Own Havaianas (MYOH), an event where guests can create and customize their very own pair of flip-flops. Now on its 12th year in the Philippines, the highly anticipated event featured flip-flops sporting the bright colors and bold prints of the trendy 1990s.

Tikboy Rosquillo, all smiles as he helps his customer

Millennials
That’s not the only thing that caught people’s attention during the event held last week at SM Megamall’s Mega Fashion Hall. If you happened to be there, you would have noticed the throngs of millennials present at the event. These millennials were not customers, though—they were actually working!

Stationed all around the event space—they greeted guests at the entrance, guided them around the different stations, and led them to the lines leading to the counters where the customized flip-flops were assembled by, you guessed it, millennials—the young workforce was energetic, helpful and enthusiastic, traits not usually associated with this generation.

Millennials are often described as lazy. This could not be further from the truth. As a millennial who worked alongside other millennials during MYOH, I can say that our drive is fueled by our passion for our work. Even with the long hours, we were happy to serve customers and work alongside our peers.

Beth Gatmaitan helping a customer create his own pair. —PHOTOS BY CARLA CENTENO

In between assembling pairs of flip-flops, we took little dance breaks, bopping along to the ’90s hits that blared through the speakers. Some of the workers, myself included, also used the downtime to study, since final exams were fast approaching. Yes, it was a long and challenging event, but the work was also fun and fulfilling.

I asked a few coworkers to share their biggest takeaway from this year’s Make Your Own Havaianas, and this is what they had to say:

MJ Singson making sure the chosen pins stay in place.

Each person is unique
“Personally, I felt the four-day event really improved my social skills and allowed me to connect with more individuals, especially people my age. There, I was reminded of how each person is unique. You know millennials, we got a lot of spunk in us. It was fun working with everybody
—making mistakes, assembling slippers and just creating memories together.” —KC Soon, 20

“Working at MYOH definitely taught me that people skills are an invaluable tool. I mean, you’re going to be working with about 90 other people and you’re bound to interact with them. Having a nice personality really helps foster great relationships with people you’ll be working with for close to 14 hours a day, for four days.” —MJ Singson, 20

Value of work, money

“The event taught me to be more responsible and to own up to mistakes I made while assembling some pairs of Havaianas. The experience also gave me a better perspective about the value of work and money.” —Tikboy Rosquillo, 21

“It’s definitely not as easy as I had first anticipated, but I was more than willing to learn the ropes. I will look back at this as a good learning experience.” —David Kabigting, 20

“Through this event, I saw firsthand that millennials are really dedicated to their work because they’re so passionate. We’re not lazy workers at all! The event also taught me about keeping a sense of professionalism while interacting with customers.” —Zoe Calderon, 20

“Persistence is key in trying to learn a new set of skills. I also learned that hard work definitely pays off in the end.” —Paolo Perez, 20