They are the future of the workforce, yet they have earned a generational reputation bad enough to send shivers up the spine of mature small-business owners everywhere. They are Generation Entitlement, the ambitious Millennial children of baby boomers who grew up hearing “you can be whatever you want to be because you’re special.” And they are sick of the bad press.

Blanket accusations of vocational entitlement have plagued Millennials since they first jumped into the workforce in the early 2000s. This unflattering and condescending charge found legs when young professionals started—seemingly en masse—to ask for promotions, higher salaries, and grander titles in spite of their brief work history. “They are just unreasonable, demanding, and unmanageable,” one small Massachusetts business owner who has previously hired Millennials claims, “I don’t know who they think they are.”

But members of this group—most born in the mid-1980s and the 1990s—cry foul at such disdain from their professional elders. These accusations are not only unfair, they say, but have negatively affected their ability to succeed.

Rodric Bradford , a 30-year-old senior communications specialist at General Dynamics, has been in the workforce since he was 16 years old. But an internship at Philip Morris and a double BA in sociology and history from the University of Missouri haven’t been enough to shield him from accusations of entitlement. “I wasn’t raised with an entitlement attitude,” Bradford says, but the “bad reputation in the workforce…has affected me when negotiating salary, raises, etc. I believe I have to prove more than older workers, even though my work has been nationally recognized.”

Matt Wilson of Under30CEO.com adds that any sense of entitlement doesn’t come from an innate sense of deserving, but the fact that “we were told we could be whatever we wanted to be when we grow up, so many of us simply aren’t satisfied, and I think that’s great.”

Many members of the Millennial generation share Wilson’s perspective and feel curious and confused at their bad reputation. After all, aren’t they just doing what previous generations have set them up to do: achieve greater levels of success and live up to their potential?

Mark Hall, a 25-year-old Internet entrepreneur and founder of InputLadder.com, thinks that the attitude of his generation is less about entitlement and more about appropriate compensation. He points out that what is expected of a professional today in terms of education and training has increased significantly, and therefore it is not unreasonable to expect higher compensation earlier in a career. “This [job] culture has caused us to pass along the expectations that were placed on us back onto the job market. Fair? Maybe, maybe not. A sign of entitlement? Absolutely not,” Hall says.

So what is the truth about Generation Entitlement—are they victims of unfair labeling or living examples of what happens when every kid on the soccer team gets a trophy?

The answer is likely a little of both. Maria Cox, a 27-year-old marketing representative for Diversified Crop Insurance Services, admits that sometimes she catches herself living up to her generation’s stereotype: “When I don't make a sale as big as I thought, I don't understand why my clients don't see I’m the best person for the job.” But this momentary flare of petulance is tempered with the very antithesis of entitlement: humility. “Then I humble myself, and I realize that hard work, patience, and networking will build my business over time,” Cox says.

This balance of surprising confidence and dogged determination is in many ways the real definer of the Millennial Generation, and it begs a rethinking of how young professionals are both utilized and treated within small businesses. Perhaps the conversation should not be about how shockingly entitled these young professionals are, but how best to harness the power of their ambition—as disquieting as it may appear—to help accelerate small-business recovery.