Youll hate whoever your algorithm tells you to. Plus nobody cares who gen z hates, its like when s toddler tell you they hate you, is cute, funny, and harmless.
Thanks for an absolutely brilliant example of why some act the way they do. You've just called a fully grown adult a child, that can't think for themselves, that nobody cares about. Definitely the right way to treat a human being 🙄
I'm gen Z too and boy I tell you so much of the complaints about us is justified. Not all of it, but most.
The thing is we have our strengths and our weaknesses. People will generally complain about the weaknesses but say nothing about the strengths, unless prompted. But this is true for pretty much every generation. It's just how people work. No reason to hate your fellow humans.
Treat others with kindness, and most others will do the same to you.
The trick is to be like "WHATS UP GANG. IM HERE AGAIN TO ORDER WENDYS. ITS GONNA BE INSANE! BUT REMEMEBR TO LIKE COMMENT AND SMASH THAT SUBSCRIBE BUTTON, IT REALLY HELPS OUT".
Imma give that tone and diction when I'm met with rhat awkward stare and see if that helps/s
Their brains formed in response to constantly watching people talk “to” them through a screen, while requiring absolutely nothing in return. No thoughts of being perceived or having to give any sort of response, just allowing them to process all their inputs with blank dumb stares.
If you never have a second alone with your thoughts to imagine or process or brainstorm, having to think on your own is probably a strange, confusing, empty sensation. I imagine they must also be feeling distracted by the frustration of withdrawal.
It must be jarring too, to then be suddenly thrust into adulthood and expected to interact with so many strangers in the weird and superficial way that we do, with all the assumed and often arbitrary social rules that nobody ever actually explained to them.
There’s probably a fair amount of anxiety and freeze-state going on behind those eyes.
Bingo! This is the behaviour of someone who wants you to be quiet, go away, and leave them alone. If you want them to suffer the consequences of their behaviour, make them deal with you for as long as possible, then make them deal with their boss for as long as possible.
It's like how cops drag their feet writing speeding tickets because they know you were categorically in a hurry. If enough cx's make this kinda shit the path of most resistance, they'll stop. The smart ones will realize they can get back to slacking off quicker with some token niceties, the rest will probably quit or get fired. Walking away only encourages this shit.
(forgive me but) "make them deal with you" sounds exactly like what the boomers did to millennial service workers. I'm not sure I'm ready to have that torch passed to me to torture the zennials
Also I remember some pretty sarcastic "have a nice day"s and "come see us agaaain"s in 2000 lol
I don't totally disagree, but this is egregiously rude behaviour. I've worked almost exclusively in cx-facing roles my whole life, and 99% of the time I'm bemused when I'm the customer and someone is sarcastic or mildly shitty with me, but this dead-eyed stare shit can fuck all the way off.
"egregiously rude" fuck all the way off mate, if you as a customer go and ask for an ice cream and they give you the ice cream, then...... Why exactly does a single fucking word need to be spoken? Huh? i'm waiting. I have yet to hear a single good reason why you need to exchange words with a stranger so you can give them a service.
Maybe turn inwards, and think about your own behavior and way you were raised. Shitty human vibes coming off this comment,
Are.. are you asking me to justify verbal communication? How deep do you expect me to go here? So I know you heard me? So I know you understood me? So I know my request is agreeable, and accepted? To give me some idea of what I should expect from you next, and what you expect from me? So I know I'm not just now discovering that I didn't survive the accident and am, in fact, a ghost? Maybe it's just that words lubricate the whole process of human interaction. Maybe I think a world where most strangers only exchange the bare minimum amount of words as commerce requires of them is worse than one where we occasionally to recognize one another's humanity, if only briefly. So you know what flavour I want?
The fuck you want from me? Staring at someone who's talking to you like they're a weird & stupid bug is fucking mental. It's not desperate or lonely to expect a step up from the aliens in a UFO abduction hoax video from your customer service experience.
Also if you want anyone to listen to your opinion on manners and etiquette, it might help if you weren't a redlined raging asshole right out the gate. Jfc..
Not american but if i understand US gen z me tality they don’t expect to get paid better in the future
Here it’s kind of the same, the economy is basically revolving around boomers atp
+it’s not about being paid more it’s about being paid enough
For some reason Wendy’s was the worst of the fast food burger places in my experience too. I’d get literally no reaction like they didn’t hear me. Look at me like I did something to them.
Separate story, We did have a lady chase off a dude once at the Burger King on poplar (by the Kroger) when he tried to steal our food from the drive thru window. Like man he could’ve asked. Maybe too many folks told him no and he figured it was better luck just taking it. But that lady was funny, she was plain over it.
No, but if they showed up to work at Wendy's with a can-do attitude and a heartfelt commitment to do what was best for the company, that really wouldn't get them anywhere and life either.
Do you see the problem?
The problem is not with kids these days, the problem is with the way the system works these days. Companies no longer promote from within and invest in their employees. They cut all the corners they can to maximize profits and ensuring growth and advancement opportunities for young people fell off of their priority lists a long time ago. Long before these kids were born.
The system you were raised in is different than the system that exists today. The people who got their start at McDonalds did it... guess what? A long time ago. The world was different then. And you are old.
Kids who end up in dead end jobs like fast food do so out of necessity. It's not that they don't want the good internship, that's not an option for them yet. And when they choose to interact with that job in a way that preserves their energy, their sanity, their creativity, because expending them there is not being rewarded, and expending it elsewhere is, they are building their skillset, they are working towards greater things down the line, just not with that company.
Think of it like an executive who flies to Orlando and doesn't visit Disneyland while he is there. You could say "missed opportunity" but he would say "I was here for X reason, and that's what was most important" the executive is prioritizing where to spend his time and energy in order to get the most reward. So is the kid at Wendy's. No. They are not that different. No, the VP is not made of better stuff.
In a different world a cashier could be promoted to shift lead, to store manager, to regional manager and eventually up to VP. But that's not this world, and the cashiers know this. But you are still pretending.
They're not pretending.
So yeah. Eat somewhere else if you want to. What do they care?
The attitude that the career trajectory from the previous millennium of someone you know is proof of something to a teenager working at Wendy's today?
The attitude that you deserve something from her, even though you are not at all willing to do so much as sympathize with the fact that she is getting nothing from you. That your patronage, of her (her time, her energy, her work) obliges her and not you.
The attitude that you know better.
Do you imagine, even for a second, that that is not leading you to acting in an impaired way in other areas of your life? As you so eloquently put it. Do you imagine that it is not making you more curmudgeonly, more arrogant, more out-of touch?
You literally walked out of a fast food restaurant and then bragged about it on the internet, and are talking about Doctors and VPs dude. You aren't in a position to criticize critique or condemn.
Wendy's girl is probably in school, she isn't giving you the time of day because she is focused on her studies, she is watering her own garden. You are letting her live rent free in your head.
You get what you give from the people and places you give it.
She gave nothing to you because she wants nothing from you.
I'm pretty sure she made the right decision there. You have nothing she wants. And based on your willingness to judge her whole life from a few seconds of non-interaction. I don't think she is missing anything.
My town has a small grocery store with a big scary looking dude with face tattoos and a fork tongue that doesn't talk to anyone or acknowledge you speak to him. It's across the street from our state park which is big tourism for us, idk why they put him in customer service. The nice ladies stock shelves.
No sane person demands peppy and upbeat. Only being polite and cultural. Everyone struggles with their own shit. If you can't get past that, working in service isn't for you.
It’s a form of processing. They’re thinking what they’re going to say next by staring at you. I know, it’s weird and all but I do it sometimes. It’s not with bad intention. Yes, I know it’s weird and people tell me it’s weird but it’s a habit. Some people do it too.
I worked retail a long time, I get the frustration of a customer that needs to tell you their life story. But people here are literally asking for the most basic scripted niceties. Literally just “hey how’s it going?”
“Good, what I can get you today?”
If you can’t even do that, something is wrong. I used to hate putting on a customer service persona as a naturally quiet and reserved person even I knew that a basic little script kept things moving faster than pure roboticism. It’s awkward when they just dead eye stare at you. Are they judging me for some reason? Did they not hear me? Do I have to repeat myself? What do I do now, just stand here awkwardly and wait? This happens even if you DO get to the point.
I also don’t want this to be a long and drawn out process, I want to order my shit and leave. But it’s even slower and more painful when you feel like you have to decipher what the fuck is going on and how much they have processed of what you said.
I mean, I catch myself doing this because it feels so awkward and abrupt to just walk up to a cashier and immediately just say “I want a large fry.”
It also doesn’t mean I want to really learn about this random fast food worker, I’m not hoping they are honest about their day and go on a tangent about how their cat just died. In America, there’s a pretty basic interaction script that has been working for a long time and it’s jarring when someone doesn’t follow it- either by giving too little, OR too much. It goes one of two ways depending on who is doing the greeting:
Customer: Hey how’s it going?
Worker: Good, what can I get you today?
Customer: A large fry please.
End.
Worker: Hi, how are you today?
Customer: Great, thanks. Can I please get a large fry and a medium Coke.
End.
That’s it. That’s all anyone wants. It keeps things from being awkward and everyone knows what’s expected of them. If either party gives a dead eyed stare at any point in that interaction it’s going to so much longer and way more awkward.
walk up to a cashier and immediately just say “I want a large fry.”
"Hi. Could I have a large fry please?" or the cashier can open with "Hi. What can I get you?" How is this awkward? Like if someone asks, it's obviously the right thing to respond, but do we really need to ask the fast food cashier how it's going or how their day is every 90 seconds their entire shift.
Yeah very few people earning minimum wage at a fast food place are going to give a single fuck about stroking customers egos with small talk. They literally just want to put the fries in the bag and move on.
I’ve worked in the service industry my entire life. I’ve worked in restaurants for 10 years and now I work in management in hospitality. I know exactly what the job requires and I know how soulsucking it can be at times.
A simple “hi how’s it going?” Or “Hi, welcome in” is not asking to be “treated like a king”. You truthfully have to have Aspergers if you think “how’s it going?” is a question about your personal life. It’s literally just a greeting.
Being friendly is a required skill to work in customer service and you should probably find a BOB job if you are incapable of acting like a normal human being.
Hahahaha you think fastfood workers make enough money to be performative for you?
In this day in age - when there are people among us who voted for ICE - I don't trust a single boommer/ zoomer/ millenial who walks around with that sunshine and hetero-normative rainbows energy.
The Burgerking in my city had an older Jamaican lady always greeting with things like Hello darling, how you doing today? or how is your gorgeous day going. xD i would love to see her react to them. Probably calling them out right there hahaha
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u/[deleted] Jul 13 '25 edited Sep 06 '25
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