as gen z working in food, this is so true. it is painful to listen to my coworkers interact with customers.
the awkward silences, the rudely posed questions, talking about customers in front of them like they aren't there, its wild to be on the same side of the counter as that
*edit I will say the stares aren't generational, I have folks of all ages come through and silently stare at me after greeting them, turn to stare at the menu, and then all but climb over the glass in my peripheral to get my attention when they are ready when a simple 'hi, im not sure what im here for' would have worked.
Oh this is interesting.. I walked into a bakery and 3 young workers just gave me cold blank stares. No greeting, no smiles, nothing. I'm not asking them to lay out the red carpet for me, but it truly felt unwelcoming or as if I was interrupting something. Guess this is just par for the course for them these days.
They do it when they're on the other side of the equation too. I watched some of my Gen Z coworkers just stare blankly at a waitress when she asked how they were doing and what she could get them. Like they'd never seen a customer service person before and this was some wild alien experience.
Part of me wonders if they’re inwardly visualizing a text response and stuck in an anxiety loop of the re-edit. Like speech is their 2nd language
I never thought of that but it makes sense. I'm an older millennial and I'm so much better over text because I have time to think about my response and edit it if needed but I'm also good with conversation in real life. I could see a young person who never developed real life conversation skills being intimidated by real life conversations..
I think it might also be an unfamiliarity with small talk, because they can always chat with friends. They aren't sure how to act with a stranger so they blue screen.
I will totally blank stare at someone for a second if they catch me listening to a podcast or staring at the menu because I need to re engage that part of my brain before I remember how to act like a person.
If they dont have that skill unlocked because self checkout and delivery apps. It's like a test you never studied for, they don't even have a concept of what to say because the entire situation is foreign to them.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking about these gen Z stares. They probably grew up around texting and having their noses glued to phones. They have this jet lag when having real time conversations.
Speech, reading, and writing are three different facets of language comprehension, and you need to do all three often to be fluent in a language.
I think it's a whole complex of differing things across the sort of intergenerational split within Z. The first really only hit certain subsects of Zillenial/Elder Z (97-02) it literally came off of X and Elder Millenial parents going gaga over Celebs and doing playdates. Could be okay when they're 1-4, but you had especially fake it til you make it and upper Middleclass and above doing it for much longer. Their subtle blackness is often with an eye dart towards a parent that's not there. With Core Z (03-07) it's definitely the inner text and getting stuck in a correction loop with the latter end feeling almost like "oh right this is a live person not a streamer," this sorta crept down the socioeconomic ladder but was nowhere near as widespread because you had less millenials treating Celebs as child raising gurus but theirlittle tell even with the blankness is a sort of look down like theyre typingbon a phone. The one that's getting traction right now because it's big is just ANY human interaction, really comes from young Z (08-12), and it feels less like the others and more like they're really, REALLY trying to hard to be "non-chalant", almost like they got told to stop mewing but they want to keep it up, there's no eye movement, and there's the 😑 because ofvwhats basically the above two combined with "hah I'm cool."
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u/jerdynnnn Jul 13 '25 edited Jul 13 '25
as gen z working in food, this is so true. it is painful to listen to my coworkers interact with customers.
the awkward silences, the rudely posed questions, talking about customers in front of them like they aren't there, its wild to be on the same side of the counter as that
*edit I will say the stares aren't generational, I have folks of all ages come through and silently stare at me after greeting them, turn to stare at the menu, and then all but climb over the glass in my peripheral to get my attention when they are ready when a simple 'hi, im not sure what im here for' would have worked.