Nope. It's always safe to ignore any articles about "kids these days"
Oh I take most "news" with a large grain of salt for sure. Just seems like such an odd thing to attribute to a single generation when everyone alive has probably at some point reacted with a blank face to avoid saying "you're fucking weird"
It was only a few years ago that journalists seemed to realize that Millennials had jobs and kids. I'm thinking about college for my kids and "Millennials unable to adapt to the work force" articles are still being written. Bitch, we ARE the work force!
As an elder millenial I might have some insight. You know how when we were kids people used to get all up in their feelings when you weren't smiling. That's this. "Gen Z stare", is just "Resting Bitch Face" or "You look prettier when you smile darlin'" repackaged and rebranded. They're mad that the young people in general and women in particular aren't running around with goofy forced smiles on their faces to make them feel special.
The various answers in this thread are just hilarious.
The stare is real; it's when they work in a service position but don't communicate. You walk up to the counter and instead of greeting you or asking how they can help you or saying anything at all they just stare at you. That's the Gen z stare. It's that simple and I've encountered it everywhere that employs younger people. It doesn't bother me, you don't have to do shit for a shit wage, but it does make interactions unnecessarily awkward.
The comment saying that Gen z just doesn't tolerate stupid is hilarious. What percentage of your generation voted for Trump again?
Huh maybe it's cultural but I have totally encountered this with older people. Any time there is a ticket or info booth like at a train station, they are either staring or doing something else and I never know if I'm interrupting something. It's the best when they fiddle with something looking very busy, and then they look at me annoyed that I'm not saying what I want from them.
Thank you! This is the part I cannot stand. If you want to sit and blink at me on the bus when I ask if the seat next to you is taken, hey, fair enough, Ill just sit down then and fuck you, I was just asking to be nice but aint no one sitting in it and you didnt open your mouth so now Im sitting in it and you can process that however you need to, not my problem.
But when Im at the store and ask where the paper towels are so I dont have to spend 20 minutes walking through a building that covers 40 acres, and get nothing but a dead ass stare, thats fucking ridiculous. Is having to point to an aisle really such a hardship that mentally it causes you to lockup?
Honestly I think this comes down to a lack of socialization. People arent learning how to function in social situations that arent curated for them ahead of time anymore and simply do not know how to communicate properly with strangers. Which is understandable, of course, but where it falls apart is when you willingly take a job to be in that position and then dont want to do what the job entails.
Unless you are literally a child there is no reason for the person at the counter to greet you or ask how they can help, put on your big boy pants and just tell them what you need and move on, everyone is busy and no one has time to make you feel special, have your order prepared before getting to the counter, just say Hi can I have xyz and they will get it done, that's all the conversation that needs to happen.
First, I've never noticed this "Gen z stare" thing, but you do need something when you walk up to a customer service person. Looking up at me, a little nod, a hello, something to let me know you're ready for me to start the interaction and I'm not interrupting.
Im sorry but thats just not normal unless you are neurodivergent. We're not robots. Honestly something is wrong if you dont even have mirror facial expressions.
I get dissasociating from a rude customer, but i ja e gotten that stare from a simple ass "hey hows it goin".
Lmao what? You are saying the person put specifically in a position to ask me how they can help me, or say hello, or just have a normal human interaction isn’t required to do that if I’m an adult? Wild.
There is a huge reason for the person at the counter to greet you or ask how they can help: thats the fucking job.
I find it ironic that you're throwing out lines like "big boy pants" when you could also do the same and get a job where you dont have to work customer service...you know, put on your big boy pants...and go get a job that doesnt require you to be a human facing worker.
"God I cant stand the smell of cooking meat!!"
"Then why do you work at McDonalds?"
"Stop being microaggressive!"
"But there are lots of other jobs out there where they dont cook meat, why not take one of those instead?"
"NO! Why should I have to change? McDonalds should change! And until they do, im going to bitch and complain every chance I get."
"Oh, uh...okay, good luck with that I guess"
Every generation is like this at that age. The hallmark of my generation, GenX, was apathy. Not that I care. Whatever. Never mind.
As an elder millennial, I've neither witnessed nor even heard of this "phenomenon."
no. it's just another thing to make people upset at each other. ignore what they say.
That’s not genz thing. That’s the hot potato method of where you drop the potato on the ground and don’t play the games the sociopath wants to play.
This is a more widely used strategy now that mental therapy is more openly discussed. And the best way to win the game with a narcissist/sociopath is to not play their game. in the older days this was done in form of cutting contact. Don’t take their calls. Leave. Don’t interact.
Deadpan stare is a form of this as visual blocking.
Before the 80s so many people thought ‘I can change him!’ And after the 80s there were so many books about living loving a narcissist and how you can’t change him.
Now we just have the deadpan stare. And so many hack comedians from yesterday liken it to ‘cancel culture’ or not having a sense of humour cuz they can’t deal with being irrelevant because of their unchecked hatred landing flat
I guess it depends on the context.
Work in a customer service job? People are going to talk to you. They may ask you questions. Those questions may even be something you consider silly. But guess what? Thats part of working customer service! Youre paid a wage to...wait for it....serve customers. Part of serving customers is occasionally having to answer questions that you may or may not think are stupid.
But its not a big deal. There is no one on this planet that hasn't asked a stupid question before. Even the person that works at the counter at Starbucks and is annoyed that Im asking a question and thinks its appropriate to stand there and blink at me rather than acknowledge I exist in some human way, ill bet any amount of money they asked a stupid assed question at some point in their lives and the person they asked almost definitely didnt just sit there and stare at them until they felt bad for asking it.
I guess my point is, the problem as I see it arent the people that play that game in their day to day, its the people that play that game when their whole job is to assist the public in some way. The context is different. You can do whatever you want in your personal life, but dont take a customer service job if you dont want to interact with customers. Youre paid a wage to answer those questions and assist customers whether you think theyre stupid or annoying or not. But dont worry, nobody forces anyone to work anywhere in this country anyway, so if that is truly too much to bear, there are plenty of other jobs that arent customer service out there, go do one of those.
Signed, a 40-something that has gotten the blink in response to questions like "is this where I pay?" when standing at the register at a diner and being blankly stared at for 5 minutes, or "excuse me, where are the restrooms located?" when Ive got my 3 year old in tow and they're doing the potty dance, about to soil themselves. If someone here thinks those are the appropriate sorts of questions to just stand there like a statue and not respond, please help me understand how, because I cant figure it out.
I'm an older millennial and I've been doing the gen z stare since the late nineties. I often find the stupidity that spews forth from not just my peers, but what seems all humans, to be disarming to the point of disbelief. That translates to me staring at you blankly for a second. The times i don't stop and recover for that second results in insults spewing from mine own mouth before my brain can restrain. The pause is for both our sake.
We're actually giving them a second to tell us they're just kidding
No, hacks keep writing generation war articles because they're stupid and lazy.
Even the "stare" is just a hack's memories of general teenager movie tropes. I bet right now if I said "80's bored teenage stares at character saying something stupid and weird" you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I remember when I was 16, some middle aged guy at work accused me of having no personality. In reality, I kept all conversations short as possible with him (like almost everyone in the store) because they were casually racist and misogynistic.
lol sounds like an asshole to work with. I would have handled it the same way.
This guy was insane, we had an employee who came over from China for uni. A few of us are in the lunchroom eating one day then this guy walks in, takes an exaggerated breath in and says "SMELLS LIKE A CHINAMAN IN HERE!" this happened in like 2015. And he has the audacity to think other people are the ones with nothing going through their head.
I've seen it a few times. Each time I immediately thought "damn this job must suck" and then later I realized I was the moron customer who asked a dumb question.
The thing is, even if you do ask a dumb question they should treat you with respect, right? And not make you feel bad about it, unless it's perhaps offensive.
Remember when you're mother told you, "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all"? Well gen z kids raise by the kids rasied on that behavior. The second line in this societal meme. They don't insult but they don't give fake small talk to cover it. Maybe I'm projecting but i feel the gen z stare is the evolution of that mindset.
I have absolutely seen this and experienced this. Although, I don’t think it’s much different from any teenager or young person working shitty jobs in any decade I’ve lived or seen in media. The silent teen staring you down at fast food is timeless.
Nah, it's just the natural response to people asking the dumbest shit imaginable while you can't say anything rude without getting fired.
I've had 1 experience with 1 younger employee that encapsulates what is considered to be the "Gen z stare". She was prolly just bored at working in a beef jerky shop. Not gonna get my ruffles in a feather (I like em crunchy).
Ive worked with younger folk at my work. Half are "oh my lord , we are so screwed " the other half is "damn, this kids smart, I like em"
Soo nothing has changed in the last thousand years.
GenX here. I think it’s the name that’s given to a small collection of social mismatches between the generations’ expectations of one another and their social behaviors.
Gen Z in my view do not place much value on social graces as I define them. They’re under no obligation to please me, I realize. But yeah they do not seem to care much for social graces as I define them. Things like “greet someone before you ask for something,” and “say thank you before you leave.” I try to do these things at all times and I find GenZ do not always return them or give any sign they even saw them. When a cashier hands me my change and it’s time for me to go, I will say “thank you,” and imho it’s good social graces for them to say “thank you” as well or “you’re welcome” or even just “have a nice day.” But with GenZ cashiers, I say thank you, and then realize they had stopped paying any attention to my presence even before I said it. The second the change has been handed to me, it seems they consider the transaction over, period. It can feel abrupt. And in that moment, someone like me can be waiting to hear that “you’re welcome” and instead see the other person staring off into space. I have also heard of worse cases where someone is asked a direct question and instead of answering they just stare. I think those are more extreme cases but it’s believable to me and I’ve heard it enough times for it to be credible. It’s obviously not a universal, constant thing.
I also think that for this generation, being a retail worker is much more of a misery than it was when I was their age. Wages suck more now. People may be less polite now. And corporations have really tried to squeeze the most out of every employee. They have to do a bunch of different things. It seems they schedule the bare minimum number of people they can get away with. Maybe in my day kids enjoyed their job more because they could literally only stand at the register talking to customers when there were some, and in between horse around with the other workers. I think a lot of that slack has been squeezed out of the system. Frankly a lot of service has also been squeezed out of the system. I remember when waiters would pack the rest of your meal to go for you. They still did this when I visited Portugal last year and it was so nice. Many things like this have disappeared. Maybe this is part of why customers are less polite now. Service isn’t what it once was. Not always the fault of the workers.
The bit about the Stare is not always true or even most of the time. But it’s something that happens often enough to notice as a pattern. Once you’ve heard the stereotype of the “GenZ stare” you can start to experience confirmation bias of it. And really you never know if the person you’re facing is GenZ or not.
So it’s not a thing one should over-think. But yes I think there is something real behind it. Like a lot of stereotypes, it’s not fair to apply to everyone, but it may have some origin in reality somehow.
I've encountered what I think of as the Gen z stare once or twice.
It skews more towards the younger end of Gen z, and honestly might even be more of an older gen alpha thing.
What I'm talking about isn't the blank look given after being asked a stupid question, although they are absolutely masters of that as well (and I love that look and use it as myself)
It feels like more of a lack of understanding that someone is asking you a question and expecting an answer, or perhaps an inability to process that question and come up with an appropriate answer.
My friend who works at a bank has what I think is kind of the quintessential story that shows this version of the stare looks like, a younger person walked up to the counter, he asked some variation of "How can help you today?" And just got a stare back, like it never crossed their mind that they'd have to answer a question and say "I need to make a deposit/withdrawal,/etc."
And I don't think it's necessarily a feature of the generation as a whole, not that gens z and alpha don't have their quirks, but I have plenty of Gen z friends and coworkers and I don't think they're much worse off in any particular way than my fellow millennials. I have somewhat less exposure to gez alpha, but overall my opinion of them is largely the same so far.
I think it's a very specific subset of the generation with a perfect storm of social isolation/anxiety issues, maybe some neurodivergence, probably some overbearing helicopter parents, and COVID kind of hitting at exactly the wrong point in their lives so that they missed out on some kind of social development milestones.
I’m Gen X and I have that stare when dealing with some people.
I call it the “dafaq” stare.
The Gen Z stare is simply the rational response in dealing with customer facing situations where either 1. the customer is problematic, or 2. if the worker genuinely doesn't know what what to do.
Responding or engaging to problematic customers (racist, homophobic, misogynistic) can only lead to conflict, reprimand, or lawsuits.
Responding with inaccurate information or simply saying leads to conflict, reprimand, or poor reviews.
Both have worsened as people have become more polarised, and management cuts funding and hours for training.
I've always interpreted the stare as a consequence of growing up where cameras (phones) are everywhere and nothing ever disappears from the internet. And as a result people who grew up under that are ALWAYS cognizant of this. So they express nothing because it could make for embarrassing video or photos. Being extra or try-hard are also considered bad. Everything is tamped down, socially. They are seriously just repressed, internalized.
It's just a positive sign towards the deprecation of the weird social theater we've trapped ourselves in.
"You must smile at all times even if nothing warranted it, otherwise you are rude and I get offended."
It's basically the same concept the "Jim face" from The Office. You do something stupid, they stare deadpan at you.
These people we've been screwing over for our own benefit won't smile for us!
I'm also an early 90s baby. It used to be you'd say something back when you caught someone staring at you. Like hey take a picture it'll last longer. Then the one staring would snap out of the moment, crack a joke back, and be done with it. Now it's that moment going on too long and the person engaging the stare doesn't even acknowledge it afterwards. My brother's girlfriend does it all the time. The other day I'm getting ready to leave and opened my door to go to the bathroom and the girl stopped what she was doing to glare at me. No hello, no good morning, no thought behind those eyes. Just nothing. I put my hands up like I got arrested and she snapped back to what she was doing without acknowledging my existence.
It's almost as if nobody told them staring is rude. It's weird. It sucks.
Edit to add a word
Forbes has an article from a Ph.D. who claims it's real.
By Bryan Robinson, Ph.D., Senior Contributor. author of Chained to the Desk in a Hybrid World: A Guide to Balance.
Jul 16, 2025, 06:43pm EDT Jul 21, 2025, 04:07pm EDT
He was born in 1945 according to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_E._Robinson
That puts him in the Silent Generation, as Boomers don't start until 1946.
Ah yes, an 80 year old definitely has the perspective to understand Gen Z. It's possible, extremely unlikely, but there are always exceptions, just look at Skyrim Grandma.
Quickest way to tell is to see how they explain a current massive meme like 6-7. If it's some overly complicated explanation, they clearly have no fucking idea what they're talking about, degree or not. A degree just means you're more educated in one specific thing, the higher that degree, the more specific that knowledge. Often that means anything unrelated to that specialization end up lacking. Some of the most educated people I know are the absolute dumbest as soon as it leaves their very specific knowledgebase.
Here's a quote from that article
Galvin says the facial expression is a subtle cue from a digital-native generation raised on screens, fast content and online communication. “For many Gen Zers, constant eye contact doesn’t always signal attentiveness the way it might for older colleagues,” he explains. “What a Boomer or Gen X manager may perceive as checked-out might actually be Gen Z’s version of active listening.”
Sujay Saha, president of Cortico-X agrees. “Gen Z entered the workforce in an era defined by screens, social distancing and remote communication, and companies must now close the experience gap with empathy-focused onboarding and support, not judgment,” he told me.
If any young Blahaj users are reading this, I want you to know that this is exactly what my cat would do; and doing this supposed behavior makes you look like a cat. You are a cat if you do this. Carry on.
It's collective PTSD. 1997. Keeping up with things feels like a marathon. It's hard smile rn. It doesn't feel appropriate rn. You Stonewall until the other person indicates how they feel, but sometimes you get two blank faces going back and forth. In general, we live in interesting times and I don't want to het punched in the face because I smiled about Trump being a bitch.
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