As an early 90’s millennial, I’ve never noticed a “gen z stare” as described in news articles like a “blank face that shows lack of social skill or ability to think”. The only times I’ve witnessed it happen and seen the older person accuse them of “gen z stare” is when the older person says something off hand or dumb but isn’t self aware enough to realize they’re being weird. Hell, I’ve given people a blank face countless times because I was taught it was better to say nothing at all sometimes. Especially when it came to talking to older people at work.
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.
To a degree, I do agree with you. However, if you are of the legal age where you are even allowed to hold a job, period, you shouldn’t have to be trained on how to interact with human beings. That training should have happened long before you came to us looking for a job. If they’re even hired in the first place, they must have demonstrated that they are capable of having a conversation or else they wouldn’t have been brought on.
I mean really that’s the whole reason we do the interview…we don’t give a shit about their technical skills really, because that’s all stuff they will be trained on. What we give a shit about is that they’re capable of interacting with other people in a professional manner. If someone is sitting for an interview and just blinks at us whenever we ask them a question about their application, they’re not going to be offered a job. So its pretty clear that for the interview, at least, they demonstrated that they have that base skill or else I wouldn’t be training them in the first place.
So then why the fuck is it that all those skills they demonstrated they have during the interview evaporate the minute they’re on the payroll? Like do I really have to train someone that if the phone rings at their desk, they need to answer it? That if they receive a direct email from someone, they need to respond to it? That if someone asks them a question, they need to answer, and not just stare at them?
I can teach people the technical shit all day long, and literally do it all day long. But I should not have to teach them that a ringing telephone needs to be answered, especially if the job they were hired to do was, in part, answering the fucking phone. And there are people out there that still think that I should have to do that, or worse, that Im the jerk for expecting it in the first place. Just such a fuckin clown show all around.
The education system doesn’t teach shit on how to interact with human beings though, and even heavily discourages it by making it about individual skill and competing for the highest scores. Then throws them into the real world that functions completely different than what it teaches and floods people with various things that demand attention but giving attention to all at once isn’t possible and a lot of it is bullshit anyways. Everything becoming a suburban hellscape where you need a car and parental consent to do anything and people call the police on children or teens doing things by themselves and stuff being increasingly age restricted doesn’t help either. Meanwhile everyone still needs a paycheck whether they have those skills or not.