Gen Z Stare Down

As many business news sites are reporting, the “Gen Z Stare” is the latest fad affecting customers seeking help from service workers. The phenomenon is characterized by a blank, impassive expression, flouting the industry conventions of eager service with a smile. Many customers are frustrated with the trend, but perhaps some, having read about it in their favorite Facebook group, may be seeing it where it isn’t….

Don Bowers recently visited a Cinemark theater in Manchester, CT one Wednesday afternoon and describes his experience with an employee who hit him with the now infamous Gen Z Stare.

“I had just come out to talk to the usher,” says Bowers, “about what a disappointing experience I was having.”

Bowers had intended to tell the worker that several people went unchastised for talking and using their phones during the movie, the popcorn was stale, and that the lobby’s colorful carpet pattern was “obnoxious”.

“Usually I’d walk up and receive a friendly greeting,” says Bowers. “I’d make my complaint, have a nice conversation, get my free tickets to come back another time for my trouble and be on my way. Not this time though. I walked up to the kid manning the lobby and not only did he not greet me in a manner befitting a movie theater usher, but he didn’t acknowledge me at all, just gave me that stupid Gen Z stare! I tell you, I was irate for real this time, not like all those other– uh, I mean exactly like the other times, but, uh, moreso. Yeah!”

While many see the Gen Z Stare as a declination to speak first, eschewing the normal customer service model of workers approaching customers in anticipation of their needs, Bowers took this to be far more insulting.

“These kids and their blase attitudes,” says Bowers. “It’s like they forgot who pays their salary!”

“If he knew how much we made,” says usher Chris Pearson, “trust that he would not be taking credit for it.”

Pearson is a Gen Z aged employee of Cinemark and was at the theater at the time of the stare down. We asked him his opinion on this trend.

“Well, for starters it’s nonsense,” he says. “These people are just upset we’re not jumping to attention with a silver platter and an expression that says ‘I’d like nothing more than for you to wipe your feet on my face!’ the second they step into our radius.

“Furthermore,” adds Pearson, “that wasn’t even an employee he was arguing with, it was friggin’ Timothée Chalamet!”

At this point, you may be asking yourself what Hollywood’s hottest leading man was doing at a Cinemark in Manchester, CT on a Wednesday afternoon and you’d be right to be skeptical. As it turns out, the Gen Z staring “employee” in question was nothing more than a cardboard cutout.

“We get these promotional standees all the time,” says Pearson. “We were in the process of putting one up for Timothée Chalamet’s next movie and must’ve walked away from it for a bit. Bro was out here telling Maud’Dib he wanted to see his manager!”

Despite the fact that he had spent what some witnesses estimate to be a few to several minutes shouting at a flat, glossy screen idol, Don Bowers still insists he was wronged in some way.

“They tried to tell me this kid was cardboard,” says Bowers, “like I didn’t cotton the wooden expression for myself. And you wouldn’t believe the excuses they made for him! Like ‘sir, that’s Timmy Shamwow’, as if his name makes a difference! And telling me that he’s ‘not a living person’? I know we all feel a little dead inside sometimes, but that doesn't make it acceptable!”

Oh wow, okay, so he still can’t see the difference between a cardboard cutout and an actual theater employee despite having no apparent visual impairments. That’s interesting….

“They keep trying to make this about a generational divide,” says Pearson, “when it’s really about their own entitlement not being catered to. It’s literally gotten to the point where my manager had to pretend to fire a piece of cardboard to get this guy to let it go!”

“Even as the manager stood there and told him that behavior would not be tolerated the kid just stared and said nothing,” says Bowers, “just showing a total lack of respect for everyone and everything. I say good riddance to him! Although I did think it was a bit harsh when the manager said he was going to toss him into the baler.”

In the aftermath of this incident, all employees of this particular theater will be undergoing additional customer service training as well as affixing stickers to all future standees specifying the actors being depicted are not actual people. Don Bowers was given four free readmit tickets for the trouble of making himself look like a belligerent idiot.