‘Appalled’: This is what’s wrong with Gen Z workers

An ordinary day in Sydney has exposed how Australia’s youngest service workers have a lot to learn about doing their jobs well.

OPINION

Maybe it’s down to devices, and too many people in their early 20s prizing their virtual lives over the real McCoy, but my most recent “service” experiences have reinforced my growing concern that for all their tech savviness, Gen Z, as a cohort, is missing a vital chip.

An old friend and I headed to Sydney’s Barangaroo on Sunday to meet three other school friends. En route we realised we’d both had major fails at the same chemist, hers only that morning, when a young man behind the counter extravagantly rolled his eyes when she asked for help reaching a perfume, then was bitterly rude while she paid for it.

“I can beat that,” I said. “Imagine an elderly woman, a mum with a sick child, a gentleman and myself all waiting at the prescription counter, and one of the cashiers standing behind it loudly chatting to the young pharmacist about her love life.

“Suddenly she starts saying: ‘Like, what the f**k?’ – not once, but over and over, until I leaned over and said: ‘Excuse me, but we can all hear you’.”

And the look on her face! She gave this sneery little snort, annoyed I’d interrupted her, and her mouth hung open as if she couldn’t believe I had the temerity to bring the crowd of customers to her attention.

Journalist Diana Jenkins reckons Gen Z service workers need to lift their game.

My friend and I are Gen Xers. She was as appalled as I was and we both marvelled at the young pharmacist’s inaction, f-bombs loudly detonating while she was dispensing prescription medications. She was wearing a labcoat! Where was the professional decorum? Why didn’t she at least have the sense to shut down her potty-mouthed friend? Who are these people?

The whole thing blew my mind.

And that was before Barangaroo, where we discovered that there is truly no limit to ways Gen Z can bludgeon the basic principles of hospitality to a brutal death by indifference.

I won’t dwell on the service nosedive that soured an otherwise enjoyable lunch, because our spirits were immediately buoyed by the discovery of an almost empty, vast third-floor terrace bar with terrific views. We congratulated ourselves on choosing this ideal venue right up until the Hostile Hostess arrived, whose first beef was the size of our party, apparently because of an impending stampede of “other people”.

We all looked around in confusion because the bar was virtually empty inside and out.

“We’re … five,” we said, exchanging glances and enunciating slowly, so she had time to count it out on her fingers, “but two of us are leaving shortly.”

This detail incited something very angry deep in her heart.

Diana Jenkins and her friend both marvelled at the young pharmacist’s lack of professionalism. Picture: iStock

She marched darkly to a table set low down on a side overlooking buildings rather than the water.

We all stopped short, taking in the rows and rows of at least 30 empty tables on the way to this outpost, from which we would need to deploy a semaphore system to attract service, and asked if we could possibly have one of the many empty tables with a view. That’s when an already perplexing scenario became positively Seinfeldian.

“We have other people coming,” she repeated.

Okay, honey, I get it, we’re 52, not 22, menopausal mums not injectable-addled influencers, but this joint was empty. I could have star-jumped from one side of the building to the other without troubling a single soul.

“Could we please sit at that table?”

“No, not that one.”

“What about that one?”

“No.”

“How about this one?”

“No, this is a table of three.”

“But we could just bring over two extra chairs – and these two girls are leaving in a minute anyway.”

“It’s a table of three.”

“Do you think we could swap the stools for these high chairs with backs?”

“No.”

“What if we change them back when we leave?”

“No.”

Diana and her friends when had a bizarre encounter with a young waitress over which table they could sit at in a near-empty restaurant at Barangaroo. Picture: Damian Shaw

We pointed to one of the only groups in the place, who were of a similar vintage to us.

“But they’ve moved their chairs.”

“This table has stools.”

“Okay, so can we sit at that other table of six and change the chairs like they did?”

“No.”

“But we’re surrounded by chairs. Look at all these chairs!”

“We have other people coming.”

“So you keep saying. But we’re here and they’re not.” We looked around again. “We’re basically the only ones here.”

It was so bizarre. Anti-fun, boring, dumb and perverse.

And did all the fabled “other people” ever come?

No, they did not.

Call me crazy – call me “Karen” for all I care – but I have a sneaking suspicion why they stayed away.

Originally published as ‘Appalled’: This is what’s wrong with Gen Z workers