I work retail, and customer and fellow employee alike have no ability to google fucking anything, and this isn’t bound by any age bracket or demographic. Young and old alike, half my job is googling shit for them, I’ll do it in front of them in an attempt to be like “see you can do this yourself next time” and it never works. People will call my shop and ask me to google the phone number and directions TO OTHER STORES!
I forced a younger coworker to google a question he asked me yesterday and I swear I heard the fucking 2001 Space Odyssey theme played as he realized you can find information to answers your questions yourself!
ok. have a lot of experience in retail too (ugh). i will say i do think some people just crave the interaction
they know how to look stuff up but they just desperately want an “expert” to tell them. or just someone to talk to and make them feel good
some of this is just alienation. just like if I pick a piece of food out for someone they immediately think it’s the best thing ever because i chose it.
people are losing the ability to find out info thanks to AI though. but sometimes they just want to interact and we are paid and forced to interact with them so we make great social sponges.