They’re petulant, disrespectful and particularly selfish. They lack a firm grasp on the harsh realities of life yet refuse to admit it. They scream and cry in public; the most minor inconveniences can set them off. The world revolves around them, and they’re absolutely everywhere. 
I’m not talking about babies — I’m talking about Baby Boomers. 
For Resident Assistants on campus, concerns about COVID-19 have brought extra stress to the already-hectic move-in process. Beyond opening doors, checking students in, fielding complicated questions and directing traffic, RAs have also had to serve as the immediate enforcers of the University’s updated mask and guest policies.
This past week, as residential halls filled with thousands of potential carriers of the virus, the most vocal critics of such rules were not the students themselves but the adults accompanying them, many of them mask-less and on the prowl for student workers to harass.
We see this trend everywhere. When it comes to respecting minimum-wage workers in the service industry, Boomers consistently have one of the worst reputations. They tip poorly, blame retail workers for situations outside of their control and, more recently, have begun coughing on strangers out of spite for coronavirus-related safety procedures. 
Somehow I don’t think bad parenting is necessarily to blame for Boomers’ generally poor attitudes. Rather it was the economic growth and generous newly-established social programs of the late Twentieth Century — which allowed them to do things like pay for a year of college tuition after doing a summer’s worth of minimum-wage work — that set them with a uniquely skewed image of what hard work and struggle actually looks like. 
Seriously: if you believe that the 20-year-old taking your order goes home after an eight-hour workday and lives comfortably off their daily wages just like you do, you may find it easier to insult their services without giving it much thought.
That behavior is harder to excuse, however, when you understand the server is most likely exhausted from working two or more jobs just to barely cover their rent and pay off student debt. Members of Generation Z tend to treat service workers with more civility because we’ve seen firsthand what a lie the notion of “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” is.
Years of governmental inaction on wage stagnation, decreasing welfare benefits and rising rent and tuition prices — all while tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy are approved time and again — have fostered solidarity among the young, especially among those in the lower and working class.
The pandemic has only amplified this disparity in generational decency. As young minimum wage workers enforce mask policies for the common good, Boomers use them as targets for their anger at institutional forces. The government is ostensibly restraining their freedom of movement, and Boomers are suddenly facing opposition in the same spaces they once ruled.
On move-in day, crowds of Baby Boomers stamped their feet, denigrated student workers and rolled their eyes when reminded to wear a mask. One man even told a coworker of mine he refused to “take advice” from a woman.
Is it okay to be angry at the University for reopening campus in the middle of a pandemic? Yes. But student workers aren’t to blame for the choices of the administration, nor are they the emissaries of whatever else you think is wrong with the world today.
They’re just trying to help out — and trying, despite all the odds stacked against them, to survive. 
Cécile Girard is a 20-year-old Psychology junior from Lake Charles, LA.