MANAGING THE GENERATION GAP

A cell phone rings inside a clothing store at the Sunset at Galleria mall in Henderson. A man who appears to be in his early 20s reaches into his pocket to retrieve it. He smiles as he reads the caller ID, then begins a five-minute conversation.

Here's the problem: He's the only open cashier serving a line that's seven customers deep and growing.

"Can you believe this?" customer No. 4 asks customer No. 5, both of whom appear to be in their 40s.

Every generation of adults complains about how much worse kids are today -- in manners, values and class. But the generation gap between the baby boomers (born between 1946-64) and the millennials or Generation Y (1980-2000) may be even wider than usual because of the ubiquity of electronic communications.

"They really have grown up more with technology than human connection," says Patti Fralix, president of a North Carolina-based leadership consulting firm who writes and lectures about the millennial generation. "They don't have that experience, and they really don't want to connect on that level.

"They're much more comfortable with technology."

Nowhere is this age-related schism more evident than in the retail store, where the quality of customer service most baby boomers expect clashes with the quality most millennials provide.

Experts call this the service gap.

"They need to be taught what the human connection is all about," Fralix says. "They don't necessarily know. You would think they would, but they don't."

A company directive forced Cynthia Wade, general manager at Salvatore Ferragamo's two Palazzo outlets, to place young people on her sales floors. Of the 80 mostly millennnial sales applicants she interviewed before her stores' January opening, two actually received cell phone calls during their job interviews.

"And they took the call, both of them," Wade reports. "They gave me the 'hold on a minute' finger."

Needless to say, they're working elsewhere -- if at all.

What boomers perceive squarely as rudeness, however, may also be a cultural difference. To a typical millennial, electronic communications always take precedence.

"I wouldn't have a problem with it," says Rachel Alger, 18. "But with some of my friends, if you took their computer and cell phone away, they'd probably go into shock."

Alger says one of her best friends sits at her computer and waits for people to e-mail her.

"That's what she does all day," Alger says.

Millennials rely on technology for all aspects of life -- including socializing, which they increasingly conduct via text and instant messages, and social networking Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook. In their 2007 book, "Connecting to the Net Generation," Reynol Junco and Jeanna Mastrodicasa surveyed 7,705 college students and found that 97 percent own a computer and 94 percent a cell phone. And, of the 76 percent who reported using instant messaging, 15 percent are logged on 24-7.

"They work hard, and they learn fast -- at least when it comes to learning technology," says Amy Coykendall of Desert Birkenstock, where the sales staff is 40 percent millennial. "But sometimes we have to develop their social skills."

To that end, Coykendall banned all cell phones from her sales floors several years ago.

"We had to," she says. "At absolutely every opportunity, (younger sales staffers) were on their phones."

Now, all interactive electronic gadgets must be left in a back room -- in the off or vibrate positions only.

"And they all spend their entire break text-messaging," Coykendall says.

It's not that millennials don't develop important interpersonal skills such as listening, communicating and mediating differences; it's that they develop them as much for the virtual world as the physical one.

"There are times when someone reacts out of what you're comfortable with, and you suddenly realize you don't know what to say in that kind of situation," says Tara Verderosa, 18, whose part-time job is welcoming customers to Laser Quest laser tag.

"With text-messaging, I would have more time to think about my reaction to something," Verderosa explains. "But when you're having a conversation face to face, you're put on the spot. You don't have that time to really think about it."

Confounding the service gap is the memory most boomers have of being lavished with customer service in their youth, by all the friendly faces assisting their parents during shopping trips to the local department store.

That reality hasn't existed for decades -- even in most department stores -- so millennials don't have the reference point. Most of their boomer parents breezed them through the minimally staffed aisles of Costco and Home Depot, while the millennials shop with increasing frequency online -- where they do almost everything else -- with little or no human contact.

"If no one's taught them how to have human interaction or expected them to be good at it, and then they're thrown into these jobs, I don't think it's surprising that they struggle," says Jennifer Basquiat, professor of communication at the College of Southern Nevada.

"But I do think it's a mistake to blame it on them," Basquiat adds. "We, the older generations, have created this culture for them, and they're really just a product of the culture they've been raised in."

As of yet, no studies have been published measuring the potential economic impact of the service gap (how likely offended boomers are to buy desired goods and services at other stores or not at all). According to some Las Vegas business owners, however, it hurts in a very real way.

Leo Demirtshian owns the MakeMeLaughShirts.com kiosk in the Hawaiian Marketplace. In a year, Demirtshian says, he's gone through 20 millennial salespeople.

"It's a simple job," the Los Angeles resident says. "If someone approaches the kiosk, you just tell them what the product is and how much it costs.

"But just getting them to talk to people seems like extra work to them that they don't want to do," he says.

Demirtshian says he pays an average of $10 an hour plus commission.

"But it doesn't matter what kind of incentives you do," he says. "They're just not comfortable talking to people. So a lot of them say, 'It's just too hard working here.' "

To be fair, not all experts believe in the service gap.

"I don't agree with a lot of your perceptions," writes University of Nevada, Las Vegas marketing professor Gillian Naylor in an e-mail. "There are many really hard-working teens out there. And too often, customers are rude and overbearing to workers, especially teens."

"Want good service?" Naylor adds. "Be a good customer."

Tellingly, perhaps, Angeline Close also lectures to millennials in a UNLV marketing course.

"We teach them about relationship-based marketing and the importance of building and maintaining one-on-one relationships that are trust-based," Close says.

After class, she says, students don't look up at each other and say, "See you tomorrow" or ask "Where are you going for lunch?"

"The first thing they do is turn on their cell phones," Close says.

Contact reporter Corey Levitan at clevitan@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0456.