Fortune ran a piece on April 23 with a headline corporate America did not want to read. The Gen Z Pout and the Gen Z Stare are now officially a warning to Fortune 500 CEOs. The pout is a vacant selfie expression the New York Times described as looking “like a koi fish on Ativan.” The stare is the deadpan, unresponsive gaze young workers give in place of saying “ok.” Together they form what the article calls “the studied performance of not performing.” We have a question. Has anyone in this conversation ever owned a cat? The Stare Was Not Invented in 2025 The Gen Z stare went viral in mid 2025. CNBC ran a CEO warning that the stare would “backfire” because it reads as disengagement during performance reviews and client meetings. McKinsey reported that communication and interpersonal skills are now the top entry level hiring gap, ahead of technical skills, for the first time. Six in ten companies in a 2024 Intelligent.com survey said they avoided hiring Gen Z candidates over professionalism concerns.…