The back-to-school rush is stressful enough without cracked screens, flat batteries and volume-blasting headphones thrown into the mix.

If you’ve spent five seconds on TikTok, you’ve seen it. The deadpan, unreadable expression known as the Gen Z stare. It’s already a meme, and now, as summer jobs heat up and Christmas crowds descend, the look is about to be everywhere from retail counters to café registers.