The office-manners fight is a two-way renegotiation, not proof that one generation forgot how to behave.
More than 6 in 10 US companies now run or plan etiquette training, and where they do, it is usually required for everyone, boomers included, not just Gen Z. Meanwhile the under-24s scolded for refusing cameras-on are the ones showing up more than the average worker, about three days a week.
- Cameras-on became a workplace default only in 2020; treating it as timeless professionalism is a choice, not a law.
- A rule only the initiated can follow is a password, not a manner.
- Name the rule out loud (cameras on for clients, off internally) instead of grading people on a code they were never shown.
Stop treating your habit as the default and theirs as a lapse. Ask for what you want, say why, once.
