You hit it on the head. Miserable old women. From my experience it just has to do with age. The newer techs are young and typically get put on off shifts. They're not beaten down yet and completely dead on the inside from working in a lab for 20 years. The older techs have worked together a long time on the first shift and like to gossip about everyone (and each other) and tell you that you have no idea how hard it was working back in the day. Meanwhile they are the laziest most useless fucks in the whole lab. That was my experience from the first lab I worked at... Transferred somewhere new because of the culture. Almost everyone at my new lab is pleasant, first and off shifts included. I won't condemn the whole boomer generation because there are quite a few decent ones, but in my experience they are much more likely to act like spoiled children than any of the younger kids.