That’s actually where the term came from. Back in the days when dates were chaperoned and school classrooms segregated by sex, ordering a soda was one of the few times when a teen-age girl could approach a boy her age group, since soda jerks tended to be young. A lot of them took advantage of their situation by asking out girls they liked, and using inappropriate language. Guys who acted that way were described as acting like soda jerks, and later, it was shortened to acting like jerks.
That’s actually where the term came from. Back in the days when dates were chaperoned and school classrooms segregated by sex, ordering a soda was one of the few times when a teen-age girl could approach a boy her age group, since soda jerks tended to be young. A lot of them took advantage of their situation by asking out girls they liked, and using inappropriate language. Guys who acted that way were described as acting like soda jerks, and later, it was shortened to acting like jerks.