There’s an old adage that says if you love what you do, then you’ll never work a day in your life. The concept of work and all of the stress, anxiety, and ennui associated with it seems to be a uniquely human problem in the animal kingdom. Beavers appear to enthusiastically build every dam they come across, and while no tigers can comment on this, zoologists say they really do love the act of hunting, killing, and eating deer.
When it comes to the human being, we’ve developed a series of complex systems over several thousands of years that never seem to give us any relief. And TikToker Julia Huynh (@jigglyjulia) touches upon a subject that many have openly discussed in social posts: a growing disenchantment with corporate life.
“I’m literally six months into my first corporate job and I already want to quit,” Huynh says in the video. She clarifies how her job is nice enough and that she loves her co-workers.
“If you look at it at face value, it’s great,” she continues. “My one thing that I hate most is the fact that it’s been six months and I literally feel like…nothing has happened in the past six months.”
Huynh says that she works 9am to 5 am Monday through Friday, though truthfully she says it’s more like “8 to 5 or 5 to 5” on some days.
“By the time it gets to Friday, I’m just so exhausted to the fact where I can’t do anything on the weekend anymore,” Huynh says. “Something needs to change in this work culture because like is not cutting it.”
Huynh vents how she’s not “gonna go through my entire life working for like forty years and then I wake up one day and I think about it and I’m like wow it’s been forty years and I’ve done literally nothing.”
“The only caveat with quitting this job is that I will not have any money so how am I supposed to live, like what am I supposed to do I don’t understand,” she concludes.
@jigglyjulia quarter life crisis alert #corporate #job #fulltimejob ♬ original sound – Julia Huynh
The Daily Dot has reached out to Julia via email for further comment.
The growing unrest in the U.S. labor force came to a head during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a massive labor shortage that saw millions of open positions in the country remain unfilled. While many industries have purportedly resolved their staffing woes, there are conflicting reports about the veracity of such claims.
According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, more than 47 million Americans quit their jobs in 2021. Business Wire also wrote in October 2022 that there were still many U.S. retailers scrambling to adequately staff their stores ahead of the holiday season. Forbes confirmed this assessment a month later in a pre-Black Friday post of its own.
However, there were some retailers that seemingly bounced back from the labor shortage better than others. CNN reported in December 2021 that Target wasn’t severely affected by a lack of employees, even if anecdotal reports from individual shoppers say otherwise. Walmart and a ton of other retail stores also stated that they were overstaffed in May of 2022, but that still leaves the question of 10.7 million unfilled jobs in June of the same year.
With all the talk of the labor shortage, it comes as a surprise that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate has been at a very low 3.7%.
There has been an upside to so many Americans quitting jobs: corporations raised salaries and hourly wages with some offering sign-on bonuses and perks for folks willing to work. There are also a number of social media users/influencers who are encouraging folks who feel as if they’re stuck in dead-end jobs with no room for advancement that “rage applying” is the way to go for upward mobility.
