A 1986 article published by the Boston Globe featured the following quote from an art teacher, “If you love your job, you never have to work a day in your life.” But for many, getting to work in a vocation they love might take time. Building the necessary skills to break into one’s industry of choice requires a lot of perseverance and, oftentimes, luck, to land the gigs they want.
For many folks who aren’t wealthy or have parents/guardians who can help fund their dream careers, they’ll need to find other means of sustaining themselves financially until they’re able to work a job they love.
The question is, how invested should one be in these interstitial jobs? That’s the crux of the debate that’s surfaced from a viral TikTok posted by a Walgreens employee. In it, she calls out her manager’s assertion that work should take precedence over her personal life.
@kalienstar ding dong your opinion is wrong #workingclass #corporateemployee ♬ original sound – theylovemeefr
User @kalienstar writes in a text overlay of her video, “When my boss said ‘I know we want our personal lives to come before our jobs but that can’t always be the case’ but I’m literally 20 years old and work at a Walgreens.”
She lip-syncs to a man saying, “fuck was that about?” with a puzzled look on her face, intimating that she can’t comprehend why her manager would be so demanding of employees working a retail job that, on average, pays $10.42 per hour.
This seems to be a sentiment that other TikTok users who viewed her clip shared, “My Tim Horton’s manager asked why I wanted to go to college when I had potential to be a manager like them,” one user wrote.
But others said the only reason they work their jobs is to have necessary funds they can use in their personal lives.
“Like they forget the only reason I’m working a job at all is to financially support my personal life,” one TikToker said. Another wrote, “My job will never come before my personal life,” while someone else penned, “I work to live, NOT live to work.”
A growing number of folks have been posting to social media that they’ve stopped looking towards their jobs as a means of finding personal fulfillment, which has been a recurring theme as part of “quiet quitting” commentary.
In fact, Fast Company has written that “Gen Z isn’t looking for a ‘dream job’.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Walgreens via email and @kalienstar via TikTok comment.
