The Real Reason Modern Work Is So Soul Crushing, Explained | Compilation - video Dailymotion

The Take Film TV Movie

It seems like pretty much everyone is miserable at their job now - but why? We're taking a deep dive into what went wrong as it's played out on screen and in real life, from workplace dystopias...

Transcript

00:00:00It seems like everyone today hates their job,

00:00:03and recent film and TV are taking this anti-work vibe to the extreme.

00:00:07Let's burn this place to the ground.

00:00:10From the shocking wealth inequality of a show like Squid Game,

00:00:13to the bad billionaire Roy family of succession,

00:00:16narratives today are aware that most of us are trapped

00:00:19in a rigged economic game which benefits a select elite.

00:00:22Because they realized if all the slaves dressed the same,

00:00:25they would see how many of them there were.

00:00:27Or they'd rise up and kill the masters.

00:00:30Apple TV series Severance adds a sci-fi twist,

00:00:33but channels a similarly sinister view of corporate intentions,

00:00:36while mocking the recognizable absurdity of the workplace conventions

00:00:40that are designed to mollify workers.

00:00:42By reaching 75% refinement on Siena,

00:00:46you have earned for you and your fellow refiners

00:00:49a five-minute music dance experience.

00:00:52It suggests that without any of the sci-fi elements,

00:00:55we're already trapped in a dystopia of meaningless drudgery

00:00:58that serves shady corporate overlords.

00:01:01The surest way to tame a prisoner is to let him believe he's free.

00:01:05Other series like the investment bank-focused industry

00:01:08and real-life-inspired work stories We Crashed,

00:01:10The Dropout, and Super Pumped use documented facts

00:01:13to show us just how bad this has all gotten.

00:01:15You're going to sink the ship.

00:01:18That's 1.9 billion losses.

00:01:20Over the course of film and TV in the last few decades,

00:01:22we've moved from the Gen X slacker aversion to responsibility,

00:01:26to TV optimistically arguing that we should actually be family

00:01:29with our co-workers, to the current jaundiced view

00:01:32that work is an assault on our minds and bodies.

00:01:35Yeah, show us something real and free and beautiful,

00:01:36you could have, yeah, it'd break us.

00:01:40Here's our take on how the workplace sitcom has given way

00:01:42to widespread workplace dystopia, and how it reflects our angst

00:01:46that the nature of work today is not just soul-crushingly meaningless,

00:01:50but actively wrong.

00:01:52Why are we down here still working in the dark?

00:01:57For pop culture in the Gen X heyday of the 90s,

00:01:59work was soul-crushing, tedious, and pointless.

00:02:021999's Office Space presents a series of endlessly interchangeable,

00:02:07unimportant tasks.

00:02:08And the film still resonates today with a depiction of empty corporate life

00:02:12that continues to be recognizable.

00:02:15Corporate accounts payable.

00:02:16Nina speaking. Just a moment. Corporate accounts payable.

00:02:21Nina speaking. Just a moment.

00:02:24In office space, the blue-collar jobs are still tough and bad.

00:02:28It's up to you whether or not you want to just do the bare minimum.

00:02:31Or, uh, well, like Brian, for example, has 37 pieces of flair on today.

00:02:37But Peter Gibbons ultimately decides the best option is a construction job

00:02:41that lets him use his hands to create a concrete product and so makes him feel his work has a purpose.

00:02:46That same year, Fight Club, The Matrix, and American Beauty likewise all presented

00:02:51men disillusioned with meaningless jobs radically breaking out of their corporate prisons,

00:02:56leaving behind the rat race for a more visceral, physical, and real experience of life.

00:03:01I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.

00:03:07Outside of a white-collar office setting, we had movies like Kevin Smith's Clerks,

00:03:11which dramatized the dreariness of service jobs.

00:03:14Everybody that comes in here is way too uptight.

00:03:16This job would be great if it wasn't for the customers.

00:03:19Reality Bites presented recent graduates as having to choose between floundering or totally selling out.

00:03:24I'd like to remind you that we're laying people off around here and I can find an intern

00:03:27who do your job to free like that.

00:03:30In TV, the most popular sitcoms frequently focused on everything the characters did outside of work.

00:03:35Hits like Friends and Seinfeld were primarily interested in the romantic and social lives of the characters.

00:03:41Even popular workplace shows from the 70s through 90s like Cheers, Taxi, and Wings

00:03:46still refused to validate the concept of work.

00:03:49Though the characters eventually grew close, it was because they were bonded by how much they all hated

00:03:53their jobs and needed to come in day after day in order to survive.

00:03:57Tony, I'm not really a cab driver. I'm just waiting for something better to come along.

00:04:04You know, like death.

00:04:05This attitude toward work animates the British Office series and the early episodes of The American

00:04:10Office, which focus on how unpleasant it would be to have to interact with a boss like David

00:04:14Brent or Michael Scott every day.

00:04:16Have you felt the vibe yet? We work hard, we play hard.

00:04:20Sometimes we play hard when we should be working hard, right?

00:04:22Jim, the closest thing we had to an audience identification character, builds his relationship

00:04:27with Pam and many of the other characters on the foundation of how much they don't want to be

00:04:31doing this job.

00:04:32If I advance any higher in this company, then this would be my career.

00:04:37Well, if this were my career, I'd have to throw myself in front of a train.

00:04:42Eventually though, TV tried to sell us on the idea that work was actively good.

00:04:47But Jim is initially defined by how much he hates Dunder Mifflin, for the series to continue,

00:04:57he has to stay. And to make this less depressing, the series motivates him to want to be there,

00:05:02both due to his love for Pam and due to his friendships with the other co-workers.

00:05:06When Jim and Pam get married, the rest of the Dunder Mifflin workers are guests of honor.

00:05:10I just want to say how happy we are that all of you are here tonight.

00:05:14And by the end of the series, they even view themselves as a family.

00:05:17My top salesman, Jim Halpert, was best man at my wedding.

00:05:20And office administrator, Pamela Beasley Halpert, is my best friend.

00:05:25The biggest offender in trying to actively turn work into family is Parks and Recreation.

00:05:30For its first two seasons, Parks and Rec maintains aloofness toward work.

00:05:33Even though Leslie is committed to the idea of being a public servant, she only wins minor victories

00:05:38and pretty much has to force her apathetic co-workers to do their jobs.

00:05:42No, no, no, no. I've been trying to put a park there for four years.

00:05:45What we are going to do is we're going to take your enthusiasm, we're going to bundle it up,

00:05:47and we're going to find a new place for a dog park. Doesn't that sound fun?

00:05:50One, two, three, cheese!

00:05:52The earlier Gen X cynicism is in part embodied in the character Mark Brandanowicz,

00:05:56who tries to keep his head down and do his job without going above and beyond.

00:06:00There is a sea of red tape. Endless roadblocks.

00:06:06So yeah, I don't know.

00:06:07At first, Leslie's unrelenting faith in the power of her co-workers is a joke

00:06:11that occasionally becomes sweet. But over time, that faith and the idea that Leslie's a good

00:06:17boss because she cares becomes the beating heart of the series.

00:06:21Did anyone ever tell you that your tenacity can be intimidating?

00:06:25Yes, every month of my life since fourth grade.

00:06:27Everyone becomes excited about their jobs. Eventually, Mark, who rejected Leslie,

00:06:31is replaced with Ben, who loves his job and Leslie,

00:06:35and wins her over with his enthusiasm for numbers, logistics, and planning.

00:06:39This project, this is as much yours as it is mine. It's ours.

00:06:43I'm glad you're here.

00:06:44Oh, thank you.

00:06:45It's great you're still happy at Hattaker.

00:06:55Well, maybe not forever.

00:06:56No, not forever.

00:06:57But for now.

00:06:58It's okay for now.

00:06:59It's great for now.

00:07:00Yes.

00:07:01Yes, it is.

00:07:02In today's climate, the optimism of series like Parks and Rec would feel incredibly naive.

00:07:07But it's not just because we've returned to a version of the office space Gen X era of merely hating the

00:07:12drudgery of work. Now, work has become actively hostile and dangerous both to us and to other people.

00:07:18Things were so much simpler when people ran the corporations.

00:07:21But at some point, the algorithms just became better at it.

00:07:24They started mutating, growing out of control.

00:07:28One of the most popular and acclaimed TV series of 2022,

00:07:32Severance takes the danger of work to its logical conclusion.

00:07:36Severance follows severed workers who have a totally separate work consciousness and outer life

00:07:41consciousness and each can't remember anything of the other's life.

00:07:44Ironically enough, Severance posits a world where work-life balance isn't just difficult,

00:07:49but literally impossible.

00:07:50The severed workers' innies are constantly trapped at work, unable to exist outside of the office,

00:07:56while their outies, who collect the paycheck and don't ever remember being at work,

00:07:59won't let the miserable innies quit.

00:08:01So, what, you were unhappy at work and instead of lodging a complaint, you...

00:08:06No. I tried that first. So did you.

00:08:11So, of course, those co-workers have to become family.

00:08:14When new worker Heli is introduced to the team,

00:08:16she is inundated with language that mimics the idea that work is supposed to be your family.

00:08:21In seeing her here with you all, I say she most definitely has a family.

00:08:28In fact, the managers at Lumen watch the severed workers constantly

00:08:31and invest in their relationships the same way we do when we watch workplace TV.

00:08:35You guys are one of my favorite office friendships.

00:08:38But as Heli and the other characters start to see how terrible their employer Lumen is,

00:08:42their family-like bond isn't just about getting through the hours,

00:08:45it's infused with the much bigger stakes of potential rebellion.

00:08:49You're a so-called boss mate on the clock that taunts you from the wall.

00:08:54But my friends, the hour is yours.

00:08:57And the creepy mystery of what shady corporate work they might really be serving unknowingly.

00:09:02What if the cost of that help is that you're murdering people eight hours a day and you don't even know it?

00:09:09In a clever nod to TV sitcom history, Severance stars Adam Scott,

00:09:14who played the happy workaholic Ben on Parks and Rec and here is tortured by his job.

00:09:19It takes production design inspiration from a much earlier iconic vision of futuristic work dystopia,

00:09:24Jacques Tati's 1967 film Playtime.

00:09:27And building on something like The Office, it mocks the system of office perks

00:09:31that aim to distract and motivate workers.

00:09:33Here they're presented in examples that are playfully absurd,

00:09:36yet simultaneously recognizable and vaguely sinister.

00:09:39We see how Lumen attempts to indoctrinate its workers through an entire mythology of purpose

00:09:54that to an outside observer is clearly nonsense.

00:09:56The work is mysterious and important.

00:09:59And as it seems increasingly clear that something very wrong is happening at Lumen,

00:10:03being anti-work takes on moral overtones.

00:10:06Here, Severance evokes other recent work like Sorry to Bother You,

00:10:09which depicts workers selling themselves into functional slavery in exchange for housing.

00:10:14We help thousands of companies utilize worry-free workers.

00:10:18So wait, are you telling me you sell slave labor to companies over the phone?

00:10:22Sorry to Bother You follows the main character Cash,

00:10:25at first feeling happy that he's rising up at work,

00:10:27but then discovering he's secretly helping his bosses enact real travesties on the world,

00:10:32like selling weapons, deepening global conflict, and creating animal-human hybrids for forced labor.

00:10:37This is just incontrovertible proof of worry-free's evil practices.

00:10:42They're turning humans into grotesque horse people.

00:10:45These are far from the only recent dramatizations of dangerous, toxic offices.

00:10:50A new wave of shows don't just imagine fictional offices, they use real events.

00:10:55Series like Super Pumped, which portrays the rise of Uber,

00:10:57The Dropout, which follows Theranos, and We Crashed, which depicts the growth of WeWork,

00:11:02all take place in factual examples of the Silicon Valley workplace,

00:11:06where everyone has to deal with the whims of whatever ambitious, potentially delusional person is in charge.

00:11:11Our mission is to elevate the world's consciousness.

00:11:14And while the end result of misconduct at Dunder Mifflin was that someone might not get their paper order,

00:11:19these real bosses screwed people over and stole millions of dollars.

00:11:23This disregard for patients' lives was unconscionable.

00:11:27They hurt people.

00:11:28This company hurt people.

00:11:30While the work family fiction looked nice on TV,

00:11:33real bosses commonly use the trappings of social connection to prevent workers

00:11:37from calling out that they're not getting a fair wage,

00:11:40or to stay cheerful even if they're being exploited or losing their livelihoods.

00:11:44Severance's science fiction elements may be intriguing,

00:11:47but the scariest thing about the show isn't the type of workplace dystopia it imagines,

00:11:51it's that the type of environment it depicts is really already here.

00:11:54Have you ever felt like you're wasting your single precious life doing a job you hate?

00:11:59Right now, millions of US workers are quitting their jobs in The Great Resignation,

00:12:03after the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a mass re-evaluation of priorities.

00:12:07But on screen, we've gravitated for decades towards characters who express

00:12:11a philosophy of life that's an alternative to capitalism's assumptions.

00:12:15We don't have a lot of time on this earth.

00:12:17We weren't meant to spend it this way.

00:12:19Filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements.

00:12:23These anti-work characters riot against unlivable working conditions,

00:12:27challenge irresponsible companies that care only about making a profit,

00:12:31refuse to acquiesce to senseless labor, call out parasitic consumer culture,

00:12:36use the jobs that are exploiting them to their own advantage,

00:12:39reveal the evils of a system based on capital,

00:12:41and won't give up their principles or identity for the workplace.

00:12:45If given a choice between doing something and nothing, I'd choose to do nothing.

00:12:49But I will do something if it helps someone else do nothing.

00:12:52I'd work all night if it meant nothing got done."

00:12:54Being anti-work doesn't mean being against all labor and effort.

00:12:58It's about refusing to let what we do for income cost us our lives and our humanity.

00:13:03Here's our take on the anti-work heroes of film and TV,

00:13:06and what their anti-work ethic teaches us about resisting soul-sucking jobs and changing the system.

00:13:15Anthropologist David Graeber points out that in the early 20th century,

00:13:21it was believed that by the year 2000, people in rich countries like the US and the UK

00:13:26would have a 15-hour work week due to technological progress.

00:13:29But instead, technology only made work more soul-deadening,

00:13:33and somehow has led us to work more by creating new positions that are actually pointless.

00:13:38Graeber distinguishes two types of terrible jobs,

00:13:41bullshit jobs and just bad jobs.

00:13:43Bullshit jobs are those that appear to offer no true purpose or contribution to society.

00:13:48So I go through these thousands of lines of code and, uh, it doesn't really matter.

00:13:54Because they are so meaningless,

00:13:55bullshit jobs cause existential despair.

00:13:58The employees of Dunder Mifflin compare their workplace unfavorably to prison.

00:14:02You got outdoors time?

00:14:04Michael, why don't we get outdoors time?

00:14:06But paradoxically, many unnecessary bullshit jobs are overpaid,

00:14:11while more necessary and meaningful jobs are underpaid.

00:14:14As Dallas Hawthorne wrote on Twitter,

00:14:15I don't think boomers realize how many of us actually want to work as librarians,

00:14:19gardeners, and teachers.

00:14:21Those jobs just don't pay us enough to feed us,

00:14:23so we have to take jobs we hate to get paid more.

00:14:25It's as though there's a trade-off happening in modern employment.

00:14:28You either earn money or get to do something with meaning.

00:14:31According to Graeber, the existence of so many bullshit jobs in a capitalist society is surprising,

00:14:36because it goes against the primary goal of any company, to earn as much money as possible.

00:14:42Efficiency is priority number one, people.

00:14:44Because waste is a thief.

00:14:47But perhaps one reason for all these useless jobs is the need to maintain social order.

00:14:52In a way, jobs act as a kind of daycare for adults.

00:14:55As Twitter user Neo underscore URL wrote, commenting on the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020,

00:15:00I can't help but think about how large a part of people being able to mobilize and protest right

00:15:05now is because of them not being at work, and how the 40-plus hour work week leaves most people

00:15:10for no time for political participation, and how that's kind of the point.

00:15:14Bad jobs, meanwhile, present more severe and immediate problems than the angst of bullshit jobs.

00:15:19They can be humiliating, physically and mentally taxing, with criminally low wages.

00:15:25If we're going to give them our day,

00:15:26we need to have enough to cover our basic necessities.

00:15:30This terrible state of affairs became especially obvious during early COVID pandemic lockdowns,

00:15:35when only essential workers had to put themselves at risk to go into work.

00:15:39And the situation revealed that many of those jobs society actually needs to run pay the lowest.

00:15:45People working for minimum wage can't expect a comfortable retirement,

00:15:48or really any kind of financial security.

00:15:50Living paycheck to paycheck, with a single medical emergency,

00:15:53or unlucky mishap enough to put them on the street.

00:15:56As Twitter user Pickwick put it,

00:15:58So, when did, if you work full-time you should be able to comfortably afford shelter,

00:16:02food, and utilities, become an extreme leftist belief?

00:16:05The writer Charles Bukowski, who worked grueling blue-collar jobs for decades

00:16:09before meeting a benefactor who supported his art, once said,

00:16:12They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free,

00:16:14just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work.

00:16:17The idea of modern work as slavery is a prominent theme in Booth Riley's Sorry to Bother You.

00:16:23So wait, are you telling me you sell slave labor to companies over the phone?

00:16:27The company that hires Cassius Green as a telemarketer runs an initiative called Worry-Free,

00:16:32which sells a barely disguised form of slavery as a wonderful career opportunity

00:16:36that takes all the anxiety out of life.

00:16:39You're guaranteed employment and housing for life.

00:16:42Stop worrying and get worry-free.

00:16:44The worry-free living quarters are state-of-the-art.

00:16:47The worry-free food is to die for.

00:16:49Perhaps the only redeeming quality of bad jobs is that, unlike bullshit jobs,

00:16:53they are at least useful to society, so they cause less guilt and rumination.

00:16:57In 1999's Office Space, Peter's friend, who is a construction worker,

00:17:01is less mentally tortured than Peter.

00:17:03In the end, Peter also ends up working construction and enjoys that manual labor

00:17:07allows him to actually see the product of his work.

00:17:10But ultimately, both bad jobs and bullshit jobs compromise employees' humanity.

00:17:15In Sorry to Bother You, the idea of workers being robbed of their humanity

00:17:19takes an absurd turn to the literal.

00:17:21A chemical change to make humans stronger, more obedient, more durable,

00:17:26and therefore more efficient and profitable.

00:17:29As Bukowski wrote,

00:17:30What hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs

00:17:34they don't want but fear the alternative worse.

00:17:37People simply empty out.

00:17:38They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds.

00:17:41These lines mirror the classic visual aesthetic we see in cinema

00:17:45about modern work, such as dystopian imagery of rows upon rows

00:17:49of deadened, soulless drones toiling away mindlessly

00:17:52because thinking would make their situation unbearable.

00:17:54In Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times,

00:17:56the hero struggles to survive in a newly industrialized world.

00:17:59At his job, the workers move in sync with the machines they're operating,

00:18:03like they're one and the same thing.

00:18:04The same is true of 1927's Metropolis,

00:18:07in which the workers move in sync with the machinery in a weird dance,

00:18:10as if they're part of the city's infrastructure.

00:18:12In the later half of the 20th century,

00:18:14films about office jobs focus on the imagery of the cubicle,

00:18:18as a visual metaphor for the way modern work destroys individuality.

00:18:22Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles

00:18:25staring at computer screens all day.

00:18:27Every human is shut into a tiny box that is just like every other box,

00:18:31and rows of them stretch towards the horizon.

00:18:34Describing the employees of such jobs, Bukowski writes,

00:18:37the color leaves the eye, the voice becomes ugly, and the body, the hair, the fingernails.

00:18:42The color palette of movies about contemporary office jobs echoes this,

00:18:46featuring muted, desaturated gray or bluish tones.

00:18:49The unflattering fluorescent light makes the characters' features ugly and sickly looking.

00:18:54Just as the workers of early industrial jobs resemble cogs in the machines they operate,

00:18:59the workers of office jobs resemble the weak, flickering gray screens they stare at.

00:19:03No, I wouldn't say I have a passion for HR.

00:19:06All these visuals seem to say,

00:19:07this work is literally sucking the life out of these people,

00:19:10and steadily making them less human.

00:19:17Among the TV and film characters that resist work,

00:19:20there are several distinct subtypes.

00:19:22The first type is the delinquent, immature slacker.

00:19:25These are usually young professionals who are distinguished

00:19:28by their profound lack of ambition.

00:19:30I'm not really cool with the amount of responsibility I have now,

00:19:34so if you wanted to promote me down a peg, I'd be cool for that.

00:19:38What makes these overgrown, children-esque characters so fun to watch

00:19:42is that they find ingenious ways of making their terrible jobs work for them.

00:19:46They turn everything into a game.

00:19:48You're literally making paper airplanes out of police reports right now.

00:19:51Well, how am I supposed to get it into that garbage can?

00:19:53Or just use their time at work to do whatever they feel like doing.

00:19:56Alana?

00:19:59What?

00:20:00What time is it?

00:20:01Were you just sleeping with your eyes open?

00:20:04In earlier times, these slackers might have been framed in a negative light,

00:20:07but now, they're portrayed as aspirational.

00:20:10This speaks to the way millennials and Gen Zers are disillusioned in the career ladder.

00:20:14The carrots of future promotions and raises don't motivate them anymore,

00:20:18because in the current economic climate,

00:20:20these promises end up often being false.

00:20:22As David underscore Mozcrop tweeted,

00:20:24Every time I read some Weekend column about a boomer struggling to retire

00:20:28on $100,000 a year and a multi-million dollar home,

00:20:31I'm reminded that my retirement plan is to die in the climate wars.

00:20:34But there are limitations to the immature slackers' anti-work philosophy.

00:20:38Though their personal rebellion and don't-care attitude is satisfying,

00:20:42it's not necessarily a solution that works in the long term for their benefit.

00:20:45What's a 401k?

00:20:47I'm glad you asked.

00:20:48Basically, it's a retirement plan, so you can-

00:20:50Oh, no, never mind.

00:20:52I totally thought it was a laser.

00:20:54And their actions don't really address the systemic problems either.

00:20:57The second type of anti-work character is the workplace saboteur.

00:21:01Whereas the slacker just doesn't care at all about their work,

00:21:04these characters disagree with their jobs on a philosophical level

00:21:08and express their rebellion in more subtle ways.

00:21:10For Ron Swanson of Parks and Rec,

00:21:12government work is antithetical to his libertarian values.

00:21:15Am I interrupting something important?

00:21:17Impossible. I work for the government.

00:21:19Ron is enthusiastic about his own hobbies and a hard worker,

00:21:23but at the Parks and Rec department,

00:21:24his only goal is to stall government work on principle.

00:21:28I like saying no.

00:21:31It lowers their enthusiasm.

00:21:32When antisocial April joins forces with him,

00:21:35they form the perfect workplace sabotage team.

00:21:37I'll make sure you don't have to go to any meetings.

00:21:40If anyone comes to see you, I'll scare them away.

00:21:43Wait, April, if you had to choose between these two ties,

00:21:47you're hired.

00:21:48The Office's Jim Halpert might seem like one of the slacker characters,

00:21:51but he actually fits best into the workplace saboteur category,

00:21:54because his dislike of his work stems from a philosophical place.

00:21:58Jim's pranks on Dwight are actually an expression of his workplace philosophy,

00:22:02sabotaging Dwight, who takes the job intensely seriously.

00:22:05Once in a while, I'll take a long lunch.

00:22:08A siesta.

00:22:08Time thief.

00:22:09Time thief.

00:22:10Fire him.

00:22:10Represents Jim's opposition towards the attitudes encouraged by modern corporate work.

00:22:15Yawn.

00:22:16Four seconds.

00:22:19What are you doing?

00:22:20Oh, you had said that you don't do anything personal during work time,

00:22:23so I'm just making sure.

00:22:24The third type of anti-work character is the workplace anarchist.

00:22:27These are the characters who are brave enough or crazy enough to overtly call out

00:22:32or take action to dismantle the BS of corporate work.

00:22:35Peter in Office Space is reminiscent of the influential

00:22:38Herman Melville character of Bartleby,

00:22:40a law clerk who, whenever he's asked to do something, responds,

00:22:43I'd prefer not to.

00:22:44While this behavior confounds everyone around Bartleby,

00:22:47from a certain perspective, it's actually rational.

00:22:50Maybe doing nothing is better than doing something pointless.

00:22:53I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be.

00:22:57The narrator in Fight Club confronts his boss in a much more aggressive manner.

00:23:01He turns the corporate world's tools of manipulation back on itself,

00:23:04using the workplace norms and conventions typically used to exploit the employee

00:23:08to manipulate the management.

00:23:10Thank God, please don't hit me again.

00:23:13Amy Jellicoe, the heroine of the short-lived cult HBO series Enlightened,

00:23:17initially adopts a less confrontational, more proactively passionate approach.

00:23:21After a mental breakdown, she returns to work convinced that she can single-handedly

00:23:25change the entire structure of the company to make it less harmful to the world.

00:23:29I just wanted to ask you if you had a chance to look at that research that I gave you.

00:23:34Honestly, Amy, no.

00:23:35When she realizes that she can't get what she wants directly,

00:23:38she formulates a plot to destroy the entire company from the inside out.

00:23:42I guess Abaddon is paying off government officials.

00:23:49It's huge.

00:23:51While this category seems the most influential or admirable in terms of actually trying to

00:23:56take down the system, it's hard not to notice that the workplace anarchist characters are often

00:24:01mentally ill or unbalanced.

00:24:03Peter is under the spell of a hypnotist,

00:24:05the narrator in Fight Club suffers from some kind of split personality or dissociative disorder,

00:24:10and Amy is inspired to create change after a mental breakdown.

00:24:14But this brings up the question, are these people quote crazy,

00:24:17or is it the world they inhabit that's completely bonkers?

00:24:20People are living under the illusion that the American dream is working for them.

00:24:26It was right in everyone's face.

00:24:33Tyler and I just made it visible.

00:24:35It was on the tip of everyone's tongue.

00:24:37Tyler and I just gave it a name.

00:24:39While none of the three work-resistant character categories offer us a complete

00:24:43solution to the problem of terrible work, there are some lessons to learn from them.

00:24:47Lesson one, don't get seduced by consumer culture.

00:24:50One of the ways modern society keeps us working at terrible jobs is by propagating consumer culture.

00:24:55Working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don't need.

00:24:58For the companies, customers buying more stuff means more profit.

00:25:02For the customers, spending more requires earning more,

00:25:05which requires working longer and harder for the companies.

00:25:08Films like American Beauty and Fight Club speak to the way capitalism

00:25:12offers consumption as a substitute for meaning.

00:25:15This isn't life!

00:25:17This is just stuff.

00:25:19And it's become more important to you than living.

00:25:21And locks workers into an inescapable loop as they feel

00:25:24compelled to constantly chase more and better things.

00:25:27What kind of dining set defines me as a person?

00:25:30We can find an alternative to consumerist society in the king of slackers,

00:25:34his dudeness himself.

00:25:35The Big Lebowski's protagonist is an anti-capitalist hero,

00:25:39unemployed and totally satisfied with his relaxed lifestyle.

00:25:42He doesn't have the consumerist urge for novelty,

00:25:45but sticks with what he likes — bowling, white Russians, and one good rug.

00:25:49While his antagonist, the other Jeffrey Lebowski, is a fake.

00:25:52He has no money off his own.

00:25:54The dude is presented as an almost Christ-like figure,

00:25:57whose commitment to taking it easy contradicts the evils of the hustling,

00:26:00striving, capitalist world.

00:26:02It's good knowing he's out there.

00:26:04The dude.

00:26:06Taking her easy for all us sinners.

00:26:09Lesson 2. Question the status quo.

00:26:11It's dangerous to think that the way things are is necessarily the way they should be.

00:26:15As Queerly Autistic tweeted,

00:26:17I've come to the conclusion that the sole purpose of homework is to condition children

00:26:21into accepting that unpaid overtime and ridiculous hours

00:26:24and not being able to escape work even in your own home

00:26:27are a normal thing to expect in your future.

00:26:29But even those brave enough to attempt to disrupt the status quo

00:26:32need to be watchful too, because capitalist markets have a tendency

00:26:35not just to crush revolt, but to subsume it,

00:26:38using dissent to their own advantage, rather than simply destroying it.

00:26:42Then maybe they want to organize, maybe they want to rebel,

00:26:45and that's why we need someone on the inside

00:26:48who represents Worryfree's needs.

00:26:51This is illustrated symbolically in The Matrix Reloaded,

00:26:54when Neo finds out that he isn't the only one,

00:26:57but is one of several versions in a repeating formula

00:27:00where the one's revolt is used to actually maintain the system.

00:27:03The anomaly is systemic.

00:27:04In the 1976 film Network, when newscaster Howard Beale announces

00:27:08his plan to commit suicide on air after he's fired for low ratings,

00:27:12the gesture of revolt causes a huge surge in his viewership,

00:27:15thus benefiting the TV network he was revolting against.

00:27:18And when Beale's later on-air tirades get too anti-corporate,

00:27:22the head of the network takes the teeth out of Beale's protest

00:27:24by indoctrinating him with the kind of dry, abstract,

00:27:27big picture language that corporations love,

00:27:29because it removes the human element

00:27:31and makes audiences' eyes glaze over.

00:27:33One vast and imane, interwoven, interacting,

00:27:38multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars.

00:27:41Language notably similar in that sense to the architects in The Matrix Reloaded.

00:27:45Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation

00:27:50inherent to the programming of The Matrix.

00:27:52In real life, we can spot how corporations likewise co-opt

00:27:55societal resistance in their marketing,

00:27:58which shamelessly attempts to reduce social justice issues to press campaigns,

00:28:02or claims to be boldly fighting against climate change

00:28:05in service of getting us to buy more pollution-causing products.

00:28:08Lesson 3. Don't make work your identity.

00:28:11The world tells us that work is not just a way to earn a living,

00:28:14but also a route to self-fulfillment, creative expression,

00:28:17and general badassery.

00:28:18A job can become an identity, especially if the work is necessary

00:28:22and or driven by passion.

00:28:23You're off work, Christina. Go enjoy your day.

00:28:27I'll enjoy my day if I can help retrieve a heart, I promise.

00:28:29But nowadays, it doesn't seem to matter what you do,

00:28:32as long as you're working really hard at it.

00:28:34As Sleepy Socialist tweeted,

00:28:36the worst capitalist brainwash is being proud of your own exploitation.

00:28:39Saying you've worked 80 hours a week since you turned 17 isn't a flex.

00:28:43It's sad.

00:28:44Where have you been?

00:28:46Sleeping.

00:28:48What? All night?

00:28:49As we discussed in our video on The Devil Wears Prada and Workaholism,

00:28:53our modern-day obsession with work can be traced back

00:28:55to the Calvinist branch of Protestantism.

00:28:58Sociologist Max Weber wrote that because Calvinists believed in predestination,

00:29:03they sought to be successful in order to prove they were part of the elect,

00:29:06destined to go to heaven.

00:29:08In the Protestant work ethic mindset,

00:29:10which is hugely formative in American culture,

00:29:12work is associated with virtue, while sloth is a sin.

00:29:15But within Calvinism, the focus isn't just on work, but on success.

00:29:19And anti-work heroes force us to consider the question,

00:29:22who defines what constitutes success?

00:29:25Thus, the anti-work movement is not only a social and economic shift,

00:29:29it's also a spiritual one.

00:29:30Our great war is a spiritual war.

00:29:33Our great depression is our lives.

00:29:36When Elliot on Search Party declares that he doesn't want to write his book

00:29:39because he hates working,

00:29:40At first I thought it was writer's block,

00:29:42but then later I realized it's actually just the discomfort of hard work.

00:29:46At first, this seems like a typical millennial joke about how boomers see us as lazy.

00:29:50But Elliot's revelation that he doesn't like working

00:29:53strikes a deeper chord with people today who are increasingly rejecting the explanation

00:29:58that constant work is just kind of what you gotta do in life.

00:30:01No, not for me.

00:30:02Lesson 4. Help others act on lessons 1 through 3.

00:30:06Finally, it's important to keep in mind that many of the anti-work actions

00:30:09that can be taken are only available to those with a certain amount of privilege.

00:30:13It takes having money to not care about money.

00:30:16Most people do not have the privilege to opt out of terrible jobs,

00:30:19and many have to fight for jobs most wouldn't want.

00:30:22And as Ava DuVernay illustrates in 13th, there are racial aspects of employment problems.

00:30:27Like the way that prison inmates, mostly people of color,

00:30:30are forced to participate in basically uncompensated labor,

00:30:34often for the profit of private companies.

00:30:36We now have more African Americans under criminal supervision

00:30:39than all the slaves back in the 1850s.

00:30:42Partnerships between correctional industries and private business

00:30:45are a rapidly growing segment of a multi-billion dollar industry in America.

00:30:50So it's not enough to just rebel on an individual level.

00:30:53Big societal changes need to happen in order to stop the onslaught of terrible,

00:30:57humiliating, and unlivable employment.

00:30:59Well, you don't talk white enough.

00:31:01I'm not talking about sounding all nasal.

00:31:06It's like sounding like you don't have a care.

00:31:08Breezy, like, I don't really need this money.

00:31:12And while the obstacles might seem insurmountable,

00:31:15it does feel as though meaningful change is around the corner.

00:31:17With the Great Resignation, millions are quitting in search of more livable pay,

00:31:21better work-life balance, or just work with more meaning.

00:31:24The resulting labor shortage has the potential to give workers more power to dictate terms.

00:31:30Pushes for the 4-day work week and remote work prove that Americans are moving away

00:31:34from workaholic assumptions about success,

00:31:36and are valuing their personal time and quality of life more and more.

00:31:40So hopefully, sometime in the near future, we will be able to say more often,

00:31:44and more sincerely, that we do what we love.

00:31:47As much as Hollywood loves stories about the horrible exploits of rich people,

00:31:52they also love to pump out stories about struggling 20-something-year-olds trying to

00:31:56make it in the big city.

00:31:58Shows like Broad City and Two Broke Girls gained lots of popularity for their depiction of young

00:32:02urban dwellers working odd jobs to afford living in the Big Apple.

00:32:06While both series tried to base their leading ladies' financial troubles in realism

00:32:10by giving them shabby apartments or showing them shopping at Goodwill,

00:32:14Lots of people cry at Goodwill.

00:32:17You go to France, you eat snails, you come here, you cry.

00:32:20They still have plenty of time for out-of-work shenanigans and quirky side quests.

00:32:25Even when they are shown at work, they're doing a lot of chit-chatting

00:32:28and questionable activities that, in reality, would probably get them fired.

00:32:32So let's take a closer look at what Hollywood gets wrong, and right,

00:32:36in its depictions of 20-somethings on screen, why we're drawn to these characters,

00:32:40and the financial and emotional reality of trying to make it on your own after college.

00:32:45Gen Z and millennials, more than any other age group, are more likely to work at least

00:32:50two jobs to make ends meet or pursue a creative interest.

00:32:53Some people, notably those who work in finance, have tried to spin this change

00:32:57in the work landscape as a cultural trend in response to the pandemic.

00:33:01Coining the term polywork, which feels akin to the corporate rebrand of rose gold appliances.

00:33:06Did you just come up with a fun euphemism to describe

00:33:09us not being able to survive off of one job?

00:33:12No, no, this is completely different.

00:33:14There is nothing hip or cool about having to work multiple jobs,

00:33:18because your 9 to 5 doesn't pay you a sustainable salary.

00:33:21The median rent continues to skyrocket,

00:33:23and your once affordable neighborhood is now being gentrified.

00:33:26It makes sense why so many shows that depict financial hardship are packaged as comedies.

00:33:36The reality and costs of going to school to work in a specific field,

00:33:40only to face an extremely competitive job market, which will likely force you to work

00:33:44multiple jobs until you make enough to pursue what you're actually passionate about,

00:33:48is soul-crushing.

00:33:49It's just like, everybody can tell me what I can't do,

00:33:56but nobody can tell me what I can do.

00:33:58Which is perhaps why film and TV about struggling friends,

00:34:02working odd jobs, and getting up to wild shenanigans are so appealing.

00:34:06You? You think we're going to give the shares to the man who wants to pull a mutant from a

00:34:09mystery hole in the bar and live with him?

00:34:10All right, well, look, I'm just trying to come up with a system.

00:34:12Sitcoms that revolve around struggling 20-something-year-olds like Friends, How I Met Your Mother,

00:34:17and Seinfeld became such smash hits because they speak to the cultural

00:34:20phenomenon of what it's like to fumble through your 20s.

00:34:23Welcome to the real world.

00:34:25It sucks.

00:34:26You're gonna love it.

00:34:27Cities like New York, LA, and London are popular settings for these shows because they're filled

00:34:31with all kinds of characters struggling through relatable situations,

00:34:35like trying to find an apartment within your budget.

00:34:37Well, what do you think?

00:34:39It's a hallway.

00:34:41It is a beautiful railroad-style apartment in your budget.

00:34:46Many of us dreamed of living in a big city because we watched these shows growing up

00:34:50and wanted to find our own central perk to meet up with our attractive friend group

00:34:54and run into celebrities.

00:34:56It's a beautiful city.

00:34:57Are you serious?

00:34:59Or dreaming of landing a job at a fancy corp in Midtown,

00:35:02where we impress the CEO with our young and innovative ideas.

00:35:06Really? I think you might have something important to say about makeup.

00:35:11And I know someone who might be hiring.

00:35:14Another trend worth looking at in film and TV is the portrayal of

00:35:17working-class characters who actually come from generational wealth.

00:35:21Yeah, just the word, swing by.

00:35:22Oh, how lovely, lucky ass.

00:35:25Oh, don't worry. Dad's already booking me a taxi.

00:35:28Which means their financial troubles are superficial at best.

00:35:31Sometimes this portrayal is meant to be satirical.

00:35:34The writers are clearly in on the joke that this seemingly struggling 20-something-year-old

00:35:38can easily call up their parents if they're short on rent.

00:35:41Till yesterday, I got all of my money from my parents.

00:35:44Okay.

00:35:46Does that make you feel sick?

00:35:47Make you not want to talk to me?

00:35:48However, time and time again,

00:35:50Hollywood has proven its lack of awareness about financial insecurity.

00:35:54Likely because historically, those who succeed in the entertainment industry

00:35:57predominantly come from wealth and are detached from the reality that

00:36:01most of us have to contend with.

00:36:03Rory and Lorelai from Gilmore Girls are a perfect example of this discrepancy in film and TV.

00:36:08Lorelai is introduced as a single parent who had Rory when she was a teenager,

00:36:12leaving her waspy upbringing and working as a hotel maid,

00:36:16until she eventually worked her way up to a hotel manager,

00:36:19managing to buy a home in Connecticut.

00:36:22Well, ordering pizza, that's enough.

00:36:23Are you crazy?

00:36:24You can't watch Willy Wonka without massive amounts of junk food going in.

00:36:28Even in 1995, her salary as a hotel manager likely would not have been enough to purchase

00:36:33a home of that size, let alone afford to pay Connecticut property taxes

00:36:37and order takeout every night.

00:36:39Fans have theorized that Lorelai likely had a trust fund from her wealthy grandmother,

00:36:44which went into effect when she was 25.

00:36:46Much like Monica from Friends, who was later revealed to have inherited

00:36:49her grandmother's massive rent-controlled apartment in Greenwich Village.

00:36:53However, both Lorelai and Monica's characters probably wouldn't admit

00:36:57that their proximity to wealth, despite how independent they are,

00:37:00has given them and their loved ones a privileged life.

00:37:04You left the world of privilege to do things your way.

00:37:07I guess. I never thought of it that way.

00:37:09And you did it when you were younger and had a baby to take care of.

00:37:11I know. It was really impressive.

00:37:13Lena Dunham's show Girls rocked pop culture when it premiered in 2012

00:37:16for its satirical, controversial, and often dead-on portrayal

00:37:20of four white millennial friends navigating their post-college 20s.

00:37:24Dunham plays the lead character Hannah, who is introduced having a full-on quarter-life

00:37:28crisis when her parents cut her off and her internship won't pay her.

00:37:32But I have no job.

00:37:33No, you have an internship that you say is going to turn into a job.

00:37:37I don't know when.

00:37:38You graduated from college two years ago.

00:37:40We've been supporting you for two years, and that's enough.

00:37:43In some ways, Hannah is the talented, quirked-up, unglamorous younger sister of Carrie Bradshaw.

00:37:48Hannah's struggles as a writer and millennial are relatable to pretty much anyone who graduated

00:37:53from a liberal arts college, but she and her friends are also emblematic of privileged

00:37:5720-somethings who move into gentrified neighborhoods and always have a safety net to fall on.

00:38:02During its run, Girls garnered both resentment and praise for centering these kinds of narcissistic

00:38:07female characters while still exploring their complexities.

00:38:11As Dustin Rolls puts it, the difference between a show like Girls and a show like Friends,

00:38:15which is also populated with wealthy, privileged characters, is the sense of self-awareness.

00:38:20Dunham, whether she belongs to this class of people or not, understands that they are

00:38:24unlikable.

00:38:25She doesn't want to offer her characters salvation.

00:38:27She just wants us to know they exist, and for all their negative qualities,

00:38:31they are complicated people.

00:38:33The linear narrative that getting an education that will automatically land you

00:38:37your dream job has been peddled for generations. We are told that with hard work and dedication,

00:38:42we can achieve anything, inflation and student debt be damned.

00:38:45Pop culture is one of the great peddlers of this myth that obtaining a glamorous dream job

00:38:50is worth the years, or on-screen often more like months, of extraneous labor and poor wages.

00:38:55I swear, this is my break. This is my chance. This is my boss.

00:39:03I'm sorry, Dad. I have to take this.

00:39:05As Scarlett Harris puts it,

00:39:06a lovable job is also the poorly constructed myth that motivated millennials through childhood and

00:39:12college, sustaining aspirational media and publishing workers through devalued,

00:39:17no guarantees arts degrees, in the hope that a measly entry-level salary or freelance writing

00:39:22career will allow an approximation of the lifestyles seen on film and television.

00:39:27These aspirational lifestyles extend beyond media and publishing,

00:39:31from Elle Woods defending a star client in court as only a first-year law student,

00:39:36You're fired. I have no representation.

00:39:40Who?

00:39:40To Pretty Little Liars, Spencer and Mona getting jobs on Capitol Hill straight out of college.

00:39:48All this time and we both end up in the same business.

00:39:51Um, not really.

00:39:52We both sell policy.

00:39:54Different kinds of policy.

00:39:56Film and TV often take creative leaps when depicting ambitious 20-something-year-olds taking

00:40:01their first steps out into the adult world. And while it is pretty unrealistic that so many

00:40:07people would land their dream jobs right after graduation, there are young people in real life

00:40:12who get early career breaks after school, often in fields like tech or finance. However,

00:40:16they are a privileged minority compared to most millennials and older Gen Zers in the workforce.

00:40:22When you think about it, modern stories about young self-starters are products of the American

00:40:26dream, which became our national ethos because there were people from all walks of life in

00:40:32the 20th century who were able to grow their small businesses into empires.

00:40:36To paraphrase the great J.D. Rockefeller, ain't no reward without risk.

00:40:41Who's in, gentlemen?

00:40:42Or they were discovered by someone in a position of power, changing their life forever.

00:40:47All you gotta do is trust me.

00:40:50That's all you gotta do.

00:40:51Hollywood and pop culture cling to these stories because they are true,

00:40:55but they are also extremely rare. In a society that functions through mass production,

00:41:00it's essential that young people have big dreams of entering the workforce,

00:41:04and to be effective, it has to look fun.

00:41:06I got everyone t-shirts!

00:41:11Work is fun!

00:41:12Who didn't want to become a toy tester after watching Big,

00:41:15or solve small-town crimes as a teenage private detective?

00:41:18Still, I've got too many questions swirling around in my head to wait until he's willing to share.

00:41:24These questions need answers. That's what I do.

00:41:27Popular media has come a long way since the golden years of 90s and early 2000s film and TV.

00:41:33Instead of instant-coffee escapism and feel-good sitcoms with characters

00:41:36having only superficial money problems, we're seeing more stories that acknowledge

00:41:40the financial struggles people are facing across the board,

00:41:43especially young folks of various identities working and living in big cities.

00:41:47You have protagonists who may have landed their dream job at a high-powered company,

00:41:51but they still live with their parents because their entry-level salary isn't

00:41:55substantial enough to let them rent an apartment.

00:41:57She said she wishes you'd be more realistic, but I think she's full of crap.

00:42:02And when they do finally move out of their family home,

00:42:05the next best option is a six-story walk-up with roommates who are always late on rent.

00:42:10I feel like all I do is work. I can barely pay my rent.

00:42:13Oh! Which is due tomorrow!

00:42:15I almost forgot.

00:42:16Is Juice Mucha pitching in?

00:42:18Well, I've been dropping hints all week.

00:42:21Then you have characters having to work multiple jobs to pay the rent,

00:42:23like waitressing or driving for Lyft.

00:42:25Yes! A Capri Sun! You know my heart.

00:42:27No, no, no, no, girl. Those are the passengers.

00:42:29And sometimes they have to resort to creative or downright illegal methods

00:42:33to find affordable housing.

00:42:34Look, the whole point of living in a disused hospital is to get a girl on a slab.

00:42:39No, Sam, it's to save money for a deposit on an actual house.

00:42:42Or make some quick cash to avoid sleeping on the streets.

00:42:45Broad City's Abby and Alana are friends in their mid-20s,

00:42:48trying to make it on their own in New York City.

00:42:50They sloppily balance various minimum wage jobs and throw 420 parties,

00:42:54or sell stolen office supplies to make some extra bucks.

00:42:57So, correct me if I'm wrong, people are paying you

00:43:00to use the free public charging station?

00:43:02So what? All the great male entrepreneurs do it, okay?

00:43:06While Alana's wackier schemes, always seeming to work out in the end,

00:43:09no matter how dire her money troubles,

00:43:12can start to feel a little unrealistic at times.

00:43:15Abby's story of having to work a miserable job in the hopes of maybe getting promoted

00:43:19to something that doesn't totally suck and might pay you a livable wage,

00:43:23not to mention totally putting her real dream job on hold

00:43:26because she can't even really afford to think about it,

00:43:29is something that so many of us can relate to.

00:43:32And their more out-there plans to make ends meet

00:43:35help balance out the harsher realities with a bit of fun.

00:43:38While my partner removes the ear AC,

00:43:42I'm gonna teach you boys about the dangers of ripping underaged bongs.

00:43:47One show in particular that skillfully explores this kind of realism is the recent Netflix

00:43:51adaptation of One Day, which follows the love story between two college friends

00:43:56as they navigate the trials and tribulations of their twenties.

00:43:59While the story mainly takes place during the 90s, Emma and Dexter's winding career paths and

00:44:03struggles as young adults still resonate with millennials and Gen Zers today.

00:44:07Emma, a straight-A student and budding writer, is faced with realistic financial

00:44:12challenges almost immediately after graduation.

00:44:14Unlike posh boy Dexter, Emma did not grow up with family wealth

00:44:18and ends up working a hellish service job in London.

00:44:21Welcome to the graveyard of ambition.

00:44:23Loco caliente means crazy hot.

00:44:25Hot because the air conditioning doesn't work.

00:44:27Crazy because that's what you'd have to be to eat here.

00:44:29Emma's insufferable work life, like so many people's jobs after college,

00:44:33nearly crushes her dreams of becoming a writer.

00:44:36Meanwhile, Dexter gets to gallivant around Europe before landing a job as a TV presenter,

00:44:40but life eventually catches up to him, as it does for all of us in varying degrees.

00:44:45You know, you've been through a lot in the last few years with your mom.

00:44:48I've tried to understand that, really, I have, but you're just not the person I used to know.

00:44:54One Day has been praised for its authentic storytelling,

00:44:56and the way it navigates class, gender, and relationships represents a new cultural ethos.

00:45:01Showing characters struggling in their twenties without immediately landing their dream jobs can

00:45:05actually be very comforting for those of us experiencing a similar existential dread.

00:45:10Success is not always linear, nor is it only determined by material gain.

00:45:15Success can look like making a difference in your community.

00:45:17Got my pickles.

00:45:18Yeah, extra pickles, they're in there.

00:45:20And a beanie because it's getting colder.

00:45:21Oh!

00:45:22Or finally coming to terms with who you are.

00:45:24I'm gay.

00:45:27Wow, that's awesome!

00:45:29Should we hug? I feel like we should hug.

00:45:31I don't know, we don't, we don't need a hug.

00:45:33Hug!

00:45:33And while there's nothing wrong with being ambitious in your twenties,

00:45:36it's important to remember that the economy and job market is not what it used to be,

00:45:41and plans can change.

00:45:43Nothing is guaranteed, and sometimes it may take years, if not a decade, to land your dream job,

00:45:48and who knows, by the time you finally get there, you might have a whole new dream.

00:45:52As we evolve as people, so can our desires.

00:45:55A table and chairs license from the local authority. I've already checked, I think we get it.

00:46:00It's all, it's all here, the businessman. It's all laid out for the next two years.

00:46:04Many of us will have to slog through numerous jobs in our lives before we can truly settle down,

00:46:10if we're lucky. And some of those jobs will outright suck.

00:46:13But there's always something to be learned, and that may be the true measure of success.

00:46:17Emily Charlton of The Devil Wears Prada is the textbook image of the workaholic.

00:46:22She lives at the office and expects others to do the same.

00:46:25You aren't chained to that desk.

00:46:27She cares about nothing more than pleasing her boss.

00:46:30And we have to make sure that they all think that she knows exactly who they are.

00:46:34And I've been studying for weeks.

00:46:36On one level, she's a product of the fashion industry,

00:46:38embodying its most toxic, destructive standards.

00:46:41I just one stomach flew away from my gone weight.

00:46:43But back in 2006, she also reflected a more general trend that we've seen

00:46:48explode in the years since the movie.

00:46:50Modern American culture has a love affair with working yourself to the bone.

00:46:54Emily encapsulates the valor and virtue we attach to constantly being busy and overstretched,

00:47:04and her story reveals the dark side of living to work.

00:47:08Emily's devotion to her job literally starves her and nearly kills her.

00:47:13You might say Emily's cautionary tale prefigured today's Thank God It's Monday culture.

00:47:19We have medium-speed wi-fi, draft beer on tap.

00:47:22Okay, what?!

00:47:24Girl, I hope I get to work here!

00:47:26So to better understand the Emily's of our times,

00:47:28we're taking a deep look at the history of workaholism in cinema and TV,

00:47:32and asking whether it's possible to survive the rat race with your sense of self intact.

00:47:37Thank God it's Friday, right?

00:47:38I'm gonna work until I'm 100 and then cut back to four days a week.

00:47:47Oh God, I'm already so bored thinking about that one day off.

00:47:50The term workaholism dates back to 1971, when it was coined to describe

00:47:55the compulsion or the uncontrollable need to work incessantly.

00:48:00On-screen workaholics cover a range of personalities, but they follow some common patterns.

00:48:05The positive view of the workaholic is someone driven by pure passion.

00:48:09This is gonna be so much fun! All night work! All night work!

00:48:14Often, they're in a high-powered, high-stakes career,

00:48:16and their exhilarating job is framed as the ultimate adrenaline rush.

00:48:20That was such a high.

00:48:22I don't know why anybody does drugs.

00:48:24The darker interpretation of the workaholic character

00:48:27is someone fueled by cutthroat personal ambition.

00:48:30Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

00:48:34Or who's using their job to fill a deeper emotional void.

00:48:38She's a workaholic, works frantically to avoid dealing with her weird mix

00:48:42of lack of self-worth and narcissism.

00:48:45I really like her.

00:48:46Almost universally, the workaholic character neglects their personal life.

00:48:50Hey, don't you people ever sleep?

00:48:51Don't any of you have husbands, wives, and kids?

00:48:55No.

00:48:56When you're responsible for serious matters, or even people's lives,

00:48:59it's easy to justify your job taking precedence over everything else.

00:49:03This is the most important thing I'll ever do, Jenny.

00:49:07I have to do it well.

00:49:08It's not more important than your marriage.

00:49:10It is more important than my marriage right now.

00:49:14But because they spend all their time at the office,

00:49:16the workaholic struggles to maintain relationships.

00:49:19You can get me a date for tonight.

00:49:21Actually, make that three dates.

00:49:22Who knows when I'm gonna get another night off?

00:49:25Work is their mistress, the lover who always comes first.

00:49:28Why don't you not go to work tomorrow?

00:49:30Take the day off.

00:49:33You mean not work?

00:49:34We can see the origins of today's work culture

00:49:36in the Second Industrial Revolution from about 1870 to 1914.

00:49:41With urbanization and the rise of factories,

00:49:43for the first time, people had to organize their workday

00:49:46around hours of work completed rather than sunlight.

00:49:50This led to the question of how long a workday should be,

00:49:52and the danger of exploiting workers through excessive hours.

00:49:56Labor unions campaigned for an eight-hour workday,

00:49:58which evolved into what we today call a nine-to-five job.

00:50:02Early 20th century cinema classics like Metropolis and Modern Times

00:50:06reflected fears about industrialization's effects on society,

00:50:09and alluded to the risk of turning human beings

00:50:12into uniform cogs in a machine.

00:50:14The billows feeding machine will eliminate the lunch hour,

00:50:17increase your production, and decrease your overhead.

00:50:20The second half of the 20th century saw the birth of the workplace sitcom.

00:50:24The Guardian's Charles Bromesco argues that from the 70s

00:50:27through the tail end of the 90s,

00:50:29the sitcom's predominant attitude toward the hassles of work

00:50:32was begrudging acceptance.

00:50:34Christmas is just like any other day when you work in a newsroom.

00:50:37You know what I mean?

00:50:39Uh, no.

00:50:40You gotta work on Christmas.

00:50:42I've gotta work on Christmas?

00:50:44The 90s was the slacker era.

00:50:46That's funny because I haven't seen you working for a while.

00:50:50A long while.

00:50:52During this stable, prosperous decade in America,

00:50:55onscreen characters seemed less interested in work than ever.

00:50:58I don't think my boss likes me either.

00:51:00I don't think mine likes me either.

00:51:02Maybe it's a universal thing.

00:51:04Or maybe it's because you're all hanging around here

00:51:07at 11.30 on a Wednesday.

00:51:08Meanwhile, at the movie theater,

00:51:10a narrative emerged of men rebelling

00:51:12against their deadening, soul-crushing office jobs.

00:51:14I don't like my job, and I don't think I'm gonna go anymore.

00:51:19These 90s films captured a resentment

00:51:21over being made a cog in the corporate machine,

00:51:23so you could see them as a spiritual update

00:51:26to those early 20th century films about the drudgery of factory work.

00:51:29Fast forward to now,

00:51:31and you're more likely to see people performing their love of work.

00:51:34To do what you love,

00:51:35that is just doing what you feel fulfilled by,

00:51:40and what drives you.

00:51:41So what happened?

00:51:42In short, the tech industry.

00:51:44New York Times writer Aaron Griffith argues that

00:51:46today's work culture comes from the fact that

00:51:49starting around the new millennium,

00:51:50tech companies began offering perks meant to help companies

00:51:53attract the best talent and keep employees at their desks longer.

00:51:56Google was a little startup just like we are.

00:51:59And when they started bringing in chefs and masseuses,

00:52:02we thought they're nuts!

00:52:03And now they're worth over $400 billion.

00:52:07We can see this practice at play in The Devil Wears Prada, too.

00:52:10Sure, Andy gets to go to Paris Fashion Week,

00:52:12raid the runway closet,

00:52:14and take home whatever expensive products her boss doesn't want for herself.

00:52:17Miranda didn't want it, so?

00:52:19Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

00:52:20This bag is at $1,900.

00:52:22I cannot take this from you.

00:52:23But in the long run,

00:52:25wouldn't more vacation time or higher pay be worth a lot more?

00:52:28We get emails from you at your office at 2 a.m.

00:52:31Your pay is terrible.

00:52:32According to Griffith,

00:52:33mainstream culture has been shaped by companies like WeWork

00:52:36with its brand of performative workaholism.

00:52:39With WeWork, you should expect a space to make a life, not just a living.

00:52:44Our culture has created a kind of glamour around working constantly.

00:52:48Pearson keeps a cot in her office.

00:52:49Rick keeps a Tempur-Pedic cot in his office.

00:52:51It's like the Tesla cots.

00:52:52In 2006, Emily was already completely sold on performative workaholism.

00:52:57I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.

00:53:01She's brainwashing herself into believing she loves her job

00:53:04in order to make it through another punishing day.

00:53:06And that raises the question, if our modern world is full of Emily's,

00:53:10how many of us are doing the same?

00:53:12I already have my dream job.

00:53:14You're on your corporate research analyst.

00:53:18Oh, you're right, my job sucks.

00:53:22To really understand how Emily builds on the on-screen workaholic trope,

00:53:27we can't overlook that she's a working woman,

00:53:29a subset of the workaholic character who has her own complicated history.

00:53:33Sometimes I get concerned about being a career woman.

00:53:36I get to thinking my job is too important to me.

00:53:41Across movies and TV, we can see three basic working girl character types,

00:53:45though they tend to have some overlap.

00:53:47One, the spunky working everywoman.

00:53:50This character type was most famously embodied by Mary Tyler Moore.

00:53:53Bromesco argues that for Mary, simply existing as a 30-year-old single woman

00:53:58in a competitive and male-dominated workplace counted as a win.

00:54:01I'm working here in the newsroom.

00:54:03Associate producer, can you believe that?

00:54:05In an era where many women still did not work outside the home,

00:54:09there was a sense of victory in being able to have a career of your own.

00:54:12Miss Olsen, you are now a junior copywriter.

00:54:16Is this really happening?

00:54:17Viewers can see themselves in the working everywoman character.

00:54:20No lunch, I got speech class.

00:54:22What do you need speech class for? You talk fine.

00:54:25We usually meet her at the beginning of her working life,

00:54:28which helps us connect to her emotionally and feel her ups and downs as our own.

00:54:32She inspires us by representing work as a source of empowerment.

00:54:35You're gonna make it after all.

00:54:41The career woman as cautionary tale.

00:54:44Unlike with the everywoman, we're often introduced to this character

00:54:47when she's well into her career,

00:54:49and her commitment to her job is no longer framed in such a flattering light.

00:54:52Just because you have no semblance of a life outside of this office,

00:54:58you think that you can treat all of us like your own personal slaves.

00:55:02In fact, we could read this trope as a cultural backlash to the young everywoman.

00:55:06This woman is my secretary.

00:55:09This is highlighted in Working Girl, where Tess,

00:55:12a clear example of our first character type,

00:55:14discovers that career woman Catherine is a jaded villain

00:55:16trying to pass off Tess's idea as her own.

00:55:19She rifled through my desk, found my memo outlining a Trask radio acquisition,

00:55:24and has been passing it off as her idea.

00:55:26It was my idea.

00:55:28The career woman is essentially the female version

00:55:30of the workaholic absentee father,

00:55:32who doesn't spend time with his family.

00:55:34Peter, you're missing it.

00:55:36All right.

00:55:38Want a meeting tomorrow, AM?

00:55:40Dad, I came.

00:55:41You promised.

00:55:42And she often has to learn to step back from her career

00:55:45and make room for romantic love.

00:55:47I've got a big day.

00:55:48You've almost got a big day.

00:55:49Even on the weekends, you have a big day.

00:55:51You can't let this job be your life.

00:55:53This setup makes her a fixture of rom-coms.

00:55:56And three, the boss superwoman.

00:55:58This high-powered woman is killing it at her job,

00:56:00and her drive is portrayed as part of what makes her fabulous.

00:56:03I'm gonna kick some ass and remind them that I'm fierce.

00:56:08This character type took off in the 2000s,

00:56:10and is a staple of Shonda Rhimes' shows.

00:56:13It may even borrow from real life,

00:56:14as Rhimes' success has made her into an aspirational figure,

00:56:17much like the women she creates.

00:56:19And she's spoken positively about being a workaholic.

00:56:21I work a lot, very hard, and I love it.

00:56:26When I am hard at work, when I am deep in it,

00:56:29there is no other feeling.

00:56:31It is hitting every high note.

00:56:32It is running a marathon.

00:56:33It is being Beyonce.

00:56:35In part, this character's fabulosity comes from the fact

00:56:38that she makes her own money,

00:56:39which puts her in total control of her own life.

00:56:42You can't afford me.

00:56:43The ladies of Sex and the City prefigured this character type,

00:56:46because the show explored the power of financial independence,

00:56:49and not needing to rely on a man for economic support.

00:56:52And with that, Ms. Miranda Hobbs' Esquire,

00:56:55a.k.a. just me, bought herself her first apartment

00:56:59and promptly took herself out for a drink.

00:57:01Interestingly, the three main female characters

00:57:03of Devil Wears Prada seem to fit neatly into these categories.

00:57:07Andy is the spunky working girl we root for.

00:57:09Well, look, you gotta start somewhere, right?

00:57:11And Miranda is the cautionary tale

00:57:13who represents the danger of sacrificing your personal life for a career.

00:57:17Just imagine what they're gonna write about me.

00:57:20The dragon lady, career obsessed.

00:57:23And Emily is going for category three,

00:57:26the utterly fabulous existence of the high-powered glamour workaholic.

00:57:30I get to go with her to Paris for Fashion Week in the fall.

00:57:34I get to wear couture.

00:57:35I go to all the shows and all the parties.

00:57:36I meet all of the designers. It's divine.

00:57:39Except that, to the outside viewer,

00:57:41Emily's life hardly appears that great.

00:57:44Remember, you and I have totally different jobs.

00:57:46I mean, you get coffee and you run errands,

00:57:49yet I'm in charge of her schedule,

00:57:51her appointments and her expenses.

00:57:52In Emily's eyes,

00:57:53Miranda belongs in Superwoman category three,

00:57:56but the movie places her firmly in villainous category two.

00:57:59You chose to get ahead.

00:58:01You want this life?

00:58:02Those choices are necessary.

00:58:04Emily is so enthralled by the myth of Miranda

00:58:07that she looks right past this,

00:58:08and that leaves her aspiring towards an empty ideal.

00:58:11This reflects our contemporary lives, too.

00:58:14A woman, that's a minus.

00:58:16Well, of course it's a minus.

00:58:18I didn't make the world.

00:58:19We may be in an era where powerful,

00:58:21hardworking women are lionized on screen,

00:58:24but society itself is not set up to reward female workaholics.

00:58:28Even if a woman is doing extremely well in her career,

00:58:31there's still discomfort around her success.

00:58:34He offered it to me.

00:58:35To be next.

00:58:37Because I thought that it was something that we wanted from me.

00:58:40Many heterosexual couples are unwilling to reveal

00:58:43when a woman is the breadwinner.

00:58:45And Aaliyah Hamid Rao writes for The Atlantic

00:58:48that the more economically dependent men are on their wives,

00:58:51the less housework they do.

00:58:52In other words,

00:58:53women's success in the workplace is penalized at home.

00:58:56So it's clear that our world has a long way to go

00:58:59before category three,

00:59:00the working superwoman,

00:59:02becomes more than a fiction.

00:59:05Emily's devotion to her work rivals religiosity.

00:59:11Our modern-day obsession with work

00:59:13can be traced back to the Calvinist branch of Protestantism.

00:59:17Sociologist Max Weber wrote that

00:59:19because Calvinists believed in predestination,

00:59:21they sought to be successful in order to prove

00:59:24they were part of the elect destined to go to heaven.

00:59:26Today, it's not hard to see how the Calvinist idea of a calling

00:59:30has evolved into people seeing their careers

00:59:32as representing their life's purpose.

00:59:34I devote myself completely to my job.

00:59:36It's what I do. It's all I am.

00:59:38In a modern spin on the Protestant work ethic,

00:59:41some have argued that work has now effectively replaced religion

00:59:44as the arena where Americans seek meaning in our modern lives.

00:59:47A lot of people have essentially turned to work

00:59:51to find the very things that they used to seek from traditional religions.

00:59:55Transcendence, meaning, community, self-actualization,

00:59:58a totalizing purpose in life.

01:00:01We may be using non-stop work or busyness to fill a deeper existential void.

01:00:07As Tim Kreider writes,

01:00:08obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless

01:00:12if you are so busy completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.

01:00:16I get 20 minutes for lunch and you get 15.

01:00:19Worshipping at the altar of work turns the boss figure into a kind of deity.

01:00:23She saved me. She saved Huck. She saved Quinn. She saved you.

01:00:27Boar on the floor. I really, I feel...

01:00:30Get down! Boar on the floor!

01:00:33Boing, boing, boing, boing!

01:00:36I got it!

01:00:36There's perhaps no better encapsulation of the boss god

01:00:40than Emily's worship of Miranda Priestly as an almost mythical superhuman being.

01:00:45She's the editor-in-chief of Runway, not to mention a legend.

01:00:49Many people turn to religion to make sense of the world.

01:00:52But work wasn't designed to do such a thing.

01:00:54As Derek Thompson writes in The Atlantic,

01:00:56the modern labor force evolved to serve the needs of consumers and capitalists,

01:01:00not to satisfy tens of millions of people seeking transcendence at the office.

01:01:05Thus, the root of the problem is that we're told

01:01:07to look for profound meaning in our work in the first place.

01:01:10And the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.

01:01:14And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

01:01:18On the surface, this may seem like good advice.

01:01:20One third of your life is spent at work,

01:01:21so ideally that time should be devoted to something you care about and enjoy.

01:01:25But the constant pressure to love your job sets people up to feel crushed

01:01:29when it doesn't unlock a deep sense of fulfillment.

01:01:32So just like Emily, from time to time,

01:01:34many of us could stand to be reminded that a job is just a job.

01:01:38I hope you know that this is a very difficult job,

01:01:40for which you are totally wrong.

01:01:42And if you mess up, my head is on a chopping block.

01:01:49Emily is a model of what not to do in your career.

01:01:52You never ask Miranda anything.

01:01:55It's one thing to work all the time because you genuinely love what you do.

01:01:59You're off work, Christina. Go enjoy your day.

01:02:02No, I'll enjoy my day if I can help retrieve a heart, I promise.

01:02:05But Emily never actually seems happy at Runway.

01:02:08So until she decides that you're not a total psycho,

01:02:11I get the lovely task of waiting around for the book.

01:02:13During her time there, she sacrifices her sense of self

01:02:16and self-respect for the job.

01:02:18Under the pressure of her industry, she goes on starvation diets.

01:02:22You look so thin.

01:02:23Do I?

01:02:24Yeah.

01:02:25Oh, it's for Paris.

01:02:26Well, I'm on this new diet.

01:02:27It's very effective.

01:02:28Well, I don't eat anything.

01:02:29And when I feel like I'm about to faint,

01:02:31I eat a cube of cheese.

01:02:33And comes to the office even when she's terribly sick.

01:02:35How's the cold doing?

01:02:37Like death warmed up.

01:02:38She gets hit by a car because she's so distracted

01:02:41running an errand for Miranda.

01:02:43Showing how her commitment to work is literally putting her life at risk.

01:02:46And if she continues on this road, like many an addict,

01:02:49she will kill herself.

01:02:50This disregard for her own well-being suggests

01:02:53that Emily doesn't really value herself.

01:02:56What took you so long?

01:02:57I have to pee.

01:02:58You haven't peed since I left?

01:02:59No, I haven't been manning the desk, haven't I?

01:03:01Bursting.

01:03:02She's internalized the negativity that permeates Runway's workplace culture.

01:03:06It's just Miranda wanted some scarves from her mares

01:03:09and she did tell me yesterday but I forgot like an idiot.

01:03:11And Emily is well on her way to a problem facing many

01:03:14in the overstretched millennial workforce, burnout.

01:03:18BuzzFeed's Anne Helen Peterson named millennials the burnout generation.

01:03:22You deserve paid work.

01:03:23I can't get paid work.

01:03:25I just graduated from Cornell with a business degree.

01:03:28That's the worst ivy.

01:03:29Thompson argues that this is due to a combination of student debt,

01:03:32entering the workforce post-recession,

01:03:34and the way social media has heightened the pressure

01:03:36to present an image of success to one's peers.

01:03:39Meanwhile, instant communication has made it

01:03:41so there is no clear work-life divide anymore.

01:03:44Andrea, Miranda decided to kill the autumn jacket story for September.

01:03:48And she is pulling up the Sedona shoot from October.

01:03:50You need to come into the office right this second

01:03:52and you pick up her copy order on the way.

01:03:54The romance around work strategically glosses over the fact

01:03:57that being a workaholic isn't a choice for most of us.

01:04:00The jobs that pay the rent.

01:04:02The jobs that pay the rent.

01:04:03The jobs that pay the rent.

01:04:05Our country's policies essentially force people to work a lot.

01:04:08We get little vacation time,

01:04:10new parents aren't guaranteed paid leave,

01:04:12our healthcare system makes many people reliant on their jobs for insurance,

01:04:16and even getting welfare assistance usually requires proof of employment.

01:04:20And a study by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth

01:04:22found that because people's output can't always be measured in a concrete way,

01:04:27companies tend to unconsciously use working hours and face time

01:04:31as a way to estimate their employees' productivity and commitment to their jobs.

01:04:35He's in here every night at 9, every morning at 8.

01:04:38But in the long run, workaholism doesn't serve employers well either.

01:04:42People who are overworked are less productive and more likely to make mistakes.

01:04:46Oh my god, I just can't remember what his name is.

01:04:49I just saw his name this morning on this.

01:04:51Oh, I know this.

01:04:53Even if you don't care if the rest of your life falls apart,

01:04:55you still shouldn't be like Emily,

01:04:57because her non-stop work style doesn't help her get ahead.

01:05:00How does Miranda show her appreciation for the way Emily is killing herself for this job?

01:05:05The tales of your incompetence do not interest me.

01:05:08She's been at Runway longer than Andy,

01:05:10but the new girl with no experience overtakes her in less than a year

01:05:14to become Miranda's preferred assistant.

01:05:16I need the best possible team with me.

01:05:20That no longer includes Emily.

01:05:22After Miranda betrays Emily by choosing Andy to accompany her to Paris,

01:05:26Emily still returns to work for this person who clearly does not value her.

01:05:30By the end, Andy is pursuing her real dream of being a journalist,

01:05:33while Emily hasn't moved forward an inch.

01:05:35You have some very large shoes to fill.

01:05:39Hope you know that.

01:05:40Employees need to have boundaries,

01:05:42but Emily doesn't have Andy's instinct to question conventions

01:05:46that seem ridiculous and downright cruel.

01:05:48One time an assistant left the desk,

01:05:50because she sliced her hand open with a letter opener,

01:05:52and Miranda missed Lagerfeld just before he boarded a 17-hour flight to Australia.

01:05:58She now works at TV Guide.

01:05:59At a certain point, if you want your superior's respect,

01:06:02you need to assert yourself.

01:06:04You're never going to get that corner office

01:06:06until you start treating Don as an equal.

01:06:08As we discussed in our Miranda video,

01:06:10Andy's show of self-respect is what earns her a second look from Miranda in the first place.

01:06:15I'm smart.

01:06:16I learn fast, and I will work very hard.

01:06:18Meanwhile, Emily's haughtiness towards Andy reveals that she isn't able to see past appearances

01:06:24to the deeper qualities that an employer might value,

01:06:26like having a unique voice and take on the world.

01:06:29I mean, I have no idea why Miranda hired her.

01:06:32Career excellence requires other qualities in addition to devotion and long hours.

01:06:37Emily plays too much by the rules.

01:06:39She doesn't invest in other areas of her life.

01:06:41She loses her joy.

01:06:42And most importantly, she doesn't put herself before the job.

01:06:45I refuse to be sick.

01:06:47I'm wearing Valentino for crying out loud.

01:06:49She's so fixated on what's required of her that she's willing to efface her identity.

01:06:53You do not talk to anyone.

01:06:56You do not look at anyone.

01:06:58This is of the utmost importance.

01:06:59You must be invisible.

01:07:00Do you understand?

01:07:02This makes her a good assistant, as that's a role that requires supporting someone else's career.

01:07:07But workaholism alone will not make you the next Miranda Priestly.

01:07:11Can America ever truly escape our toxic workaholism and dreaded hustle culture?

01:07:16The internet can't stop talking about quiet quitting,

01:07:19i.e. when an employee stops coming in early, leaves on time,

01:07:22and doesn't do more than their actual job.

01:07:25They're just going to their jobs and then just doing the job from 9 to 5.

01:07:28And then, and then, and then, hold up, that's just working.

01:07:31So we can all agree the quitting part is pretty much a misnomer.

01:07:35But if you think about it, using this term to describe an employee

01:07:38just not exploiting themselves is hilariously revealing about American work culture.

01:07:43Take the day off.

01:07:45You mean not work?

01:07:47And while all this talk of quiet quitting and burnout sounds pretty negative,

01:07:50actually, it's a very positive sign that collectively,

01:07:53our attitude toward deep-seated toxic workplace expectations is shifting.

01:07:58While the 2010s glorified hustle culture, rise and grind,

01:08:01and phrases like WeWork's Thank God It's Monday, today we're undergoing a crucial reset.

01:08:05I think it is almost direct resistance and disruption of hustle culture, honestly.

01:08:11And I think it's exciting that more people are doing it.

01:08:15So even if quiet quitting itself is probably overblown and not enough of a solution,

01:08:20this craze signals an opportunity to, as a culture,

01:08:23find a more enlightened understanding of the role work should take in our lives.

01:08:30Today's workers are burned out.

01:08:32They're small annual raises eaten up by a rapidly increasing cost of living.

01:08:36And they have little national legislative support,

01:08:39from no required paid sick days to ridiculously behind-the-times parental leave.

01:08:43The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world

01:08:47that doesn't have a federal law mandating paid maternity leave.

01:08:50But before the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of this was already true.

01:08:54The difference was people were more successfully brainwashed by the promise of hustle culture,

01:08:59that if we just worked harder, longer, and smarter, we could get to be the ones who rose up and made it.

01:09:04She's a workaholic, works frantically to avoid dealing with her weird mix of

01:09:08lack of self-worth and narcissism. I really like her.

01:09:11The 2010s era of WeWork built a glamour around performative workaholism,

01:09:16spurred on by the tech industry practice of offering fun-sounding perks designed

01:09:20to entice people to stay longer hours in the office.

01:09:23We have medium-speed wifi, draft beer on tap.

01:09:26Okay, what? Girl, I hope I get to work here.

01:09:29But the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 completely shifted

01:09:33this picture because suddenly, for a lot of people, the office space was no longer the center of work.

01:09:39Remote work blurred the lines between on the clock and off,

01:09:42leaving many workers overloaded with unclear, unattainable expectations.

01:09:46I went from being someone who really, really valued, you know, putting everything into my work,

01:09:53giving it my all. Suddenly, I was at home with two times the amount of work.

01:10:01For others, removing the office and commute from their day offered some much-needed clarity on

01:10:05exactly how out of balance their life had been. This led to the Great Resignation,

01:10:10where many workers rapidly quit or change jobs, but also what's been called the Great Reflection.

01:10:16Being able to just stop and take stock of where our work lives were at spurred many to realize we

01:10:21weren't happy with what we saw. People consciously considered what they wanted out of their careers.

01:10:26For some, their answer was clear – to pay for pleasant lives outside of work. Workers began

01:10:31taking advantage of remote work, even relocating to exciting destinations overseas.

01:10:36I get all day free. I can do whatever I want. I can go see my family. I can sightsee.

01:10:40Others didn't take as drastic steps, but questioned whether the sense of self should be so intricately

01:10:46intertwined with work-based productivity. And that's reflected by our current culture's zeitgeist,

01:10:51which simply doesn't portray work as so sexy anymore. While dominant work myths were already

01:10:56starting to be challenged in narratives like 2018's Sorry to Bother You, shows like 2022's Severance

01:11:01are infused with a dark absurdity that makes the workplace feel like a mundane yet sinister dystopia.

01:11:07Dylan Gee's Waffle Party will commence at close of day. In the meantime,

01:11:11I've ordered the pre-Waffle Party Egg Bar Social for everyone.

01:11:15The sheer act of reflection has the potential to be deeply empowering for a lot of workers

01:11:20and disturbing to many company owners and senior executives. People are widely resisting the agendas

01:11:26of many CEOs and upper management to get workers back to the office. And yes, they've been quiet

01:11:32quitting or simply drawing boundaries in their lives, refusing to view going above and beyond as the norm.

01:11:38So does quiet quitting actually work?

01:11:44Stepping out of a workaholic pattern can be part of a recipe for a more healthy balance in your life.

01:11:49Laura Vanderkam, the author of several time management books, believes finding relief from

01:11:53work-related stress is best found outside of work. But it's not just about the amount of free time you

01:11:58have or simply that you check out from work. Studies have shown that when people intentionally take a

01:12:03few hours a week to themselves and spend it on something that is engaging, enriching, and active,

01:12:08they feel as though they have more free time than people who do less active forms of relief,

01:12:12like binge-watching TV shows. They leave their activity feeling recharged.

01:12:16Things that just calm the mind rather than stimulate the mind. We are constantly being

01:12:22overstimulated by everything around us. If we don't find that engagement somewhere in our lives,

01:12:27just disengaging at work is a recipe for hating our jobs and making us feel more tired out than ever.

01:12:33Amelia Nagoski, co-author of the book Burnout, The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle,

01:12:37believes quiet quitting may also be harder to do than many TikTok videos would have us believe,

01:12:42not just logistically, but emotionally and psychologically, especially if you're someone

01:12:46who previously put a lot of your identity into your work. Quote,

01:12:49The real challenge is grieving the loss of something you thought was valuable,

01:12:53mourning the time and energy you invested into a relationship where you were not valued the way

01:12:57you deserved to be. Moreover, not everyone has the ability to quiet quit. It's an option mainly for

01:13:03white collar folks who work remotely at a desk and others like teachers, to an extent,

01:13:08who have been deciding increasingly that they're not going to put in the extra uncompensated around

01:13:12the clock hours that have long been expected from them. But many from migrant workers and day laborers,

01:13:18to people in medical and emergency services, to customer service reps and grocery store clerks face

01:13:23far more rigid expectations and have to either comply or actually quit.

01:13:28It finally clicked to me just how absurd it is that bedside practitioners work 12-hour shifts

01:13:36and get a 30-minute break. Undocumented or disabled folks may also feel that their life depends more

01:13:42on their jobs than the average worker because of healthcare and immigration status. And even in fields

01:13:47where quiet quitting is possible, many black and brown people say they don't feel that this is a safe

01:13:52or a useful tool for them when they're already looked over for promotions and more readily seen

01:13:56as troublemakers because of racial bias. Quiet quitting doesn't work for black women because

01:14:01in the United States, people are trained and taught from a very early age to heavily lean on black women

01:14:08for labor. Even if you can do it, quiet quitting isn't the best long-term solution. You're better off

01:14:14finding a job you like and care about, at least somewhat. And if you're really phoning it in,

01:14:18your employer's not likely to put up with it forever. I just want you to realize the ramifications,

01:14:23the realities. If the economy gets worse, you're going to be the first one on the chopping block.

01:14:28Still, if we look past quiet quitting as an individual choice and think about what it signifies

01:14:33collectively, this could be used to change our work landscape forever. But something that truly

01:14:38terrifies governments around the world is what do you do when your population just stops doing anything?

01:14:49In sectors where quiet quitting is less of a thing, we're seeing many actually quit. There's a big

01:14:54shortage of teachers, nurses, and workers in the retail, food service, and hospitality industries.

01:14:59People are leaving jobs that require in-person presence for low wages, instead seeking roles

01:15:04in more lucrative fields that allow hybrid or remote work. This concrete action can potentially force

01:15:10entire industries to restructure. To face the truth that certain highly essential jobs have long been

01:15:15systematically undervalued, and this needs to change. I didn't realize how toxic being a

01:15:21teacher in the United States was until I left the profession. While quiet quitting is a pretty

01:15:25solitary activity, organizing could be the next collective step for white-collar and blue-collar

01:15:30workers. Support for unions is at a 57-year high in America. Tons of corporations from Amazon to

01:15:36Starbucks are witnessing their employees push back against unfair exploitative work environments.

01:15:41Employee strikes have seen an uptick since the pandemic, and in cases like the 2021 John Deere

01:15:46strike, they're actually winning.

01:15:48The issue's being negotiated very widely from different industry to industry,

01:15:53but there's one constant. Workers want more money.

01:15:57It's also important to remember that, while we consider our individualistic everyone-for-themselves

01:16:02hyper-capitalism of today's America the norm, the country's history hasn't always been this way.

01:16:07The generations of our country's past believed strongly in labor unions that provided real

01:16:12benefits to many.

01:16:13Us poor folks haven't got a chance unless we organize.

01:16:18And there have been waves in the public attitude toward work. After the greed is good mantra of the 80s,

01:16:23the 90s saw the rise of the Gen X slacker, who questioned whether the point of life could be

01:16:28something more or different than just amassing material wealth. And again, the negative label

01:16:33these youths were given of slacker is revealing. It mirrors the impulse today to frame all these

01:16:38developments in bad-sounding terms like quiet quitting or burnout, or the rhetoric that's mocking

01:16:43or critical of Gen Z workers who assert their boundaries or don't believe they must blindly

01:16:48fall in line with every repressive workplace norm their bosses take for granted.

01:16:52So Jack actually hired me to work from eight to five Monday through Friday.

01:16:57So anytime before eight and anytime after five, I'm actually not available.

01:17:02In truth, we're now presented with a really hopeful opportunity to address our long-standing

01:17:07work-life balance problems in the US. If we take our frustrations and channel them into something

01:17:12productive, we can do something to create a more equitable workplace for everyone. That's why some

01:17:17are rebranding this moment, the great renegotiation. Maybe this shift in attitudes can even extend to

01:17:23accepting and advocating for things most Europeans consider normal, like taking actual vacations and

01:17:28supporting real paid family leave. With the advances in technology of the past couple of hundred years,

01:17:34we should be working less than any other time in human history, not priding ourselves on how much

01:17:39non-essential work we can pack in. If we enact change together, we don't have to hate where

01:17:50we spend most of our lives. Burnout is a sign that something's not working right. So let's listen to

01:17:55these red flags and make the concrete changes needed to make this picture brighter for everyone.

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The Real Reason Modern Work Is So Soul Crushing, Explained | Compilation

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