The internet is divided over a Gen Z woman’s complaint about working 9 to 5
Culture’s obsession with Gen Z’s relationship to work has reached a fever pitch again, this time in response to TikTok of a young woman complaining about her job.
Brielle Asero, who posts on TikTok under the username @brielleybelly123 to over 125,000 followers, complained in a nearly minute and a half-long video about the lack of time she has left for herself after commuting home.
“I get on the train at 7:30 a.m., and I don’t get home until 6:15 p.m. [at the] earliest. I don’t have time to do anything!” says Asero in the viral video. She goes on to call the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule “crazy,” before ending with a couple important questions: “How do you have friends? How do you have time to meet a guy?” Her video has received over 2.3 million views on the platform and over 200,000 likes.
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Peers who resonated with her video flooded the comments. The most-liked comment reads, “The 40 hour work week is beyond outdated and your feelings are totally valid.”
The TikTok got reposted to Twitter/X earlier this week, sparking debate among users. One user captioned it with “#4HL,” in reference to the four-hour life — the idea that you have four hours left over for yourself after work each day.
The internet is quick to come for young women expressing their opinions online, especially those about work — remember the video of the project managers working from the pool? Some users surfaced Asero’s video with disapproving captions. One wrote, “Gen Z girl finds out what a real job is like,” and that has post garnered over 15,000 likes. Another said, “Omg, poor baby has her first job. Like..she has to commute?? Like…she has to cook dinner?? Like…no time or energy to work out?? Like..she’s working in person not remote??? Like…She. Has. To. Work. 9. To. 5 ??? What????”
Many came to Asero’s defense in the quote tweets of those posts. One X user wrote, “why are people cooking her for pointing out that the 9-5 work structure is broken ?? she’s literally right ??” The tweet received over 327,000 likes. Another pointed out, “people dragging her as if she didn’t just say what karl marx said about capitalism 2 centuries ago LET HER SPEAK.”
Asero explained the response to her video in an interview with Rolling Stone. “Most people who are mad at me are just taking out the anger they feel over the time they’ve lost working long hours. I just wanted to bring people together who feel this way to possibly incite a change,” she declared.
Gen Z’s reckoning with entering the workforce is more public than any generation, leading to the coining of phrases like “quiet quitting” and the “lazy girl job.” But a dissatisfaction with the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. grind is anything but new. As Blink-182 so succinctly put it way back in 1999, “Work sucks, I know.”