Woman Complains About Today's 'Work Culture' After Working A Corporate 9 To 5 Job For Only 6 Months
She's just begun her career and already wants to end it.
@jigglyjulia / TikTok The lifestyle of having a corporate 9 to 5 job definitely isn't for everyone, and it comes with pitfalls for most of us.
But for one woman on TikTok, the 9 to 5 career grind is so unpleasant she's ready to chuck it all after just six months in her very first corporate job.
In her hot take on her first gig, TikToker Julia Huynh, who goes by @jigglyjulia on the app, says "something needs to change" about this whole capitalist plan of working most of your life away in an office.
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Her complaints probably seem entitled to those who have been in the workforce for years and years — or even decades upon decades.
But her beef with the corporate structure is pretty relatable to anyone who's ever had a job they weren't particularly enthused about working.
The TikToker's complaints center on work-life balance, saying she has little energy once her 9 to 5 is over.
"I’m literally six months into my first corporate job and I already want to quit," Huynh said, but she was quick to clarify that her job itself isn't even the problem.
She claims her job is ideal "if you look at it at face value" — that she doesn't mind the work she does and loves her coworkers, which is of course key to surviving any job.
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But, she says, she feels that after just her short stint at her job, "I literally feel like nothing has happened in the past six months."
She goes on to say that after a week of working hours that are more like 8 to 5 — and sometimes even 5 to 5 — that she is "so exhausted" by Friday that "I can't do anything on the weekend anymore."
That's certainly a relatable experience to anyone who's found themselves catatonic by the time dinner is over on a Friday night.
She says that 'something has to change' with corporate 'work culture' because her job is consuming too much of her life.
"I'm not going to go through my entire life, working for like 40 years, and then I wake up one day...and I'm like, 'wow it's been 40 years and I have done literally nothing.'"
So why doesn't she just quit? Well, the same reasons most people don't.
"I will not have any money," Huynh says, "so how am I supposed to live? What am I supposed to do? I don't understand!"
Yeah, that is... kinda how it works. You have to have a job to get by.
But while Huynh may be a touch early to this kind of disillusionment, she's certainly not alone, especially nowadays.
Sentiments like Huynh's are part of a wider trend that saw millions of people ditching their corporate jobs since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. Department of Commerce calculated that some 47 million Americans quit their jobs in 2021, a phenomenon now called "The Great Resignation."
Seems all that time stuck at home in 2020 pondering the prospect of having "done literally nothing" in life, to use Huynh's words, had an impact.
Those resignations have in turn caused the major staffing shortages we've been hearing about for ages — labor shortages that still persist today despite rising wages.
And some experts say it's precisely because of complaints like Huynh's — the jobs on offer just aren't fulfilling or well-paying enough for people to return to the pre-pandemic way of life, especially given how inflation is effectively erasing wage increases.
Many on TikTok wholeheartedly related to Huynh's 9 to 5 despair.
One commenter said, "We need 3-day weekends" while another called the 9 to 5 life "the depressing cycle."
Another person, also just six months into their first job, said they "feel the exact same!"
And a fellow 20-something took Huynh's video as a call to action, writing, "We as a generation have to change work culture."
Huynh and her generation may be a bit young to feel so down about things, and sometimes all it takes is finding the right position at the right company to turn everything around.
Still, when it comes to Huynh's fear that she will "work all my life and forget to actually live," the data shows she's far from the only one.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.