Woman Who Hung Up On A Zoom Job Interview After Only 2 Minutes Is Told ‘Millennials Don’t Want To Work’
She wants to work, she just also wants to be compensated fairly.
Thought Catalog / Unsplash As Boomers begin to age out of the workforce, Gen X’ers, Millennials, and Gen Z’ers will take the helm to redefine corporate culture. Yet, what some people see as the normalized sacrifices of working, others see as being taken advantage of.
A woman left a job interview after only 2 minutes due to the potential employer's absurd expectations.
Shelly Janda shared a story that pretty much encapsulates just how cutthroat the job market currently is. “I just left a Zoom interview after two minutes because I have self-respect,” she started her TikTok.
She explained that the company told her she’d have a one-on-one interview, only to turn it into a group interview the moment she signed on to Zoom. According to the employers conducting the interview, they changed the format because “They are so busy that they need to do it all together to see who’s the best fit.”
“So, you want me and this other woman to duke it out on screen right now?” Janda questioned. “And on top of that, you just told me what ‘full-time’ meant to you, and that’s 60 hours a week, six days a week?”
“I am so glad you asked me to speak first because I am not sorry that I said, ‘No, that will not work for me, and I wish you the best,” she declared.
In a follow-up video, Janda responded to a comment declaring that the problem was her work ethic, not the company’s expression of their own ethics.
She clapped back at the tired critique that continues to haunt young job-seekers: ‘Millennials don’t want to work.’
“It is not an issue of Millennials not wanting to work anymore,” she explained. “I am a Millennial. I want to work. I wanna find a good career, but that doesn’t mean I wanna be taken advantage of.”
She took a stand against employers who assume that young people are so desperate for work that they’ll ignore workplace red flags, like being told an interview will be conducted in one way, only to change it at the last minute, without any warning.
Almost 70% of people looking for work in 2024 say that their current job search is harder than the last time they were seeking employment.
Although jobs are hard to come by, people shouldn’t have to lower their expectations of how they deserve to be treated just to make ends meet.
Implying that young people don’t want to work is ultimately a lazy argument that purposefully ignores the realities of our current economy. Most Millennials and Gen Z’ers are working already — they’re just barely making enough money to survive.
“I wanna work full-time, but full-time is 40 hours a week, not 60, and yes, $20 an hour is above minimum wage, but I live in Southern California, where it is expensive to live here, so I did some of the math,” Janda said.
Photo: fizkes / Shutterstock
She calculated what the potential income for that position would have been, noting that for “$20 an hour, 60 hours per week, we’re talking about a gross pay of $1,200 a week.”
“Let’s take off 30% for taxes, so every single week, you are taking home $840, roughly,” she continued. “Bi-weekly, that’s $1,600, and for the entire month, you’re bringing home $3,360.”
Taking her rent, bills, and expenses into consideration, she would have about $1,500 of extra money; however, given the extensive working hours, she would likely be too tired to do anything with it.
“It is not an issue of ‘I don’t wanna work,’” she added. “It is an issue of, I also wanna enjoy what I’m doing and have a life and be able to live a little bit. And making that, honestly not large enough amount of money, a month for how much I’m working, is not worth it.”
“It’s not cool to think that people should accept that,” Janda concluded. “Know your worth.”
Our lives are about so much more than the jobs we hold. We find the most nourishment in the people we surround ourselves with and the way we spend our time outside of working hours: Cooking, reading, and cuddling our pups.
No matter what generation a person falls under, we all deserve an equitable paycheck and a work schedule that allows us to thrive, both on and off the job.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.