Zillennial Anti-Work Manifesto

I hate working, and I am allowed to.

I am a hedonist by nature. I have different priorities than a career. I care about life, and experiences, and people, and feelings. I hate working, and it’s preventing me from life.

It doesn’t help that working has completely been divorced from value. Oh, clap for the nurses! Tip delivery drivers! All of this adds up to nothing when CEOs make millions. Lower classes juggle multiple jobs and bills to survive. Unsympathetic managers and bureaucracy. Office workers can scroll online for 50% of their day because of how optimized productivity has gotten. Yet they must stay to keep the illusion, to keep a semblance of power at the top.

I know that I don’t need to be working. I know this because it took a year to find a position that was mostly made up. No one wanted to hire me, big media companies, small businesses, CVS. Labor shortage my ass. Ended up doing social media for a couple people who don’t know how to open Instagram. We are exposed to so many people who can do what we want to do way better than we can. And I’ve done all I was supposed to in my upper-middle-class education. The market is simply oversaturated with other Mes. Why should we even bother? We have college degrees but nothing to offer but our tarot readings, our handmade tchochkis, and “social media expertise.”

Someone has to work, you say.

Make a more equitable system, I say. Half a century ago, one (white) man was expected to earn enough for a whole family, and his wife would do domestic work. This work is not unsubstantial, but completely unaccounted for when two-income households are required to live. Wages haven’t risen to accommodate inflation. Houses are left uncleaned, social lives are bygone.

It doesn’t have to be this way, I say. Pre-industrial revolution, societies around the world worked less than half the year. Prehistoric peoples worked 3-5 hours a day. What did they do with their time? Cared for each other, had full lives, invented movies.

My current job isn’t bad by any job standards, and I’m still unhappy at it. It’s easy, but I’m exhausted from 10 hour shifts, I make minimum wage, and I have no benefits. People are just like, okay whatever about these conditions once they get above a threshold like mine. But some people never do. I look in horror at older people in jobs like mine and know it’s possible to never have an opportunity for better.

I’m tired of defining myself by career path. I am so much more, but I am not at my fullest potential when I am constantly drained by stupid work and stress about not having enough. I want to imagine a better world. How can we make that happen?