Like many others, Brielle said she can’t afford to live in the city, close to her workplace, so has to commute for her job, which takes even more time out of her day.
“I don’t have time to do anything. I don’t have time or energy to work out or cook my dinner,” she added.
“How do you have friends? How do you have time to meet a guy? I don’t have time for anything, and I’m so stressed out.”
This woman is not saying she doesn’t want to work (just pre-empting some unfounded criticism that is bound to come up). She points out that she enjoys her job, but she is simply highlighting the fact that her daily schedule makes it hard to find time or energy for anything else.
It’s a common reality for many and, perhaps for that reason, she was not met with much sympathy online, with keyboard warriors mocking her for crying over doing what most people do and that she should just “suck it up” because this is what being an adult is like.
But is it? And, if it is, does it have to be?
Brielle is not wrong to point out that a situation like hers makes it really hard to build or maintain any kind of social life or time to oneself. Most of us grew up watching our parents leave home in the early hours of the morning, come back late in the afternoon or in the evening, with little time for anything else. With all the technology and societal advances we’ve seen in the last few decades, shouldn’t we expect things to be different by now?
Her TikTok video made it onto Twitter (sorry, X), where it has been viewed more than 40 million times. The caption for the Twitter post with the video read: “Gen Z girl finds out what a real job is like”.
Despite some mocking comments, she was also met with overwhelming solidarity from people who agree that the status quo needs to change.
“Every one of her points is completely valid. No one should have to surrender their entire waking life to work and in fact Gen Z’s disgust with mandatory, in-office 40-hour workweeks is a tremendous opportunity to instigate change,” one person wrote.
“Just because you’re from a generation that brutalised and berated you into never questioning why things are the way they are and that you shouldn’t speak unless spoken to doesn’t mean the rest of us have to sit here and take it,” another internet user said.
Someone else also made the interesting point that when a startup entrepreneurial tech bro criticises the 9-5 life to suggest you “don’t succumb to the rat race” no one bats an eyelid, but when a young woman does the same, she gets mocked for it.
“Criticising the 9-5 grind is the core of all that hyper-masculine entrepreneurial ‘don’t succumb to the rat race’ content, but if it’s a young woman with a valley girl accent then she’s stupid and lazy I guess.”
Another internet user also pointed out that no one should accept a daily three-hour commute as normal, calling it a “public policy failure”.
Brielle’s teary video is a good reminder that we do not have to accept the way things are just because that’s the way they’ve always been, and that just because so many had to live this way, we can hope for a different life for the generations that come after us.
