This TikToker Crying About Her 9-5 Kind of Has a Point

Dolly Parton said it best: “Working 9-5, what a way to make a living / Barely getting by, it’s all taking and no giving.”

She may have first sung those lyrics back in 1980, but the sentiment is still just as relatable. Let’s face it—jobs can kind of suck. No matter how great your actual work might be, the whole process of commuting, taking lunch breaks, and, you know, just fitting in other things like cooking and cleaning and socializing can be utterly draining.

A TikToker recently captured just how wild the 9-to-5 schedule can actually be. In a video that showed her crying, Brielle Asero, a recent grad who is 21, explained her shock at starting her first 9-to-5 office job.

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“This is my first job, like, my first 9-to-5 job after college and I am in person and I’m commuting in the city and it takes me fucking forever to get there,” she began. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to afford living in the city right now, so that’s off the table.”

“I don’t have time to do anything,” Asero went on. “Like, I want to shower, eat my dinner, and go to sleep. I don’t have time or energy to cook my dinner, either. Like, I don’t have energy to work out, like, that’s out the window. Like, I’m so upset, oh my God! Nothing to do with my job at all, but the 9-to-5 schedule is crazy!”

She added, “How do you have friends? How do you meet, like, a guy? I don’t have time for anything and I’m, like, so stressed out.”

The video quickly went viral, inspiring a heated debate in the comments section. Is this girl just a wimpy Gen Z learning about the realities of surviving in our capitalist society? Or, maybe, does she actually have a point?

“Welcome to ADULTHOOD,” one person commented.

Another wrote, “Welcome to life. Love Gen X.”

Okay, harsh.

Others, however, agreed with the recent grad.

One person even wrote: “I had a crisis when I got my first 9-5 job. Literally I couldn’t believe this was life.”

As Asero’s video and the response to it proves, there is something fundamentally wrong about the way we work.

After all, the office 9-to-5 setup used to work well when men drove into the office each day, while their wives (or mothers) dealt with the household chores. When they came home, there was a hot meal waiting for the on the table. At least, this was the idea.

Now, however, many single people work full-time. Plus, people in relationships and families are typically dual-income households, so everything around the house has to be done in the evening or on the weekends.

And then there’s the commute. As the cost of living continues to rise, rents have become astronomical in city centers. In London, a one-bedroom apartment in the center of London is likely to cost you around $2,400 a month. The average salary in the city is around $3,300 a month—in other words, living close to work is probably next to impossible if you want to have money to actually, you know, eat and live.

Commuting in London will take you an hour each direction (if you’re lucky). That’s an extra two to three hours added to your day just spent sweating it out on public transit getting to and from work. After adding in a shower, a quick breakfast, and cooking and eating dinner, there is literally no time left to do anything but sleep.

We already know that people are literally exhausted from work. Cases of burnout reached a record high in 2022. So we are told to focus on self-care—but the question is: When?

As Asero noted, she has literally no time to exercise, see her friends, or even cook nice meals.

After this hectic schedule, even our weekends are bound to be packed with all of the chores we missed out on throughout the week.

So what can we do? The only real solution seems to be to continue to push for more flexible working options that reflect our modern lifestyles. The nuclear family with the stay-at-home wife is, for many of us, a thing of the past. We need organizations to embrace new alternatives.

The four-day working week, for instance, has already proved to increase both productivity and employee well-being. Similarly, studies on flexible work have shown it has benefited employers and employees alike.