"Lazy Girl Jobs."

We love to create bullshit memes and trends and concepts around work , probably because (a) some journalists need to hit deadlines, (b) TikTok is fun I suppose, and ? we spend a lot of time at work, so why not opine on it with funny videos, right?

The new one is “lazy girl jobs.” I guess these are jobs you can do and be lazy, like take a nap or watch three episodes of a Netflix/Hulu show in the middle of them.

This is a stupid and lazy meme, and it probably doesn’t need to involve a specific gender. I thought we were into the narrative of “women are doing better than men and men are collapsing,” and yet now we’re attaching the “lazy” TikTok meme to “girls?” What about “lazy boy jobs?” Honestly, a bunch of high-comp jobs in finance are pretty lazy, or while you spend a lot of hours at the office, you’re thumbing social media half the time, because you’re beholden to when the rich guy you’re trying to make richer is available.

So that’s the first problem: the meme doesn’t need a gender, per se. That’s dumb.

Second problem: “lazy girl jobs” are honestly every white-collar job, or at least 70% of them. Do you remember about five months ago when everyone was up in arms that some people were holding 2–3 full-time jobs at the same time? Executives were livid! How dare these assholes take my salary and also the salary of someone else?!?! How is this possible?!?!?!

It’s possible because a lot of jobs aren’t that hard, and the pace of white-collar work is much slower than people let on or discuss. So much of “knowledge work” is hurry up and wait work — you do something, but it needs to be approved by someone who sits in meetings all day, so they don’t have the time to approve it until PM, and then you see it in the AM, you make the adjustments, and then they’re in meetings all day again, so now it’s Day III and Adjustments Cycle II and nothing has happened.

I’m currently trying to get a PDF finished that should have been finished Monday at 11am. It’s now Thursday morning and it’s not done. Tons of hurry up and wait.

If you know how to manage time and you know what bosses really believe is important — fire drills, mostly — then many jobs are “lazy” jobs. You can sit around and watch DIY quilting videos, and when you see an email with CAPS LOCK in the subject line, you open it, scan for the deliverable, do the deliverable, send it back, and go back to your quilting videos. A lot of work is like this — managers want to seem “on top” of things and they want to believe their people will jump whenever they ask. Fire drills are the norm, and fire drills keep people feeling “busy” and “execution-focused,” and that’s what truly matters to most people.

We long ago stopped being as productive as we claim.

And now we “communicate” (meetings, calls, emails) much more than we “iterate” (do stuff).

So, in reality, a lot of jobs are “lazy” jobs. It’s a stupid video meme to get younger generations attention on The Tok. It’s not really anything to take seriously, and it’s not some revelatory approach to burnout. A lot of people don’t work as hard as they claim. Look around you with eyes wide open. You’ll see it.