The girl boss era of the 2010s is dead. In its place? Lazy girl jobs. Well, according to TikTok anyway.
Videos mentioning the trend have amassed 47 million views on the platform. “Lazy girl jobs are my favs, all I do is copy and paste the same emails, take three to four calls a day, take my extra long break, take more breaks AND get a nice salary,” user @raeandzeebo said in a video that has been viewed over 840,000 times.
Users quickly commented, saying that this was their “ideal dream job” and they wanted a job that gave them a “slower” pace. “I want these jobs but I girl bossed too hard and I’m overqualified now,” another joked.
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“’Lazy girl jobs’ usually refer to administrative, remote working, flexible roles which have a relatively decent salary,” Mhairi Todd, roadblock coach and founder of Revolve Coaching, tells GLAMOUR. “The term includes any job which has little to zero responsibility and where extended periods of ‘slacking’ would go unnoticed and unchallenged.
“Some examples from self professed ‘lazy girl job’ holders are customer service manager, administrative assistant for a charity and marketing assistant. The term is popular with Gen Z who are part of the anti-work movement. Whereas generations prior may have placed work front and centre of self worth and personal value, the anti work movement is an attempted rebellion against this and our capitalist culture.”
In an ideal world, everyone would work in a job that challenges them just enough, is gratifying, has good pay and hours and a company that values their employees. Yet, this kind of job feels like an anomaly rather than the norm. It’s either good pay, long hours, and no work-life balance OR rubbish pay, normal hours and more work-life balance. Which is exactly why well paid ‘lazy girl jobs’ could be the solution.
Todd says that whether or no a ‘lazy girl job’ is the right option for you depends on what season of life you are in and what your personal sense of success looks like.
“If your goal right now is to backpack around the world, then holding a job that has no pressure and lots of flexibility may be ideal,” she adds. “However, having personally held what I’d consider to be a kind of ‘lazy girl job’ in my early twenties as a medical rep, they can be incredibly draining and demotivating.”
Like most trends, it’s not the first time people have shifted towards a lower pressure job. Todd points to the term “bullshit jobs” that was coined by the anthropologist David Graeber in his 2018 book of the same name. “Though it may be attractive at first glance to think of doing very little and getting paid for it, Graeber argues that these types of roles take a serious toll on mental health,” Todd adds. “In a study which looked at individuals who felt their jobs were ‘pointless’ he found a much higher incidence of depression and anxiety.”