While I was doomscrolling on TikTok, I saw a video of a person claiming to be afraid of working. It sounds crazy, but unfortunately, it’s true. Almost half of Gen Z is afraid to work according to Business Insider, whether because of social situations or the looming threat of artificial intelligence in the workplace. To dive deeper into this fear, I interviewed two students: ninth-grader Sullivan McCann, who is currently unemployed, and Groves sophomore Anna Behrens, who is employed.
“What scares me most is that I don’t really have any interviewing experience,” McCann said.
When asked whether there are any benefits to not working, he replied, “I don’t think so because when you work, you get money. If you don’t, you’re not going to have a lot of money.”
When I asked whether he could overcome this fear, he replied, “Yeah, I just need to practice interviewing.”
According to sophomore Anna Behrens, the benefits of having a job are that “you get paid, you get to talk with other people your age, and older people can give you advice. You get to learn a lot of skills, like responsibility, punctuality and leadership.”
Basically, having a job teaches valuable life lessons for the future.
When asked why she thinks people are scared of working, she said, “It’s a large responsibility, and maybe they think they’re going to fail.”
Finally, I asked Behrens whether these fears are realistic.
“Oh, that’s definitely very true. Though, I don’t think it’s that scary because we have that same responsibility in school. I think that makes it less scary because we do it almost every day.”
The idea of Gen Z not working is almost crazy to think about. How can one small fear make someone not want to go out and work? While Behrens believes it is more responsibility-driven, McCann said he is more afraid of the first steps of getting a job. However, both students believe the benefits of having a job outweigh not having one.
Jobs take a lot of responsibility and commitment, and though they can be scary for many reasons, having a job provides many benefits and prepares people for the future. Like Behrens said, we practice these responsibilities every day, so what is so scary about that? At school, people practice public speaking, meeting deadlines and writing every day, all of which are skills used in most jobs.
I believe Gen Z avoiding work is something that should not be normalized because having a job provides great preparation for the future. In the end, jobs may not always be fun or exciting, but workplace experience offers lessons unlike anything else.
