I admit that I get a good laugh out of youngsters who claim to be “adulting” when they are really working a small job and being supplemented by Mom and Dad.

I also admit I got a kick out of 21 year-old Brielle Asero’s inability to deal with a 40-hour workweek when she took to TikTok a few months back:

Adulting was so hard commuting in on the train. But now, Brielle has that time that she always wanted back. She has been laid off from her torturous, grueling, entry-level marketing job in New York City.

How do you have time for dating?

I don’t have time to do anything and I’m so stressed out.

I want to shower, eat my dinner and go to sleep. I don’t have time or energy to cook my dinner either. I don’t have energy to work out – that’s out the window.

I’m so upset. The nine to five schedule in general is crazy.

I’m also getting sick leave me alone I’m emotional OK I feel 12 and I’m scared of not having time to live”.-Brielle Asero

Brielle’s whine-fest on adulting went viral. And, of course, Rolling Stone found sympathy for the poor 21 year-old (of course they did) who has “no time for quality relationships”, yet seems to have time for her lash and nail appointments.

And now, apparently, no money for nails and lashes and no savings. Boo-hoo?

[Gen-Z] works just as hard as people before us, with lower salaries and higher costs of living. When the standard work week [was implemented] people could afford to support a family with one spouse staying home and taking care of the mental load, food, and children. But that is hardly the case anymore. And most people who are mad at me are just taking out the anger they feel over the time they’ve lost working long hours. I just wanted to bring people together who feel this way to possibly incite a change.”-Brielle Asero, Rolling Stone

Lol I work 60+ hours a week usually 7 days or more in a row with 1 day off. Time to toughen up. 9-5 sounds like an easy week to me. Oh yeah it's also outside and I live in Arizona. I still make art and play games and shoot and hike.

— Primordial Stalker (@Primordialskulk) October 26, 2023

What about the two days in between to decompress?

Let’s call a spade a spade here. I am 52. I work a 40-hour week. If Ms. Asero keeps up on her eyelash extension and nail appointments on the regular, we’re looking, at the very least, at about four to six hours a month at various salons. I’m not trying to be a “Karen” here, but this stuff involves TIME. I’m also a not trying to be a “Karen” because, I’m sorry, this is all part of managing your time and adulting. I guarantee, a chipped red, coffin-square-shaped fingernail might send a 21 year-old, image-conscious, woman into a deeper bout of depression and a downward spiral.She had no time. But, the time to get yourself “on fleek” comes from somewhere and this young woman managed to squeeze it into her already unbearably busy calendar. No time for dating? No time for working out? But, alas, time for nails and lashes.

I know people my age who also bemoan the 9-5 workweek. I admit that the older I get, the more I want to retire and be a “trophy wife” who works out daily, eats healthy, travels whenever and wherever with my spouse, religiously goes to my nail appointments and facials, writes on my laptop from a well-organized home or exotic destination, and has time for a weekly outings with friends. That lifestyle appeals to me. But, in all honesty, I need to work a few more years to have that lifestyle. And, in reality, when the 20-somethings crap out, someone has to run the shop.

That would be me. And I don’t do it begrudgingly. I get paid to run the shop. But it was years and years of hard work to get there.

I type this as I stare at a broken finger nail and down at my bare feet, in desperate need of a pedicure. But my work days are long and, it’s my senior’s last winter wrestling season, so priorities needed a bit shifting.

Brielle Asero wants to “bring people together” and took to TikTok again to discuss her layoff:

The salaries people are making after college right now, with a degree, it’s just not ok. We’re working so much and still don’t have an emergency fund.

I wasn’t making enough to save any of it, everything was going towards living expenses, and commuting and everything else.”-Brielle Asero

Yes, it sucks for anyone to get laid off right before Christmas. But..hmmm…what about those “low-class hicks” in her home state of South Carolina who are now electricians and plumbers? Just spitballing here. College and career is a choice. Sometimes, those choices don’t pan out as we expect them to.

In truth, the same was true when I graduated with my BA in the 90s. I, too, was part of the entitled crowd who expected a six-figure salary out the gate and unlimited, paid, vacation time. After all, I went to college unlike some of my fellow high school graduates. The truth is, the reality has not changed and our kids have become weaker and not stronger in weathering the harsh realities that come with adulting. Some of us are to blame for this.

I was also laid off from my first job at 21 years-old. I was last-in, first-out. I worked for peanuts in radio while the Today Show’s Savannah Guthrie (a fellow University of Arizona alum) went on to television, then Georgetown and then to hob-nob in her elite Democrat media circles. In hindsight, all of that tough love gave me a better insight to how the world really works and years later, I am grateful for this experience. Yes, it sucked and meant working two, sometimes three jobs to stay afloat. It meant a few turns and twists in the road along the way. It meant re-evaluating what was important and what wasn’t. It meant sacrifice. But sometimes, when we are adulting, we need to embrace that suck, buttercup. Keep listening to the election coverage, young people. Maybe “Uncle Joe” or “Aunty Kamala” will throw Gen-Z a bone and give them 2-day workweeks with higher wages. Don’t worry, they’ll take it out of the hide of rest of us hard-working schmucks.

Photo Credit: CIPHR Connect, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons/Cropped