The satisfaction of giving up and going viral

Samantha Rae Garcia He kept his job for four years in a restaurant In Midland, Texas, before deciding last year that he could no longer tolerate criticism from his boss. Garcia, who studied psychology at the University of Texas Permian Basin, asked her parents for advice. He recorded his decision before resigning. And after made a TikTok video about it.

In the video, which was recorded on the spur of the moment, Garcia, then 23, bats her eyelashes, smiles and gives a satirical thumbs-up gesture. Her boss, off camera, says she’s tired of pampering Garcia. The text of the video reads: “My boss didn’t know I was here as she was talking about me.”

Garcia, responds to his boss by whispering a word impossible to reproduce, and calls him “bad manager”.

Since he posted the video in February 2022, it has amassed 3.7 million views.

TikTok is full of advice on what to do after quitting a job. Garcia is part of another trend, pre-TikTok, in which young people are posting mini-dramas that are attracting millions of viewers. And, in some cases, these high-profile videos can translate into new career opportunities, helping those who post them build their personalities online.

Resignation videos—or QuitToksas they are sometimes called—reflect “a breach of the social contract that if you work hard and play by the rules, the American Dream is here for you”explained Ann Swidler, a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley whose courses include the sociology of culture. Loyalty to the company isn’t what it used to be, Swidler said. There is “a cultural disillusionment with the promises that underpin the world of work”.

Service workers in low-paying jobs publicly proclaim that the implicit compensation for paid labor is no longer a fair deal. And with 1.9 job offers for every job seeker, they can afford to complain in public.

The common theme of the videos is “dashed expectations,” said Joseph Fuller, professor of management practices at Harvard Business School. “Nobody takes a job thinking, ‘This is going to be terrible; I can’t believe I have to do this,” she said.

“In general, people don’t quit work,” he added. “They leave their bosses.”

Before resignation videos appeared on TikTok, users shared such stories on YouTube and Facebook.

In 2011, Joey La Neve De Francescothen 23, posted a video on YouTube of him quitting his job at a hotel with the support of his marching band. In a recent interview, he said he’s been frustrated with long hours, low pay, tip sharing and opposition to unionization. “I wanted to send a final message to managers and do something that would make co-workers laugh and maybe inspire a fight against managers who oppose unionism”he claimed.

In the video, a smiling DeFrancesco and his band members confront one of his managers who, seeing the musicians, tries to order them to leave. “I come to tell you that I have resigned!”DeFrancesco responds. He wants to give his letter of resignation to the manager, but it falls on the ground. He then raises his arms in triumph and the band plays a festive tune. The video has 8.5 million views.

The three-minute video earned DeFrancesco appearances on “Hello America”, “Getting to Hollywood” there “AndersonCooper 360”. It “changed my life,” he confessed, though it didn’t change his values: DeFrancesco works primarily as a labor organizer.

Many of the latest quitting videos are impulsive. Like DeFrancesco’s video, that of Marina Shifrin It was expected. In September 2013, he was 26 years old and working in Taiwan. write captions for “unimportant celebrity videos”, as she called them. After undergoing a constant harassment by my boss“, he recounted, “I was collapsing”.

She felt trapped in a system that abused young women. “I felt like I had no resources to get out of this situation, so I turned to the internet because that was where I spent most of my time.”

Shifrin adopted a methodical attitude. “I’m probably the only person who posted a viral video who wrote a list of pros and cons,” he said. His downsides included “I won’t have health insurance” and “I’ll never get hired in the corporate world.” Shifrin decided that the pros outweighed the cons.

In the video, titled “An Interpretive Dance for My Boss Set to Kanye West’s ‘Gone'”, Shifrin writes that she is at work at 4:30 a.m. She is the only person in a room full of cubicles. With a green jacket and his employee card, dance the title interpretative dancein a bathroom, in a recording studio, on a desk and in hallways, while superimposed text lists his reasons for leaving. When exiting a cabin, the text reads as follows: “I STOPPED!”. When he leaves the office, he turns off the lights. The text says: “I left”.

The work he left focused on getting as many views as possible; His response video was a hit, he thinks, because it focused “on content rather than views.” For her video to go viral, she said, was a “sweet justice”.

In less than 24 hours, as Shifrin flew from Taiwan to Los Angeles to appear on the show “The Queen Latifah Show”, it gained an additional 2.6 million views. Hollywood agents called her. Latifah offered him a job on the show. For seven years he worked in television and published a book called “30 Before 30: How I Made a Mess of My 20s, and You Can Too”.

DeFrancesco and Shifrin’s videos were a kind of performance art. Today’s warning videos have less to do with presentation and more with specific complaints. Many have minimum wage workers, often young women.

In February 2020, Maria Kukulak recorded his decision to leave his job in Wendy’s because he said his new managers were “really bad vibes”. Kukulak says he will quit after finishing his shift: “I’m going to sweep and then I’m going to jump out the window.” Halfway through the TikTok video, she learns that an official called her a “lost cause.” Jump out the window as promised. “I’m not a lost cause, and I’m quitting,” he told his boss. “Farewell”.

His video has over 15 million views. Kukulak now works as a personal trainer and doesn’t make a living from TikTok, but would love to. “I love recording videos of myself,” he commented in a recent interview. With 227,000 followers, she dreams of becoming a full-time content creator. “I think I have talent,” he said.

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