The Bright Side is a series about how optimism works in our minds and affects the world around us.
Samantha Rae Garcia held her position at a restaurant in Midland, Texas, for four years before deciding last year that she could no longer tolerate her boss’s criticism. Ms. Garcia, a psychology student at the University of Texas Permian Basin, consulted with her parents. she recorded your decision moments before she quit smoking. She later made a TikTok video about it.
In the spontaneously recorded video, Ms. Garcia, then 23, blinks, smiles and satirically gives a thumbs up. Her boss, off camera, says that she is tired of coddling Mrs. Garcia. The text of the video reads: “My boss didn’t know he was here while he was talking about me.”
Ms. Garcia, using a word that cannot be printed, whispers a response, calling her boss a “bad manager.”
Since he posted the video in February 2022, it has been viewed 3.7 million times.
Users responded to Ms. Garcia’s pushback: Along with the views came thousands of supportive comments on TikTok. One of them said: “I don’t know how you keep your composure, but I’m proud of you for not leaving.”
“I felt validated,” Ms. Garcia said in a recent interview.
While her mother worried that the video could harm future opportunities, Ms. Garcia, after dropping off resumes at various restaurants, got another job the next day. (The person who hired her didn’t know about the video. When she told her new boss about it, Ms. Garcia said, “They laughed and said, ‘My God, we won’t treat you like that.’”)
TikTok is full of advice on what to do after you quit a job. Ms. Garcia is part of a different trend, predating TikTok, in which young people post mini-dramas that attract millions of viewers. And in some cases, these highly public videos can translate into new career opportunities, helping those who post them to develop their online persona.
The quit smoking videos, or QuitToks, as they are sometimes called, reflect “a breach of the social contract that if you work hard and follow the rules, the American dream is still there for you,” he said. ann swidler, professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley whose courses include the sociology of culture. Company loyalty isn’t what it used to be, Dr. Swidler said. There is “a cultural disillusionment with the promises that are hidden behind the world of work.”
Service workers in low-wage jobs are publicly proclaiming that the implicit compensation of working for money is no longer a fair deal. And with 1.9 job openings for every job seeker, they can afford to risk going public.
The common theme of the videos is “disappointed expectations,” he said. joseph fuller, Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School. “No one takes a job thinking, ‘This is going to be terrible; I can’t believe I have to do this,’” he said.
“In general, people don’t quit their jobs,” he added, “they quit their bosses.”
Music bands and interpretive dances
Before abandonment videos appeared on TikTok, users shared similar stories on YouTube and Facebook.
In 2011, Joey La Neve DeFrancesco, then 23, posted a YouTube video of him. quit your job at a hotel with the support of his music band. In a recent interview, he said he had been frustrated by the long hours, low wages, tip sharing and opposition to unionizing. “I wanted to send management one last message and do something that would be fun for co-workers and maybe inspire a fight against union busting managers,” he said.
In the video, a smiling Mr. DeFrancesco and his band members confront one of their managers who, seeing the musicians, tries to order them all to leave. “I’m here to tell you that I quit!” Mr. DeFrancesco answers. He tries to deliver his resignation letter to the manager, but it floats to the ground. He then raises his arms triumphantly and the band plays a celebratory march tune. The video has been viewed 8.5 million times.
The three-minute video landed him appearances on “Good Morning America,” “Access Hollywood,” and “Anderson Cooper 360.” “It changed my life,” he said, though it didn’t change his values: Mr. DeFrancesco works primarily as a labor organizer.
Many recent videos on how to quit smoking seem to be on the spur of the moment. Like Mr. DeFrancesco’s video, Marina Shifrin´s It was planned. In September 2013, she was 25 years old and working in Taiwan, animating, as she called them, “celebrity fluff pieces.” After experiencing “constant harassment from my boss,” she said, “I was falling apart.”
And she felt trapped in a system that abused young women, she said. “I felt like I had no resources to get out of the situation, so I turned to the internet because that’s where I spent most of my time.”
Ms. Shifrin took a methodical approach. “I’m probably the only person who posted a viral video who wrote a list of pros and cons,” she said. Her cons included, “no more health insurance” and “you will never be hired in the corporate world.” Ms. Shifrin decided that the pros outweighed the cons.
In the video, titled “An interpretive dance for My Boss to Kanye West’s ‘Gone’” Ms. Shifrin writes that she is at work at 4:30 am She is the only person in a room full of cubicles. Wearing a green blazer and her employee badge, she performs the interpretive dance of the title, in a bathroom, in a recording studio, on a desk, and in hallways, while a text overlay lists her reasons for leaving. As she walks out of a cubicle, the text reads, “I QUIT!” When she leaves the office, she turns off the lights. Text reads: ‘I’m gone’.
The work he was leaving was focused on getting as many views as possible; His response video was successful, he told her, because she was focusing “on the content instead of worrying about the views.” For the video of her to go viral, she said, was “sweet justice.”
In less than 24 hours, as Ms. Shifrin flew from Taiwan to Los Angeles to appear on “The Queen Latifah Show,” she said, she got about 2.6 million additional views. Hollywood agents called. Ms. Latifah offered her a job. in the air. For seven years, she worked in television and published a book called “30 Before 30: How I Messed Up My 20s, and You Can Too.”
Ms. Shifrin’s video has been viewed nearly 20 million times. After she posted the video, the song “Gone,” which had been released eight years earlier, reached the US Billboard Hot 100 chart at 18.
Ms. Shifrin understands why people are drawn to the I Quit videos. “One of the most relatable experiences is feeling mistreated in a work environment,” she said. Once posted, the videos “balance the power a bit.”
The videos of Mr. DeFrancesco and Ms. Shifrin were a kind of performance art. Today’s quit smoking videos are less about presentation and more about specific complaints. Many have minimum wage workers, often young women.
the emotional blow
In February 2020, María Kukulak Recorded her decision to leave her job at Wendy’s because she said her new managers were “being really mean.” Ms. Kukulak says that she will quit after completing her shift: “I’m going to sweep and then jump out the window.” Halfway through the TikTok video, she finds out that a manager called her “a lost cause.” She jumps out the window as she promised. “I’m not a lost cause and I quit,” she tells her boss. “Bye bye.”
His video has been viewed more than 15 million times. Ms. Kukulak now works as a personal trainer and she doesn’t make a living from TikTok, but she would like to. “I love taking videos of myself,” she said in a recent interview. With 227,000 followers, she dreams of becoming a full-time content creator. “I feel like I have talent,” she said.
Like Ms. Kukulak’s TikTok, the most popular videos tend to be dramatic and short; viewers come for the emotional impact, not the details.
On February 5, 2020, a McDonald’s manager named Nelly (she does not reveal her last name in the video or on her account) had a coworker film her joyfully pressing the lever on the soft serve dispenser. “Let’s see how big we can make this cone! Free cone challenge!she announces. She then hands the cone through the window to a delighted driver as she declares: “I’m about to quit! Free cones! Free cones!”
His video was viewed 6.5 million times.
Nelly posted later an 18 minute thoughtful video to YouTube in which he says he does not condone companies that take advantage of their workers. As of the publication of this article, the detailed explanation of it has a count of 66 views.
