So what exactly is a "lazy girl job" and what does it look like to have one?
There's no better person to ask than Gabrielle Judge, a 26-year-old social media influencer and the founder of Anti-Work Girl Boss, who started this new trend herself.
@gabrielle_judgeThe mindset around the career stuff i talk about can be flexible with what works for you. Jobs can change a lot since they are human based. If you do need to get a hob great I have a lot of tips. If you can stay at your job and make some small changes with your work and boss to make it a better experience than great. #lazygirljob #9to5 #careeradvice #toxicworkplace
"It's really just about tackling unnecessary work," she told Narcity in an interview, describing the meaning behind the movement. "How can we work smarter, not harder, to be a good employee but also maintain work-life balance? Because that's super important to me."
One thing is for sure, Judge is not alone in that feeling.
"Lazy Girl Jobs" might be a new shiny slogan, perhaps being met with an equal share of desire and disgust online, but other viral workplace trends and terms like Quiet Quitting, Loud Quitting (which Judge doesn't recommend) or Bare Minumum Mondays were backed by the same goal of encouraging people to achieve a better work-life balance.
Adding to that is the staggering number of workers who soon plan to leave their current jobs in hopes of finding something better.
According to a recent survey from PwC Canada, 23% of Canadian employees are either very likely or extremely likely to change employers sometime in the next 12 months. Nearly half of those workers (47%) said their reason for wanting to leave was that they no longer find their job fulfilling.
That's something Judge can relate to as well.
"I started in corporate America in 2019 Because I got a Computer Information Systems degree," she said, then describing the initial feelings of pride from herself and her family after she had secured what she referred to as a dream job. But, those feelings quickly shifted once she realized how much "unnecessary work" she was doing.
"I didn't really see a lot of ROI (return on investment) for my time, specifically, in a lot of roles," she continued. "I was trying to make sense of it all."
It wasn't until a concussion roughly a year and a half later forced Judge away from her job and inevitably helped her realize how overworked she was.
Her time away helped to inspire her Anti-Work Girl Boss brand on Instagram and, eventually, led to this new idea of "Lazy Girl Jobs" which has since become a viral TikTok trend with more than 20 million views.
@raeandzeeboLoving it🥰 #fyp #xyzbca #job #lazygirljob #corporate #9to5 #officelife #workbreak #VikingRise
In one of the most-watched videos with the hashtag, @raeandzeebo describes a typical day at her "Lazy Girl Job".
"All I do is copy and paste the same emails, take 3-4 call a day, take extra long break, take more breaks, AND get a nice salary," she wrote.
While some of these viral TikTok videos have put the emphasis on jobs that require much less of them, as for Judge, she's aware of the negative connotations the word lazy can have. But, that's part of the reason she used it.
"Working smarter, not harder, trying to wait out the unnecessary work, being more discerning of your time and where it goes and maybe having more work-life balance to experience other personal things — that's considered lazy if you compare it to the American Hustle culture, and so it was more of like a parody on that," she explained.
"If a Gen Z person wants to take what I'm saying as a dismissal to be lazy I can't really control that. But really what I'm trying to do is create more awareness to how can we balance our time to where we are reaping rewards of what we're doing," Judge continued.
She described the ideal end result as, "Being a great employee, but maybe not losing the next 40 years of our life to a job that may not necessarily bring what we want when we retire."
In a recent video of her own, Judge said her "Lazy Girl Job" trend had received a lot of negative feedback, particularly from women who describe themself as being career focused.
@gabrielle_judgeThere are so many agendas behind demonizing worker smarter and not harder. The corporate system makes so much money from presurring you to continue to do extra work outside of your job scope without proper compensation. I think this is greedy and not ethical for workers and the employee rights we have. People are being forced to go back into the office and pick up their laid off coworkers work without any conversation of a salary raise nor promotion in 2023. I have seen so many women either personally attack me or mock the idea of work lofe balance. Women get to have agency and choices. We get to decide when we want to work hard and when we dont want to. We get to avoid unnecessary work if we want to. We get to talk to oir bosses about our stress and workloads. Lazy girl jobs is a mindset much bigger than a tiktok trend. People are waking up and no longer work in the traditional sense. Because the old way of working doesnt work for milennials and gen z. #jobtok #corporateburnout #toxicworkplace #careeradvice
"These two things are not mutually exclusive," Judge said in the video, describing again the emphasis this movement puts on the importance of work-life balance, which she maintains is possible to attain while still being focused on furthering your career.
How can you get a Lazy Girl Job?
If you ask Judge or watch any of her content, you'll realize quickly she is not talking about some kind of crystal ball or one size fits all solution here.
Understanding the reality of just how many people are feeling unsatisfied with their current jobs, she admits, "Applying for another job is like another part-time job in itself."
Not everyone is ready for that. But there is one place you can start.
"If you hate your job, I want you to assess what you can control today to make it better," Judge recommended, encouraging anyone in that situation to think, "What do you truly want?"
Where she said this way of thinking and the "Lazy Girl Job" trend can run sideways is when people think they can achieve a high-paying job that requires so little of them and that means they'll never have a hard day again.
"There's seasons in your life where things are harder. It's just it's kind of utopian to say, 'Oh, this is going to be like easy and stress-free 100% of the time' in any job," Judge said. "So it's more of like a mentality."
The "Lazy Girl Job" trend as a mentality also means the kind of job that turns out to be is entirely up to the individual. It's a job that aligns with your skills but also meets the needs of your personal life, whether that's working hybrid or remote, having more paid time off, or maybe even a job with a four-day workweek.
The whole idea comes right back to the Anti-Work Girl Boss brand that Judge first started, with the aim of "decentering the nine to five from your life, your identity [and] your happiness."
And while the workplace has already changed so much since the days of the pandemic, Judge anticipates this could be just the beginning as a younger generation of workers takes over.
"We've just seen so much in the last three years," she continued. "But I don't think that employers can ignore it at this point. I think there will be some type of change."
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
This article's left-hand cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.
