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In April this year, the minimum wage for fast-food workers in California rose from $16 to $20. Corynne, a 23-year-old in California, was working at a local news station when she heard the news. She texted her friends at Domino’s almost immediately and asked if they needed a driver. They did. “At $20 an hour, plus tips, I’m now making double what I made as a news editor and cameraman,” she says. And the pay increase wasn’t her only motivation – she was fed up with her working conditions in her previous role. “They had me coming in at 3am, my bosses were bullies, and I got retaliated against for not staying late on my birthday,” she says. This is common across the US labour market, with America having some of the worst labour protection rights and being the most overworked nation among industrialised countries.

Corynne is not alone in feeling disappointed with the realities of their dream “big girl” job post-college, and it’s not just because Gen Z’s anti-capitalist outlook has gained them a reputation for “not dreaming of labour”. When Corynne shared her experience in a now-viral TikTok, hundreds of people responded with similar stories. Despite the shared disillusionment with college degree careers on TikTok, Corynne says her decision raised a few eyebrows among her family and friends. “I’ve had some judgement from people in my life, not from people who love me, but from people who don’t understand why I’d leave a prestigious news station to deliver pizza,” she says. “I’d rather be happy than look accomplished and now I can travel, hang out with friends, do my hobbies, live my life, and not get burned out.” Corynne says her manager at Domino’s is “super accommodating” of her taking time off too.

Many of the people sharing stories of fleeing their profession in Corynne’s comments were teachers (somewhat unsurprisingly, considering the average US teacher works an estimated 53 hours a week). One of these was Cindy Ruby Rodriguez, a 27-year-old in Florida, who only taught for a year and a half for about $16.50 an hour before she quit to work in retail. “The entire time I was teaching, I had a part-time job in an outlet design store to afford expenses so, after a while, I started questioning why my career wasn’t paying me enough to live my basic life,” they told Dazed. “Now, I do way less work and can spend time on things I love like art and writing.” As it turns out, being a teacher wasn’t Rodriguez’s “dream job” to begin with. “When I was little, I wanted a career in video game writing, but my parents drilled it in me to have a job that benefitted others other than myself,” she says.

Another ex-teacher in Indiana, Stephanie Zki, left her profession to work as a flower manager watering flowers in grocery stores, through the National Garden Service. “I felt guilty for leaving the kids but I had to go for my own sanity,” she says. “So, when I was looking for jobs, I knew I needed to prioritise having a job that’s good for me.” Zki now enjoys working outdoors in the fresh air and having a flexible and independent schedule.

She adds that her five years in college didn’t prepare her for the realities of teaching. “Most of the job is behaviour management and I was just thrown into the deep end of the pool with no tools to save myself or the kids,” she says. Sarah Damaske, professor of sociology and labour and employment relations at Pennsylvania State University, says teaching is just one example of work that’s become more demanding over the years, without increased reward. “Here’s someone with a master’s degree not being paid as much as someone with a different master’s degree,” she says. “And you’re not just supposed to teach, you’re supposed to protect kids in case of a school shooting.”

Damaske says people are revolting against the dream college degree job in response to how US companies treat their employers today. “I think that a lot of people who are entering the workforce right now are recognising that companies don’t have workers’ best interests at heart,” she says. “They see there’s no longer a path to retirement with one company that was possible for their grandparents.” While some careers may sound exciting in theory, the reality of long work hours is simply incompatible with young people wanting to exercise, have time with friends, and cook meals to live a healthy life.

This rings true for 24-year-old Nadia Esquivel in Chicago Heights, Illinois, who moved from pharmacy tech work to Taco Bell in October last year. Esquivel has conducted her own unofficial vibe check between pharmacy work and fast food work. The result is this: everyone at the Taco Bell she works at is happy to be at their job, and no one at the pharmacy wants to be there. “I tell all my customers to have a blessed day and some of them tell me they really needed that,” she says. “I feel like I’m being more helpful at Taco Bell than in the pharmacy world.”

But Damaske still recommends gaining a college degree, even if you don’t intend to use it. “All the research we have out there suggests that, for most workers, having a degree is protective across a wide range of areas,” she says. “It’s not just beneficial for your wages, risk of unemployment, or long-term job prospects, but also has additional benefits for long-term health and your ability to achieve and maintain the family structure you’d like to have.”

Some US colleges are soon set to charge $100,000 a year, so it’s easy to see why having a dream career (or even going to college) can feel like a pointless pursuit. Milan Patterson also recently made the switch, going from working in cancer research to doing nails. “In my scientific career, I was struggling financially due to low pay and was extremely overworked so I decided to leave and pursue my passion for nails,” Patterson says. “But I always loved science and probably would’ve stayed if it paid better.”

Patterson changed jobs in April last year and now can earn up to $500 a day (instead of $20 an hour). But the problem with the collective detachment from the labour market, says Damaske, is that it puts even more of the risk of employment on the worker instead of the employer. “We need to nudge employers into the realisation that, when you give workers more autonomy, they’re happier and work harder for you,” she says. That sounds like a task for labour rights workers – if they haven’t all already quit to deliver pizzas.