Is My Corporate Job Turning Me into a Boring B*tch? I Blame the Millennials

Few things are more annoying than unsolicited crypto tips, men who call themselves 'sapiosexuals', or a mosquito buzzing in your ear at 2 a.m. But right up there? Millennials romanticising the 9–5 lifestyle like it’s a wellness hack.

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Sorry, Karan, but your LinkedIn ode to 'the grind' is not aspirational. You’re spending your best years under fluorescent lights that make everyone look vaguely unwell, then asking us to applaud. Please. I’m already scheduling friends into my Google Calendar like meetings, when I once saw them every other day. Call it adulting, call it discipline — I call it colonial labour dressed up as self-growth.

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And don’t get me wrong, I love my job. Creative work can be electric. But burnout sneaks up like a slow leak, hollowing you out until you feel like a spreadsheet in human form.

Millennials, We Need to Talk

Millennials don’t just work jobs — they date them. They write break-up style essays when leaving a company, full of long-form tributes and hashtags about 'resilience'. Translation: 'I pulled an all-nighter making a PowerPoint for a man named Ramesh who still uses Comic Sans.'

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Meanwhile, Gen Z is wilting quietly in the corner, fully aware of what’s happening. As Sri Parna, who works in IT, puts it: “My job didn’t just steal my nightlife. It gave me a curfew, back pain, panic attacks — and a personality that smells of Amrutanjan balm.”

The Great Energy Robbery

Office work isn’t physically demanding; it’s mentally corrosive because it bleeds you of micro-joys. Remember when you read or painted until 2 a.m.? Now you come home, scroll past a Bali holiday carousel, and collapse into bed. Rinse, repeat, for 35 years.

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Dipta, who works at a Big 3 firm, summed it up: “Work is making me boring in ways I never imagined. The chatter in my head has muted. Now weekends are for wondering if I’ll finish ten pages of a book.”

The Post-COVID Plot Twist

If you thought the pandemic was a reset button, think again. Rashi Gaur, who works in advertising, told me: ‘Working in corporate has been no joke, especially after Covid. I’ve been working from home ever since. Yes, it provides flexibility, but the workload has increased significantly. Back in 2021–22, I had nightmares about colleagues. Unrealistic deadlines, zero empathy, mid-week meltdowns—this culture leaves you staring at your laptop, screaming back at it. If your subconscious is casting your co-workers in horror cameos, that’s not ambition. That’s possession.'

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The LinkedIn Circus

The real scam isn’t the work — it’s how we perform it. LinkedIn has turned exhaustion into a humblebrag.

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Posts like 'Honoured to announce I survived another 60-hour week' or 'Thrilled to circle back… to my therapist' aren’t satire anymore. They’re coping mechanisms in corporate drag. We don’t hate jobs. We hate the expectation to romanticise burnout, to dress collapse as resilience, to treat a lunch break like a Nobel Prize.

Generational Gaslighting

Millennials sold us the formula: study, graduate, land a good job, retire at 65. What they forgot to mention: by 65, your spine will be fossilised, and your idea of adventure will be buying memory-foam slippers.

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And the school system set us up for this, not for taxes, not for relationships, not even for cooking pasta. It trained us to be employees: bells, deadlines, obedience. Cubicles were waiting before we knew they existed.

The Existential Bit (Sponsored by My Dark Circles)

If two-thirds of adult life is spent working, commuting, or recovering from work, what’s left for living? By the time we can afford to travel, we’ll need a nap on the Eiffel Tower steps.

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Burnout isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s the quiet crash at 3 p.m. when you’ve ticked all the boxes — coffee, affirmations, to-do list — but your brain still feels like an overheated laptop.

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And because humour is how we cope, the signs are everywhere. You’re scrolling Instagram late at night, double-tapping reels about wanting to quit your job and move to the hills, only to notice your boss and three colleagues have liked the exact same video. You dream about unfinished work — sometimes in the form of a never-ending Zoom call, sometimes as the email you forgot to reply to, jolting you awake at 3 am.

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Fridays aren’t fun anymore; they’re crash days. Even the couch has become a corporate arena: laptop, cold coffee, existential crisis.

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The worst part of it all? The ping of Slack, the distant cry of Microsoft Teams, and the muffled hum of your neighbour also on a work call. And somehow, despite the exhaustion, you’re still sending the same 'I can’t do this anymore' meme to three different group chats before logging back in and doing it all anyway.

Conclusion (Or Whatever, I’m Tired)

This isn’t a manifesto to quit and move to Goa (tempting, though). It’s a reminder that the 9–5 was designed for a generation that thought 'casual Fridays' were revolutionary.

We don’t want TGIF. We want TGI’m Still Alive. We want weekday joy, hobbies, and friendships. We don’t want to become boring bitches whose entire personality is a slide deck.