Woman 'Battled' With Baby Boomer CEO About 4-Day Workweeks — 'Gen-Z Wants A Life That's Not Work Centered'

Gabrielle Judge, otherwise known by her TikTok following as the “Lazy Girl Job” Girl, recently posted a TikTok in which she claims to do "battle" with a baby boomer CEO in regards to implementing a 4-day work week and what that would look like.

The video reached nearly 600,000 views, and during a time when so many Gen Zers are entering the workforce, it’s no surprise to see why. Judge, the “Anti Work Girlboss,” claims that Gen Z workers have long been looking to abandon the traditional career path.

She believes that Gen Z workers want a life that isn’t ‘work-centered.’

“It is truly astonishing the differences in the mindset around work when it comes to baby boomers versus Gen Z,” she explains. “[It’s] to the point where I’m not really convinced that we’ll ever see eye-to-eye.”

These conversations come as a result of her advocacy for a 4-day work week and her goal to eliminate “unnecessary work” — work that an employee deems to be unnecessary or that should be completed by someone else instead.

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“If I could do the productive work that’s really going to move my job forward, that I feel good about, that I think is contributing — [if] I can do that in four days, what do I do with that fifth day?” the baby boomer CEO asks.

At this moment during their panel discussion, Judge starts smiling — and her smile was hiding her “absolute shock” at that question. It seems like what she doesn’t understand is not all people want to be doing work for their career five days a week.

“The extra, fifth day, you can do with whatever you want. That’s the exciting part,” Judge responds. “We’re seeing a really, really big curiosity in what life looks like when it’s not work-centered.”

Immediately, when I pondered the CEO’s question, I thought to myself that it was a day off from work. A day off from working five days a week. A day off from the 40-hour work week.

According to a report from Zippia published in March 2023, approximately 89% of workers have experienced burnout within the past year. That number drops down to 77% of workers who reported feeling burnt out from their current job.

That fifth day would provide a massive boost in mental health, burnout alleviation, and a much healthier work-life balance. After all, that’s where the argument comes from. Not only that, but since the priority for capitalism is profit, productivity has actually seen an increase in most, if not all, 4-day workweek tests around the world.

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Judge believes that Gen Z is ushering in a ‘new iteration of work-life balance.’

“There’s a whole other iteration to it now, where it’s like ‘what does it look like when I truly de-center my success metrics from a promotion,'” she explains. Most Gen Z workers, Judge argues, are not looking to climb the corporate ladder and achieve some monumental success.

“We’re going to a huge [gap] with Gen Z as they further enter the workplace of true careerists, right? And they could look like the traditional structure,” she explains. “And people [who] aren’t necessarily careerists and they’re not looking to move the needle in the traditional way.”

In a separate video in which she discusses some “myths” about the 4-day work week — basically dismantling the claims — she explains how Gen Z workers truly don’t care about climbing the career ladder. Her reason is that a lot of promotions these days are “fake.”

“What’s happening these days is there’s a lot of these like, fake promotions happening right now,” she explains. “An example is: I was talking to my friend recently. He’s a software engineer and he got promoted to ‘lead engineer’ right? But there was no salary raise attached to it.”

She calls this “quiet hiring” an interesting play on the fake “quiet quitting” trend except this one actually exists. Remember, the biggest form of theft is wage theft, and don’t even get me started on how many jobs (62%) don’t even offer living wages.

Judge says the system might have worked for some generations in the past, but for Gen Zers and Millennials who are barely surviving — a 4-day work week needs to be the new norm for a plethora of reasons.

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Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.