The endless stream of IG reels and YT shorts on how Gen Zs are “defining boundaries” and rejecting hustle culture has moved from mildly amusing to deeply worrying. The more it goes viral, the more creators chase engagement, feeding the cycle. And in this frenzy, mediocrity and the entitlement to rewards without the pursuit of excellence is not just glorified, it’s being normalized.

This narrative is as addictive and destructive as any form of self-inflicted substance abuse. It diverts attention from the real toxic workplaces, where people still die in their workplace in plush AC offices. Meanwhile, corporate structures grow top-heavy with vanity titles for valuations, thinning mid-management, and overworked executives gasping for clarity. Even progressive policies come with the fine print of “manager discretion,” creating fresh fault lines instead of healing old ones.

Outside the corporate bubble, the damage is more acute – students dying by suicide in their pursuit of higher education, manual scavengers dying while cleaning the sanitation tanks, thousands vying for a handful of government jobs, migrant workers driving cabs they now live in after selling family land. Fast fashion and Q commerce rise without regulated labor laws and no formal union!

And yet, in our own financially secure circles, life feels far from grim. Thus we make reels on our first world problems! Many are now beginning their careers with financial safety nets and multiple income streams, not to chase bold inflection points of new possibilities, but to sink into a comfortable sloth of entitlement and false progressive rhetoric.

Earlier this was visible in the C-Suite profiles mainly, where you can easily classify the leaders who have their skin in the game and the ones who are just transactional and coming to work for them is more a status symbol vs being driven by purpose, passion and vision.

Thus, I would say, that what we have is not a ‘Gen Z’ attitude problem. It’s an issue that has been in the making, with a regressive culture towards the real work, seeping top-down and many of these Gen Zs growing up around adults with sheer entitlement, having been lucky to be at the right place at the right time and no true competence.

When I started my career in retail, a new store opening meant – all the top leaders to housekeeping staff opening up cartons after cartons and setting up the store for operations. The energy and dynamics was so much more authentic and the sense of belonging and being a part of something incredible – was leaps and bounds from an orchestrated team building activities that are forced and mandated now. We wore uniforms and stood on shop floors as equals to our sales executives, entering and exiting of the back doors and saw the many moods of our buyers. More frequently than now, we would have Mentors in our Managers and frequenting home parties with people across the hierarchy and their families – we were connected emotionally than virtually. You would go that extra mile, not for your shareholders profitability but because you saw your senior managers exhibit excellence as their nature and not performative, and it became our very own second nature.

In the by-gone era that I described, Financial Year results was only measured, accounting for the ‘off seasons’ at an annual interval. But like all else, the change has been so rapid here too, that we are reviewing sales metrics every week now. AI has in no way replaced jobs but has added more points that need our immediate action. With a growing layoff culture that distances an employee to emotionally invest to the growing attrition rates for a slightly higher compensation, makes the employer also see talent as just resources that can be replaced vs partners to grow together with.

One of my early managers, once said to me while reviewing a project – “When you’re talking about the tree, keep the forest in mind. And when you’re talking about the forest, remember the tree.” At that point, I was exasperated – ‘why can’t she just give direct feedback on my work and tell me what I need to re-do’. But clearly, I don’t remember the project to which she was responding (not reacting), but this message has grown in its relevance over the years.

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Recently, after a day of store visits and interacting with our on ground retail staff members, and seeing their joy of their continuous streak of growth, while managing some 2 campaigns and their many regional variations, to seeing my team leading a strategic presentation and fielding all the questions and being applauded for – especially when I wasn’t in the same room; was a moment of pure joy and happiness.

Such a sense of contentment does not happen with strict 8 hrs X only 5 days a week. Neither it is achieved by sacrificing your personal life and your annual holidays and working 7 days a week. It is dynamic and different for each person. And like Mutual Funds, there are compounding effects on effort as well. So the choice is upto an individual finally.

So at the day end, waiting for my dinner to arrive, which felt more earned than other days, I shared this moment of gratitude and grounding on my IG story. And among the now growing responses in emojis – a friend replied, making me feel guilty in that moment. If it were some other person, I would not have taken it to my heart to respond in this deeper reflection. But this was also a person who treats their work as a craft and not something so transactional. Its a peer who has helped me better my professional skills. And while I know she was coming from a place of genuine concern, the articulation is what caught my attention. Just the way I can read any copy and identify it if it was tweaked with Chat GPT or not, watching so many reels myself, I can identify the tone of voice. Hence my shock and my hypothesis that the growing reels culture is also affecting “us” – the ones who believe that sweat is not a thing of disgust and shame but a reward to endurance and long term fitness that in the moment stinks.

Thus the real danger hampering a more engaged and a happy workforce isn’t in the narrative that the Gen Z is accused of having hijacked, but it’s in all of us; slowly forgetting what it feels like to be fully in the work, with the forest and the tree both in view. That it is not about work life balance, but work life harmony. That the choice is between short term rewards vs long term gains.

Most importantly, how you fall asleep. Tiered and satisfied with a dreamless rest and woken up by your body clock, because what you do – at home and at work matter. Or you put yourself to sleep doom scrolling and wake up after snoozing your alarm a few times, and everyday is a blue day.

So the critical call to action for all organizations is to re-align to purpose from only KPI driven performance – and see the magic happen!