The Infuriating Discourse of Gen Z Boss and a Mini

When my love of goofy women and my hatred of mandatory office fun collide

Last week, one video absolutely dominated Twitter, unseated only by someone shooting Donald Trump. That video was, of course, “Gen Z Boss and a Mini”:

I didn’t know the details at the time, but this video came from the offices of tbh Skincare, a Gen-Z owned brand which posted the video themselves on Instagram and Tiktok.

My first reaction was that of disgust. I know, I know. I’m a bad feminist. I guess I had such a viscerally negative reaction to the video because my first thought wasn’t “women in the workplace.” It was “workplace.” And more specifically, “mandatory fun in the workplace.”

I suppose this says more about me than the video—for all I know, all participants were enthusiastically consenting to the bizarre chant that included monotonous repetition of personal attributes, from the cute and cheeky “secret product and a trench” (the secret product is from the company itself) to the clunky and unnerving, "New Frank Green and a sneaky link.” I could have scrolled and chalked this video up as just a few friends/colleagues having fun. But it awakened something disdainful within me—something that I am confident I would have still felt if the participants were male.

For a long time I have hated the use of the workplace for anything other than work. Actually, let me rephrase that—I hate the use of the workplace for mandating anything other than work. Fun activities are good to have, especially for young single colleagues who want to socialize with each other, whose “friend circle” is formed at work. But for those of us who prefer to spend time with our spouses, partners, children, or outside-of-work friends, these activities are absolutely soul-crushing. I know I sound like I’m being dramatic, and I completely am, but I am still haunted by a time that I was forced to arrive to work an hour early to attend a mandatory field day activity, which included hours of forced playing on an inflatable obstacle course. I got lost on the way there and was a few minutes late, and my boss admonished me for “not taking field day seriously.”

Anyway, there’s something I find very infuriating about “laid back” environments that are not only extremely uptight, but extremely uptight about the very things they think make them laid back. The “work hard, play hard” cultures. You know:

If you follow me on Twitter, you know this about me. You know I’ve worked at places where getting drunk in the middle of the workday in a giant adult ball pit (that component of the cartoon is actually real!) was acceptable, while leaving at 4:55 to get an early dinner with your spouse warranted “performance conversations.” Thus, I saw the video, projected everything I hate onto it, and saw red.

Perhaps I was short sighted, but when I criticized the video I wasn’t thinking that the discussion around it (which luckily, I didn’t start) was mostly going to be misogynistic. I was so blinded by my (admittedly over the top) hatred of mandated fun that it didn’t occur to me that the Gen Z Boss and a Mini video would be a vehicle for declarations that we should “bring back the gender pay gap” or the oft-repeated idea that women have “fake email jobs” mandated by corrupt DEI officers, while men are all working twelve-hour days on oil rigs. I actually hate those people more than I hate mandated fun, so I found myself becoming negatively polarized into supporting Gen Z Boss and a Mini. I was conflicted.

The women in the video managed to clap back at the criticisms in the best possible way- by repeating their nastiest replies in the form of the original video. This made me change my stance entirely- these women seem to have a good sense of humor, and the fact that they played along with the criticism made me think that perhaps everyone on their team is all-in on the fun, it isn’t being mandated, and I’m just projecting my very stupid field day trauma onto complete strangers.

But see, that’s the thing. Every innocuous video that goes viral online because it ignites something furious in people says more about the people responding than about the video itself. Take for example, the unhinged discourse about Nara Smith, the model and influencer who posts harmless videos of herself cooking typically processed foods from scratch. That’s not to say that Nara Smith, or any other viral influencer, is above reproach or that there has never been a thoughtful critique. Also, discourse is just fun in general. But when we feel complete rage about something that is, on the face of it, clearly not a massive tragedy or injustice, it’s usually an “us” problem.

In my case, of course, this is a field day problem. It’s never my fault. But I’m talking about the rest of you. Shame on you.

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