About

Working At X Is Harder Than This or X Job Is Harder Than This is a phrasal template popularized on Twitter after a viral video of grease-covered oil rig workers wrangling heavy machinery circulated on Twitter and TikTok in August 2022. The phrase "X job is harder than this" is typically used to satirize the original caption to the viral Twitter post, which asked why more women don't work jobs this physically demanding. Variations of this phrasal template include, "Being a Starbucks barista is harder than this," and "being a Harry Styles stan is harder than this."

Origin

On August 22nd, 2022, TikToker^[1] @oilfeildoutlaw posted a video of an oil drill worker, also known as a "roughneck," working on a greasy oil drill turntable. The post gathered 7.5 million views and 300,000 likes in two days (seen below).

Twitter^[2] user @ElijahSchaffer then reposted the video on TikTok on August 22nd, this time with the caption, "Why aren’t we encouraging our girls to pursue jobs like this? We need true equality." The post gathered over 200,000 likes and over 30,000 retweets in two days (seen below).

Spread

On August 23rd, 2022, Twitter^[3] user @remy4real posted a quote tweet using @ElijahSchaffer's aforementioned tweet with a caption that read, "working at starbucks during the busiest hours is harder than this tbh." The tweet gathered over 200,000 likes and 20,000 retweets in one day as it proceeded to spark backlash and mockery shortly after (shown below).

Also on August 23rd, Twitter^[4] user @goldenaffairs quote tweeted the video with a caption that read, "being a harry stan is harder than this." The tweet gathered over 4,000 likes in less than a day (seen below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References