Jodi Kantor

You can get depressed and stay home and watch Netflix and not make any progress or you

You can meet people and try things and force yourself and test yourself and consider options you've never considered before.

And I think there is a better and a worse way to deal with this environment.

And I want people to choose the better way.

I think there's a difference between the person who says that, who's like, listen, I'm taking this job because I need to earn a buck.

Like, this is a survival strategy versus and like, how could we ever, you know, tell that person they're wrong?

Like, you know, I would never want to question that person's financial decisions.

But I think there's another kind of person who does that, who says, I am giving up on work as a source of fulfillment or happiness.

There are a lot of people, young people, just the way like you were talking a few minutes ago about kids who kind of give up on the possibility of family happiness.

There are a lot of people who are giving up on the idea of work happiness.

They're foreclosing happiness.

the idea of the workplace as a source of satisfaction.

And my worry is that by doing that, they're going to put it further out of reach.

And, you know, the problem is that work is how we spend our time.

And there may be people out there who are living happy, fulfilled lives despite being utterly miserable at work.

But I have never met anybody like that.

Have you?

Yeah, they're few and far between.

They're few and far between.

Look, I'm a kid from Staten Island.