Name: Something Changed About How Americans View Work
Uploaded: 2025-05-01T13:01:24.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Something Changed About How Americans View Work' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-05-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Something Changed About How Americans View Work' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-05-01. Transcript available.

somehow or another, and I started talking about this early on in Dirty Jobs, it
just became clear
that in our society, we had identified work as the enemy. It's like the proximate
cause of all
our misery is the fact that our freaking boss is up our ass and every day for
eight or 10,
12 hours, I got to go make little rocks out of big rocks and life isn't fair
and damn it,
something ought to be done. And this whole thing, this whole thing is modeled
around the idea
that I have to do whatever it is I have to do until I get to the point where I
can retire.
Right. So like I'm, I'm retirement age now. I like the idea of retiring is so
insane to me.
Yeah. So why, why still work to be done? There's more than ever. So look, I'm
to answer your
question. I, I'm super sympathetic to Gen Z. I, I want them to find meaningful
work,
but the meaning it's not, it's not inherent in the work. It's in the dude,
right? It's in you
and you get to assign whatever level of meaning you want to that sweatshirt or
that nuclear sub or this
cup of coffee or this poisonous cream that your people brought me that right
now is either making
me tired or jacked up. I can't decide yet. You know, in 30 seconds, you're
going to tell us all
your secrets, you know, you're going to tell us where you keep your favorite
wood whittle.
My, my greatest fear is a whittle, a whittler could be a person who whittles.
Okay. A whittle it could be a thing that you whittle, but a whittle flunk is
the actual tool in question and you can Google that. Now you won't find
anything to confirm any of it. I just felt like it was my turn to talk again.
Oh, that's very fair. I'm going to say this. I, you know what? You're right.
And I think that that used to be a part of kind of what you were saying, even
in schools. Like I pledge allegiance to my country. This country means
something to me.
Like my grandfather worked at this factory where they made parts. It was for FMC,
right? And they made like elevator parts of elevator shafts and stuff like that.
But he would go to the factory and it was like this thing. And then when we
were in elevators, we would see his little emblem on the thing. He's like, oh,
grandpa made this, you know, to that. And that kind of stuff was huge. It was,
it was like, even like native,
like in cultures, there are stories that you tell your grandkids. It's like,
like the meaning of being human. We passed from each other. We passed it in
like relics and in artifacts. And, you know, you keep things from people that
meant, meant something to you. So I think to think that that just because that
only happens, it doesn't only happen like in your family, like if your
grandfather passes away and you keep something that meant something to him, but
it happens as a community too. It's like you have things that mean something to
you and that carry on.
One of my, uh, does that make any sense? Am I rambling? I'm okay. No, dude, I'm
telling you. Yeah. What the fuck are you talking about? Of course it makes
sense, dude. Yeah. It makes you feel alive, dude. You know, it makes you feel
alive. And then like you see something across town. You're like, man, I was a
part of that. And you get to drive by and tell your son, I built that house.
And your son's like, no way. I want to learn how to build something. You know,
why do you think people lost their shit when Obama said you didn't build that?
You didn't do that. We all did that together. It was, it was an insult.
It was an insult to what you're saying. That part of us. It doesn't mean that
we're not all part of a, of a team, a country, a concerted effort, but it does
mean like if you, if you rob an individual of that feeling, then you have
reduced his work to only the transactional company. It's just a paycheck now.
But I'm telling you, my life changed. It was early on in dirty jobs. And we,
and we weren't even really filming yet. Or it was, it was after we shot and I
was, I was working with a Mason and I was in his pickup truck and, and he was
dropping me back at the hotel.
And as we're driving down, we were in some little Midwest town and we were
driving down some, some easily forgettable street, but the architecture on
either side was super cool. Right. And as we're driving, he was like pointing
up to the facade. He goes, yeah, we did that one. And then around the corner,
he's like, yeah, we did that one too.
And see over here the way this, that one took. And as he was talking, like his,
his eyes were filling up and he was, he was driving past his life's work. And
it was there on display to be seen. And, um, I was very happy for him to be
able to have that, but also very mindful of the fact that you can see the same
wonder in, in the sewer, right? Like the, the architecture down there and the
technology.
Now, except you'll never see it and you'll never see the guys who tend to it.
Cause it's all out of sight and it's all out of mind.
Do you think there's something different about the Gen Z workforce or do you
think there's just, they haven't had the same examples that previous
generations had, you know?
Yeah, I do. I think, well, look again, painting was too broad a brush sucks.
And you know,
I've, we're not pointing at the Gen Z workforce, like you're bad or anything
like that. Cause you know, you know, it's so funny. It's like, we had a guy on
recently, um,
this guy, Alexander Wang, and he's not the fashion guy that got murdered. He's
a, he's a, he's like kind
of a semi Chinese guy, but he founded a scale AI. It's an AI company. And he
was saying that one way
to look at AI is that everyone will, one will kind of level up, right? It's
like suddenly, uh, kind of
robots or computers will do a lot of the more menial tasks. And you'll,
everyone will kind of be a
manager. And it's interesting. Cause if you say that to me or your generation,
our generation,
kind of that people would be like, well, I don't want to just be, I don't want
to be the manager of
five robots. And I sit in a small dark room all the time. And, and you know,
and that's my life.
And maybe I get four day work week instead of five. Yeah. But if you told my
nephews that,
you get to be the manager of five robots, you just sit in this room and control
them all day,
they would think that's awesome. Right. Just because of how they've grown up,
you know,
like everything is so gamified. So it's kind of interesting because you start
to get into what the
whole, like perception of work of being alive even is to people. Does that make
any sense to you?
It makes, look, it starts. I mean, there's a lot in there. There's a lot, but
what you're really
saying is like, what is a good job? What is a bad job? What is a clean job?
What is a dirty job?
And, and once you start to create some sort of hierarchy, which makes sense,
everybody's free
to do it. You ought to do it. But you know, if Bayard were here, the American
giant guy,
he would, he would tell you a story about the individuals who made that sweatshirt,
right? He would, he would show you the factory line. He would introduce you to
the farmers who
grew the cotton. He would show you step-by-step how his entire supply chain is
insulated from these
tariffs. These tariffs hadn't affected him at all because he, he doesn't, he
doesn't rely on any of
right? He's totally independent. So he's taking kind of a victory lap right now,
but his big point
would be, you would have to see the enthusiasm among his group of workers when
they created a sweatshirt
that became the greatest hoodie ever made. And you can look at that and go, it's
a fricking sweatshirt,
dude, but it's not a sweatshirt, right? It's not that it's not about the sweatshirt.
Thank you.