The Unemployed Friend on a Tuesday: Why Non-Traditional Work Deserves Respect
You’ve seen the meme: “The unemployed friend on a Tuesday doing god knows what.” Maybe they’re wandering a plant nursery, learning how to bind books, suddenly volunteering at a mutual aid fridge, or deep in a hyper-fixation-fuelled rabbit hole.
It’s chaotic. It’s funny. And for a lot of us queer, nonbinary, neurodivergent Gen Z, it’s not a meme. It’s life.
💡 Where the Meme Comes From 💡
The now-iconic “unemployed friend on a Tuesday” meme originated on September 21st, 2022, when Twitter user @alexsmokesmid posted an image of Gandalf wandering through the woods, captioned “the unemployed friend at 2pm on a Monday.” It quickly spread across platforms like Instagram and TikTok, becoming a shorthand term for the unstructured life of people who work outside of a traditional 9-to-5 work schedule.
In a time of record inflation, unlivable rent, and an increasingly broken job market, we’re caught in a paradox: we can’t afford to live without a job, but we also can’t afford what jobs demand of us. And when we do find work, it’s often underpaid, exploitative, meaningless — or all three. The “productivity” we’re told to aspire to feels more like a trap than a goal.
This isn’t accidental. Capitalism was built on the idea that our worth is tied to our output and that our labour should enrich someone else. We’ve inherited a world where hustle culture is collapsing under the weight of burnout, where even our rest is commodified, and where not working is seen as a moral failure, even when the system actively excludes us.
Honestly, Enby Meaning, as a business, as a project, and as a vision for community, was born out of that same hustle culture. The very one we’re trying to dismantle.
But here’s the thing: the “unemployed friend” is rarely idle. They’re helping people move, watching someone’s kids, checking in on an elderly person, restocking a community pantry, or simply trying to make ends meet.
That’s labour. It’s just not profitable.
This post isn’t just about unemployment; it’s about rejecting the idea that productivity is something we owe. It’s about valuing the unpaid, the unseen, the weird, and the care-based work that makes life livable. It’s about saying that we don’t exist to work. We exist to live. That should be enough.
The Violence of the Job Market — Especially for the Queers
Let’s be honest: the job market is brutal for most people right now, but for queer, nonbinary, neurodivergent, disabled, and racialised folks, it’s not just a struggle. It’s a form of violence.
From the first point of contact—your name, your voice, your appearance—there are unspoken rules about who gets through the door. If you don’t “pass,” if you don’t mask, if your pronouns confuse a hiring manager, or if your visible queerness makes someone uncomfortable, you’re already at a disadvantage. And if you do make it past the gatekeeping? You’re often expected to conform, stay quiet, or be the “diversity win” in a workplace that was never designed with you in mind.
We’re not talking about rare exceptions. We’re talking about structures. Tokenism is sold to us as inclusion while we remain underpaid, overlooked, and emotionally exhausted from doing unpaid diversity labour on top of our actual roles. A rainbow logo during Pride doesn’t change the fact that most workplaces are still shaped by cisnormative, heteronormative, ableist expectations of what “professionalism” looks like.
Even the so-called alternatives such as freelancing, side hustles, and gig work are merely exploitation disguised as flexibility. You’re still working under someone else’s algorithm, with no safety net, no benefits, and the constant fear of being deplatformed, devalued, or replaced.
And through it all, we’re told to work harder as if burnout is a badge of honour. As if not thriving in a rigged system is a personal failing, not a predictable outcome.
For neurodivergent folks, especially, there’s another layer: masking becomes mandatory. You’re expected to behave, produce, communicate, and self-regulate in ways that prioritise your employer’s comfort, not your well-being. It’s not just exhausting. It’s unsustainable.
We were told that if we study hard, work hard, and network effectively, we’ll be okay. That’s the myth of meritocracy. But many of us have done everything right and are still struggling. Not because we’re broken but because the system is.
The violence of the job market isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s quiet: the endless rejections, the awkward silences when you come out, the ways we shrink ourselves to survive. The choice between being honest and being hired. Between being ourselves and being safe. These experiences are emotionally draining and take a toll on our mental health.
And somehow, despite all this, we’re still expected to feel grateful for being allowed in at all.
What Counts as Work (and What Doesn’t)
Capitalism has a very narrow idea of what work is: if it makes money, especially for someone else, then it counts. If it doesn’t, it’s invisible.
By that logic, making TikToks is work if it’s monetised. But caring for your friend during a depressive episode? Not work. Creating a spreadsheet for your queer housing co-op? Not work. Cooking, cleaning, emotional support, community organising, childcare, tending to the land, running an Instagram for mutual aid, managing a group chat that keeps 20 people emotionally afloat? Still, somehow, considered not work.
But these things take time. Energy. Skills. And they often matter more than anything we’d do at a desk for eight hours.
Nonbinary and queer people are no strangers to invisibilised labour. We must build alternative structures because the ones intended to support people often leave us out entirely. We care for each other when healthcare systems fail. We raise funds when our community is priced out of the housing market. We create art, share knowledge, and redistribute resources. And we do it not because it looks good on a CV but because we know what it means to be abandoned, and we refuse to leave each other. This work is invaluable and should be recognised and appreciated.
The labour we do is real. It’s just not profitable in capitalism. And that makes it illegible.
Many of us are carrying the guilt of “not working enough” while doing hours of unpaid work every day to keep ourselves and others alive. We internalise shame for not having a job, not being productive, and not keeping up when, in reality, we’re often doing more for our communities than most CEOs ever will.
Our worth is not tied to our productivity, nor is the work we do, whether paid or unpaid, any less valuable. It should be acknowledged.
Although the state doesn’t track it. LinkedIn doesn’t list it. Our work is the work that sustains life.
This is why the “unemployed friend on a Tuesday” trope hits so hard because that friend—maybe you, maybe me—is working. Just not in a way capitalism recognises. And perhaps that’s the point.
A World Built on Extractive Productivity
In this world, you’re not a person; you’re a unit of output.
From school to work to social media, we’re constantly trained to perform at a high level of productivity. It’s not enough to be. You have to be making something. Monetising something. Selling yourself as a brand. Even our rest is expected to be strategic: meditate so you’re more productive the next day. Take breaks to avoid burnout, allowing you to continue working effectively. Rest isn’t valued unless it fuels more labour.
This is what happens in a system built on extraction. Capitalism doesn’t just want your time; it wants your attention, your identity, your labour, and your ability to push through pain. And when you can’t keep up? You’re seen as disposable.
Productivity becomes morality. If you’re working, you’re good. If you’re not, you must be lazy, entitled, and ungrateful. There’s no room for nuance. No acknowledgement of disability, trauma, or systemic barriers. The expectation is to produce endlessly with a smile.
This logic is ruthless. Queer folks already live outside the boxes. We’ve already been told our existence is “too much” or “not enough.” We’re not allowed to just be. We’re constantly expected to explain ourselves, prove our worth, and justify our joy. And the minute we stop performing, the minute we rest or reclaim time for ourselves, we’re judged for not contributing.
But what if our purpose wasn’t tied to productivity at all?
Neo-Marxist, abolitionist, and decolonial thinkers have long argued that the way we structure labour is a choice, not a law of nature. Capitalism is not the only way to live. In fact, the majority of human history functioned without it. Capitalism was never the norm; if anything, it’s brand new in the grand scheme of things. Indigenous, queer, and anarchist traditions worldwide have demonstrated that value can stem from reciprocity, care, creativity, and relationships—not just profit.
Still, we’re left with the psychic damage. The internalised shame. The belief is that we must always be doing, proving, showing, and earning. And it takes work. Slow, intentional, and deeply personal work to begin unlearning that.
To stop equating our worth with our output is a radical act, especially when the world around us keeps whispering that we’re behind.
What If We Didn’t Have to Justify Our Existence?
What would it mean to live in a world where your existence didn’t need to be justified by your productivity?
No hustle. No grind. “What do you do?” is not the default question at every social event. Just being queer, soft, complicated, in-process and still deserving of housing, care, community, and rest.
That kind of world isn’t impossible. It just isn’t profitable, which is why capitalism can’t imagine it.
But we can.
We can imagine a world where universal basic income is the floor, not the ceiling. Where mutual aid is supported, not criminalised. Where housing is a right, not an investment. Where the question isn’t how to maximise labour but how to distribute life’s essentials in ways that honour dignity, interdependence, and rest.
In that world, “work” would look different. Maybe it’s growing food with your neighbours. Perhaps it’s tending to children, caring for the elderly, or teaching one another what school never did. Maybe it’s spending a Tuesday painting, resting, learning, or simply not needing to perform value. Because your value would already be recognised, not for what you do, but for who you are.
Queer and nonbinary communities are already modelling pieces of this. We’ve built chosen families, co-ops, radical collectives, and survival networks. We understand what it means to reimagine home, care, and purpose, often out of necessity but also out of a clear vision.
Because when systems abandon us, we don’t just grieve; we also feel a sense of loss. We build. And those builds, often messy, imperfect, and ever-evolving, are blueprints for a world where existence isn’t a job.
We deserve a life where we don’t have to prove we’re worthy of existing every day.
“The Unemployed friend on a Tuesday” is More Than a Meme
The “unemployed friend on a Tuesday” might start as a joke, but behind the humour is a more profound truth.
They’re not aimless. They’re surviving. Navigating a world that asks too much and gives too little. They’re caring, creating, recovering, and resisting. They’re everything this system doesn’t count as work because it can’t commodify it.
And maybe that’s precisely why it matters so much.
For queer, nonbinary, disabled, racialised, and neurodivergent people, productivity has never been a neutral metric. It’s been a weapon. A tool used to exclude, erase, and exhaust us. But we’ve never just been workers. We’ve been visionaries, caregivers, culture-makers, and connectors. We’ve held each other when systems failed. We’ve imagined new ways of being, not despite our distance from “normal” but because of it.
It’s time to stop measuring our worth by output. To name care as labour. To honour the unpaid, the unseen, the slow, the soft, the weird, the rest.
We don’t owe this world productivity. We owe each other gentleness, dignity, and space to live whole lives outside the grind.
We don’t exist to work. We exist to live.
And that should be enough.
