# Nobody Wants To Work Anymore > Nobody Wants To Work Anymore is a 2021 meme format of handwritten business signs blaming workers for labor shortages, which became a viral punchline after researcher Paul Fairie documented the identical complaint dates to 1894. "Nobody Wants to Work Anymore" started as handwritten signs posted by short-staffed American businesses in spring 2021 and became one of the defining memes of pandemic-era labor discourse. The phrase took on a second life in 2022 when researcher Paul Fairie compiled newspaper clippings proving that people have been saying the exact same thing since 1894, turning a tired employer complaint into a punchline about the cyclical nature of blaming workers. ## Origin On April 9, 2021, TikTok user @BrittanyJade903 filmed a sign taped to a McDonald's drive-thru window. It read: "We are short-staffed. Please be patient with the staff that did show up. Nobody wants to work anymore." The video picked up over 98,000 likes on TikTok[5]. The sign was one of the earliest to go viral, but similar messages were already cropping up at businesses nationwide as states began rolling back COVID-19 restrictions and restaurants rushed to reopen at limited capacity[3]. The broader context was a massive disruption in the restaurant labor market. Nearly two million restaurant and bar workers had lost their jobs between March and April 2020[3]. Many found work in other industries and didn't come back. Those who stuck with food service faced cyclical layoffs and rehires as regulations shifted and individual COVID exposures forced repeated closures[3]. - **Platform:** TikTok (sign photos), Twitter (newspaper clippings thread) - **Creator:** @BrittanyJade903 (earliest viral sign post), Paul Fairie (newspaper clippings compilation) - **Date:** 2021 ## Overview The meme operates on two levels. On the surface, it's the actual signs that appeared at restaurants and businesses across the United States in 2021, pleading for customer patience while blaming staffing shortages on people who supposedly don't want to work. On a deeper level, it's the compiled evidence that this complaint is at least 130 years old, showing up in newspaper editorials, reader letters, and political speeches across every decade. The gap between the sign-posters' belief that they're describing something new and the historical record proving otherwise is where the humor lives. ## How It Spread Within a week of the McDonald's video, photos of similar signs flooded social media. On April 14, 2021, a Twitter user shared pictures of a comparable sign at a New Mexico Sonic, pulling in thousands of retweets. By early May, a North Carolina reporter tweeted about a Chattanooga restaurant that had to shut down entirely due to staffing[5]. Workers and their supporters pushed back hard. One viral quote-tweet pointed out the Chattanooga restaurant paid its servers $2.15 an hour. Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich posted a thread arguing there was no labor shortage, only "a shortage of employers willing to pay their workers a living wage"[5]. The mockery turned creative fast. The phrase "We are closed because nobody wants to work anymore" became a snowclone template, with users writing parody versions blaming fictional characters for the shortage. One tweet blamed Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil Village, earning over 23,000 likes. Another used a Lord of the Rings quote, picking up over 12,200 likes[5]. The meme's second major wave broke on July 20, 2022, when the Great Socialist Cat Memes Facebook page shared an image titled "Nobody Wants to Work Anymore: A Brief History of Capitalists Complaining That Nobody Wants to Work for Starvation Wages"[1]. Four days later, the same compilation appeared on Twitter[1]. Both posts racked up thousands of shares and retweets. The image pulled from a thread by Paul Fairie, a University of Calgary researcher who posts under the handle @paulisci[2]. Fairie had dug through the newspaper archive site Newspapers.com and surfaced 14 distinct clippings spanning 1894 to 2022, each featuring someone expressing the "nobody wants to work" sentiment as though it were a brand-new observation[4]. Snopes verified every clipping in the set, confirming their authenticity through the Newspapers.com archives[1]. The clippings painted a vivid picture. In 1894, an editorial in the Rooks County Record complained about striking coal miners[7]. In 1922, a Kansas reader blamed unemployment on people wanting "to work half of the time and loaf half of the time"[1]. During the Great Depression in 1937, peach orchardists in Pennsylvania couldn't find pickers despite widespread unemployment and complained "nobody wants to work at peach or apple picking and packing"[1]. By 1999, a retiring shoe repairman in Florida put it this way: "Nobody wants to work anymore. They all want to work in front of a computer and make lots of money"[1]. The compilation landed right in the middle of the "quiet quitting" discourse of late 2022. The Jacobin connected the meme to a longer intellectual tradition, noting that Paul Lafargue had been arguing against the "love of work" since his 1880 pamphlet *The Right to Be Lazy*[6]. ## How to Use The meme works in two main formats: **Sign parody format:** Take the template "We are closed because nobody wants to work anymore" and swap in an absurd, fictional, or satirical reason for the closure. The joke typically lands harder when the replacement reason is obviously ridiculous, drawing a parallel to how silly the original complaint sounds. **Historical compilation format:** Share the newspaper clippings (or excerpts from them) in response to anyone complaining about modern work ethic. The implied point: if people have been saying this for over a century, maybe it's not today's workers who are the problem. Both formats are most commonly deployed to challenge employers, business owners, or commentators who frame staffing shortages as a moral failing of workers rather than a reflection of wages and conditions. ## Cultural Impact The meme intersected with one of the most significant labor market shifts in recent American history. Eater's reporting broke down the real dynamics behind restaurant staffing: a February 2021 UCSF study found line cooks had the highest pandemic mortality rate of any occupation in the country[3]. Matt Glassman, a Los Angeles restaurant owner, explained that reopening at limited capacity meant bartenders' effective hourly wages (including tips) dropped from $50-60 to $25-30, while back-of-house staff worked in 400-square-foot kitchens where "there's no mask in the world that's going to protect you"[3]. The burnout data backed up the meme's subtext. A 2021 Indeed survey showed Millennials and Generation Z employees reporting burnout rates of 59% and 58% respectively[2]. An Asana survey from the same year found Generation Z workers in the U.S. experienced the highest burnout levels of any age group[2]. Fairie's analysis through the netmonkey.net blog added an important wrinkle: not all the historical "nobody wants to work" articles were capitalists complaining about cheap labor. Many were simply older people grumbling about younger generations in a pattern as old as intergenerational tension itself[4]. The UK experienced a parallel situation in 2020. Despite 1.3 million people losing their jobs to COVID, 150 Romanian workers had to be flown from Bucharest to pick fruit because British workers wouldn't take the agricultural positions[2]. ## Fun Facts - The oldest documented use of the phrase in the viral compilation is from 1894 in the Rooks County Record, written during a coal miners' strike[7]. - In 1940, Wisconsin Governor Julius Heil used the phrase in a public statement about legislation, saying "The trouble is everybody is on relief or a pension, nobody wants to work anymore"[1]. - A 1946 Virginia bill literally proposed abolishing work because "nobody wants to work"[4]. - In 1979, a New Orleans dry cleaner permanently closed his business and told a reporter that a job applicant had laughed at his $3/hour offer because she could clear $106 a week on welfare[1]. - Isaac Furman, a former line cook, described discovering that subsidized health insurance through restaurant work cost him $500/month on wages that barely covered his living expenses. "There's absolutely no safety net," he told Eater[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is "Nobody Wants to Work Anymore"? It's a meme based on signs posted by understaffed American businesses in 2021, later expanded by a viral compilation of newspaper clippings showing the same complaint dating back to 1894[1]. ### Where did "Nobody Wants to Work Anymore" come from? The meme's first viral moment was on April 9, 2021, when a TikTok user filmed a McDonald's drive-thru sign using the phrase[5]. The second wave came from Paul Fairie's 2022 Twitter thread compiling 128 years of the same complaint from newspaper archives[2]. ### What does "Nobody Wants to Work Anymore" mean? On its face, it's an employer complaint about lazy workers. As a meme, it's used ironically to mock that complaint by showing it's been repeated for well over a century, pointing to wages and conditions rather than worker motivation as the real issue[1]. ### How do you use "Nobody Wants to Work Anymore"? Either share the historical newspaper clippings when someone complains about modern work ethic, or create a parody sign using the "We are closed because nobody wants to work anymore" template with an absurd twist[5]. ### Is "Nobody Wants to Work Anymore" still popular? The meme peaked in 2021-2022 during the Great Resignation and quiet quitting discourse. The historical compilation format still circulates whenever labor shortage debates resurface[6]. ### Who is Paul Fairie? A researcher at the University of Calgary who compiled the viral Twitter thread documenting 14 newspaper clippings of the phrase "nobody wants to work anymore" spanning from 1894 to 2022[2]. ### Did Snopes verify the newspaper clippings? Yes. Snopes confirmed all 14 clippings were authentic by tracing each through Newspapers.com archives[1]. ### Why did restaurant workers refuse to return in 2021? A combination of reduced tips from limited capacity, high COVID-19 health risks (line cooks had the highest pandemic mortality rate), lack of benefits, and a competitive job market offering better options[3]. ### What's the oldest example of the complaint? The oldest clipping in the viral compilation is from 1894, published in the Rooks County Record during a coal miners' strike[7]. Paul Lafargue was writing about anti-work sentiment even earlier, in 1880[6]. ### How much were restaurants actually paying workers? It varied, but the Chattanooga restaurant that went viral for closing due to "nobody wanting to work" paid servers $2.15 an hour before tips[5]. Even restaurants paying $15/hour saw effective wages drop as limited-capacity reopenings cut into tip income[3]. ## References 1. [Why Restaurant Workers Say They’re Not Returning to Work | Eater]() 2. ["Nobody Wants to Work Anymore"]() 3. ['Nobody Wants to Work Anymore' Meme Cites Real Newspaper Articles | Snopes.com]() 4. [Nobody Wants to Work Anymore - Know Your Meme]() 5. [List of Fast & Furious characters]() 6. [Nobody Wants to Work Anymore - Urban Dictionary]() 7. [‘Nobody Wants To Work’ Has Been Complaint for Decades, Viral Thread Shows - Newsweek]() 8. [Fight for Your Right to Be Lazy]() 9. ["Nobody wants to work anymore" is not new. And it's not true.]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/nobody-wants-to-work-anymore Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library