Workplace Culture》After 30, She Quit Her Full-Time Job and Relearned What Work Is Like from Gen Z Interns

A 31-year-old quit their full-time job to take an unpaid internship, and ultimately learned lessons they should have remembered long ago from Gen Z coworkers nearly a decade younger. Writer Jackie Garcia-Morales recounts this experience in American business media Business Insider, asking daring "why" and leaving on time.
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Table of Contents

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• Ask why, Why
• Leave at five
• Things handed over

Key Takeaways

• 31-year-old writer Jackie Garcia-Morales quit to do an unpaid internship, relearning two lessons from Gen Z colleagues
• The two lessons are daring to ask why and leaving work on time—seemingly naive, but common sense tamed by the workplace
• So-called workplace maturity often isn't about learning, but about forgetting and handing over curiosity and self-respect one by one

Rewatching The Shawshank Redemption, I always pause at the part where old Brooks gets out of prison. An old man who spent fifty years in jail finally regains his freedom, only to find he can't survive outside the walls. The character Red says something like, these walls are funny. First you hate them, then you get used to them. Enough time passes, you start to depend on them.

He calls this state "institutionalized." Brooks isn't unfree; he's simply forgotten how to be free.

I thought of this scene because I read an article about the workplace. On the surface, it has nothing to do with prison, but at its core, it's about the same thing—how a person lives inside a system and slowly forgets themselves. I believe that feeling should be familiar to anyone who has worked a corporate job.

Writer Jackie Garcia-Morales wrote a piece in U.S. business media Business Insider. She's 31, with nearly a decade of experience, but she quit her full-time job to take an unpaid internship (that decision alone was unusual enough; the internship later landed her a dream job).

She says the most useful lesson from the entire experience didn't come from management, but from a group of coworkers nearly a decade younger—the much-discussed Gen Z. The media loves to portray Gen Z as the most difficult generation ever, but her conclusion is the opposite. She began to wonder if the traits dismissed as weakness or softness might actually be signs that this generation's emotional intelligence has already evolved.

Ask why, Why

The first thing is daring to ask why. Interns asking about everything under the sun is normal, no surprise there. But she noticed that the youngest ones weren't asking about process details; they were direct. Why are we doing it this way? Does this step even make sense? If a process is lengthy and meaningless, they'd ask, why not try another method? If something was done that achieved nothing, they'd directly ask, then why are we doing it?

What truly shocked her was realizing she hadn't asked "why" in a long time.

After a few years in the workforce, she got used to the boss only giving orders without explanations, and she learned not to ask too many questions. In my view, this is the sharpest point of the entire article. We often see "stopping asking questions" as a sign of maturity, of being sensible, tactful, and knowing boundaries. But it might just be a person slowly learning to shut up.

Leave at five

The second lesson is leaving work on time. When the workload increased, Jackie noticed that her Gen Z coworkers fiercely guarded their time. They cared about work and did it well, but as soon as the clock hit five, they were gone. They treated working hours literally.

She said when she first started, seniors told her to say goodbye to free time, that weekend overtime was the price for future promotions. This probably sounds familiar to Taiwanese readers; we have an even more blunt version called "responsibility system," "burning out," or having to reply to LINE messages after work.

But those interns didn't buy that. Off work means off work. They ate proper lunches, left on time, and directly told their supervisors when they needed a break. That's not laziness; it's drawing a line between work and life.

In contrast, Jackie herself was juggling nine projects and starting a business, cutting sleep to the minimum just in case she needed to work overtime. Gen Z reminded her of something she already knew: being on call 24/7 is not proof of dedication. Replying to an email in 30 seconds might look good, but it's not engagement. Dragging work past quitting time just to say "yes" isn't a virtue either, especially when the cost is your rest.

Things handed over

By now it's very clear. We're used to calling workplace socialization "growth." Learning to read the room, learning not to ask why, learning to give up weekends, learning to constantly say "no problem."

But Jackie's story writes a more uncomfortable version for corporate slaves: these so-called maturities are often not about learning, but about unlearning. It's taking the common sense you naturally had—curiosity and self-respect—and dismantling them one by one, handing them over to a system that may not be good for you.

Jackie herself also asks, of the "professionalism" she learned, how much is wisdom and how much is just toxic workplace conditioning.

She finally admits she had these abilities when she was younger, but over the years, she thought they were useless and lost them. She was wrong. Gen Z looks "unprofessional" not because they lack something, but because they haven't been worn down yet. Seniority, sometimes, is just another word for being fully conditioned.

So I'm not that worried about Gen Z. I'm more worried about those of us over thirty. At five o'clock, the young interns pack their bags and walk out into the sunlight, while we're still sitting at our desks, convincing ourselves this is responsibility, but unable to tell whether what remains is genuine duty or Red's kind of dependence on the walls.

Back to the movie, after Brooks leaves prison, he feeds pigeons for a while and then chooses to end it. He never wanted freedom; he just couldn't remember what freedom felt like, so he decided to return to a state of unfreedom.

I don't want that.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is this article about?

Using writer Jackie Garcia-Morales's unpaid internship piece in Business Insider as a lead-in, it discusses how so-called workplace maturity is often a systematic forgetting, discarding innate common sense—like daring to ask why and protecting rest—as immaturity.

Are Gen Z really harder to work with?

The article holds the opposite view. The author believes that Gen Z's willingness to ask why and insist on work-life boundaries is not weakness or laziness, but a shift toward emotional intelligence. It's precisely the ability that more senior workers need to relearn.