Olivia is 22 years old, has a university degree under her belt, and has already worked at two restaurants. Even so, she couldn’t get so much as a waitress position.
Her TikTok video, seen by more than 200.000 people, exposed something that thousands experience in silence. Companies rejecting candidates for being ‘overqualified’ for minimum-wage roles. In the comments, other graduates and even people with master’s degrees described the same nightmare. Some confessed to an extreme solution. Deleting their degree from their résumé, or applying under a different name, just to be considered.
Meanwhile, another strategy circulating on Reddit actually works: staying silent for 30 seconds when you’re offered low pay. One applicant received an extra 12.000 dollars and a bonus simply by saying nothing. The 2026 labor market rewards silence over effort, and that says a lot about where the world is headed.
