A Gen Z worker says he’ll ask his boss to move any meeting that lands on his lunch break, and he plans to take a mental health day every month

The creator, known as @imdrebrown on TikTok, laid out the specific rules he follows to maintain a healthy work-life balance in a video, as reported by The Daily Dot. The first boundary DeAndre Brown lists is his refusal to work through his lunch break. If a supervisor schedules a meeting during that time, he does not simply comply to keep the peace.

He says he won’t attend and asks that the meeting be removed from the schedule, as he treats that hour as his own. DeAndre Brown also makes it clear that his computer shuts down right at 5 PM. He is not willing to stay logged in or continue working once he is off the clock. He adds that the laptop could even close at 4:30, a joke aimed at offices where staying late is treated as a badge of honor.

DeAndre Brown plans to take one mental health day every month, and he expects employers to adjust. “Figure it out because I’m taking one a month, sorry,” DeAndre Brown said. The line is delivered as a sketch, as the creator plays an exaggerated version of a young corporate employee throughout the clip.

He is taking one mental health day a month whether the boss likes it or not

The character comes from real experience. DeAndre Brown is a Chicago native and Morehouse College graduate who worked in consumer banking at Citibank before leaving in 2022. He began posting while he was still employed there, and the sketches about Gen Z and Millennial office habits became his full-time work. He spent about 10 months in a corporate role before he quit.

One early video came from being asked to join a project outside his scope. He has said the sketch was more dramatic than the real exchange, but it let him say what he wanted to tell his employer. He calls himself the corporate baddie and prefers the phrase life-work balance, arguing that life should come before the job.

Adweek named him its Career Creator of the Year, and he has since launched GenXL Consulting, a firm that offers professional development and corporate consulting. The reaction to his video shows that many others feel the same way. With 3,928 comments, viewers borrowed his format to share their own rules for setting boundaries at work. Some said they keep a resignation letter saved on their laptop, while others asked why a video call couldn’t have been an email.

Younger employees are often described as lazy or entitled, and the video landed in the middle of an ongoing argument over Gen Z work habits. However, the creator has pushed back on that label. He argues that his generation does want to work, just in a different way than earlier generations did.

The creator has made the same case outside of his sketches. However, he frames it as a benefit to employers, saying that workers whose mental health is valued tend to work harder. He has also encouraged employees to take time for themselves.