Politics & Power Quote by Wanda Sykes

Wanda Sykes lands this line with the casual brutality of a workplace truth everybody half-knows but rarely says out loud. The setup gives you a concession - yes, some public employees are committed - then pivots into the punch: a broad, merciless generalization that feels like gossip with a sting. That contrast is the engine. By briefly granting virtue, she buys permission to roast the institution, not the individual. It is not just a joke about laziness; it is a joke about incentives, time, and what happens when a job becomes a countdown app.

The subtext isn’t “government is bad” so much as “systems can teach people to stop caring.” “Waiting to retire” is an elegant shorthand for stagnation: the psychological retreat into tenure, the performance of doing enough to avoid trouble, the bureaucratic choreography of passing time. Sykes targets the cultural stereotype of the unkillable desk job, but she sharpens it by naming the end goal. Retirement becomes the only narrative arc left, which is bleak and funny at once.

Context matters: this kind of bit thrives in an era of chronic frustration with public services - the DMV line, the phone tree, the form that disappears into a void. Sykes is also playing with a real tension: we demand efficient, responsive government while distrusting it, underfunding it, and treating its workers as punchlines. The joke works because it flatters the audience’s lived annoyance, then leaves a sour aftertaste: if “most” are waiting it out, what does that say about the structure we’ve built, and agreed to live under?