No One Does Workplace Comedy Better Than This TikToker

Imagine a workplace comedy that captures the mundanity of the 9-to-5 grind à la The Office starring an Eddie Murphy-esque comedy chameleon who plays every character himself — that’s essentially the ethos of Jesus Nalgas’ TikTok account, which has accrued a massive following approaching five million fans. 

Nalgas’ videos feature hyper-specific characters familiar to anyone who has ever been to a Target, the DMV or a public high school — the personalities who do the dirty work in unglamorous and underappreciated jobs create Nalgas’ colorful array of characters that capture the idiosyncrasies and specific energies of the front-desk workers and sales associates who keep our world spinning. Nalgas’ small, specific humor has made him a true TikTok star as fans flock to his absolutely spot-on impressions of the world’s unsung heroes.

Even Nalgas’ stage name is a little joke for his Spanish-speaking fans — Jesus Nalgas literally translates to “Jesus Butt Cheeks.”

Nalgas, an L.A. native, pulls much of his comedy from his own experiences — before Nalgas was able to quit his day job and do TikTok characters full-time, he worked in many of the settings featured in his videos. At different points in his life, Nalgas has held jobs at Target, Walmart, Popeyes and even Disneyland before videos featuring his now-popular character of an unamused, checked-out human resources worker went viral on Gen Z’s favorite content platform.

By January 2020, Nalgas’ TikTok channel was popular enough that he was able to subsist entirely on sponsorship money and ad revenue. Nalgas uses the channel to explore many different kinds of content creation, but the most popular videos feature the characters that his fans see in their everyday lives — the overworked, underpaid and perpetually in-charge public school front desk lady is a star on the channel. The off-screen characters whom Nalgas encounters in those sketches have even taken on their own fandoms — Olivia is a perpetually late and constantly unprepared student who has become a fan favorite despite never making an appearance on-screen.

Nalgas is a member of a group of L.A.-based Latino content creators called “Familia Fuego” — he briefly lived with the group in a Hollywood Hills mansion before venturing out on his own, though he still regularly films sketches with the collective.

Though Nalgas is a big-name star on TikTok, we have yet to see him breakthrough in film or on TV, though it’s hard to imagine that Hollywood won’t eventually take note of one of Gen Z’s favorite and most talented character comedians. Sooner or later, we’ll see some version of the Front Desk Lady on a screen larger than our phones — perhaps we’ll also finally hear from Olivia, provided she can get her shit together and show up to set on time.