No, it says that hard work "leads to success" not that "hard work is success". Typically, when applied to people, success doesn't mean working hard. It means attaining something the person wants. In the case of a donkey, their personal definition of success is likely different than for a person. That is what I meant by my comment.

Well, by owning the farm.

I like working in food service, but you couldn’t pay me enough to own a restaurant or bakery. The donkey doesn’t choose to work there, nor is it compensated, so this isn’t applicable in this case, but my ideal situation would be working super hard thirty hours a week and earning enough to live comfortably off, while taking occasional vacations. That’s unfortunately not really possible, so I’m getting a masters degree instead of trying for management.

If I'm a donkey, I define it as having good apples, tasty carrots, lots of oats, and companionship from other animals and humans.

I'm also amazed that this comment, of all of my comments, is one of my most downvoted on lemmy. I thought it was pretty tame and just pointed out the silliness of the meme.