It is interesting how the definition of Quiet Quitting quickly changed from being a hard working employee who finally decides that enough is enough and decided to give just a solid days work for a solid days pay, to: slackers, time wasters, retired on the job, unambitious etc.
It's as if the initial concept was too difficult to face, hard working employees who are burnt out. Making it slackers etc. makes it far easier to blame the victim.
- - - -
From that point on he stopped working unpaid overtime, taking work home, etc. He was no longer available to travel at short notice. He still did an excellent job at work, only now it stopped at 5:00pm.
Read your last sentence. That’s not quiet quitting. Unless I just don’t understand the generally accepted definition of quiet quitting.
My first two paragraphs give my opinion on the term Quiet Quitting. It started as describing the hard worker who was fed up with constantly being leaned on. But it has since been used to describe the slacker.
Many of the posts in this thread lean towards one definition or the other.
Regardless of how they are referred to, the problem of good employees who are pushed too far has got to be dealt with. However, corporations have done a good job of shifting the problem. Burn out = weak willed. Quiet Quitters = slackers. If it's the employees problem then the executives can sit back and blame the employee.
In my example above my friend got shafted. The unionised employees did not. What conclusions can we draw from that? And will executives draw those conclusions before it is too late?
Decades ago the world got a lot more competitive, especially if your competitor can use slave labor. I don’t but into a sinister theory about “corporate America”. Business is not easy.
That said, you have to look out for yourself. You have to be extremely careful about working outside of normal work hours in exchange for some kind of nebulous / uncertain future benefit. Don’t do it unless you’ve really thought hard about it (with a very critical eye) at it makes sense for you in your specific situation. Ever once in a while? Sure, s#it’s gotta get done. But “every once in a while” often creeps into “the norm”. Nope.
Bullsh-t. You let the corporate vultures and their oligarch overlords, and of course the political forces that allow them to feed from the social contract itself, off the hook WAY too easily here. Employment is simply another portion of the social contract between the structure of a place and its citizens. In a reasonable system, the oligarchs are simply not allowed to exist, or exist greatly reduced by regulatory structures that limit their predatory capacity. In such a system, they are not able to buy the political/tax/regulatory processes and must balance their thirst for our very souls with the needs of the citizenry.
That hideous feeling of endless exploitation and utter valuelessness that exists among many workers in America is the result of all of the reasonable processes and rules having been tilted/rigged almost exclusively for the benefit of the oligarchy and their thin first rank of elites/executives/political functionaries. A very cursory look at the American economy and SES strata/data will demonstrate that there exists an ever-thinning rank of extreme affluence and endless access to spoils, sitting on top of massive numbers of those who now struggle to maintain any sort of reasonable quality of life in the US.
Even the once strong middle class has been hollowed to the point that even those educated and well-employed are typically ONE negative life event away from personal catastrophe that can easily lead to ruin and even homelessness. This is all pretext and provides context to the discussion points in this thread about work environment, and it's easy to see that employment in the US consists almost entirely of glorified gig/casual/contract people. You may see yourself as a salaried and valued employee, but you are truly a glorified casual who can/will be dumped at the next poor quarter. Tenuous. Exploited. Dumped at will.
And you want to avoid discussing the genuine evil that obviously underlines and underwrites this system we live in?
I said it above. Show me a genuine DEFINED BENEFIT PENSION with reasonable vesting and excellent benefits and I'll show you a massive supply of hard-wording and loyal employees. You don't want to offer those? P-ss off.
What are you talking about? The dude said you have to look out for yourself and NOT to work outside of normal work hours unless you truly believe it's beneficial to you.
Also, if you think that basic economic fundamentals in many industries have not been impacted by China and other countries using slave labor in sweatshop working conditions you are just being willfully ignorant. It's basic math, bro.
Bottom line, it's on you to not get taken advantage of. Don't believe the BS that an employer says. Believe what they actually do. Be a good worker, but also look out for number one. It's a dichotomy. That's just real life.
Read your last sentence. That’s not quiet quitting. Unless I just don’t understand the generally accepted definition of quiet quitting.
My first two paragraphs give my opinion on the term Quiet Quitting. It started as describing the hard worker who was fed up with constantly being leaned on. But it has since been used to describe the slacker.
Many of the posts in this thread lean towards one definition or the other.
Regardless of how they are referred to, the problem of good employees who are pushed too far has got to be dealt with. However, corporations have done a good job of shifting the problem. Burn out = weak willed. Quiet Quitters = slackers. If it's the employees problem then the executives can sit back and blame the employee.
In my example above my friend got shafted. The unionised employees did not. What conclusions can we draw from that? And will executives draw those conclusions before it is too late?
Well, that gets to the heart of the issue, the definition of "Quiet Quitting".
I guess what you are saying is that some companies/executives are using a cynical definition of quiet quitting. They define quiet quitting as not being willing to work nights and weekends for no increase in pay. Others would define quiet quitting as intentionally doing poor quality work within the normal working day.
I'd never heard this term before. Honestly seems kind of miserable. I've had jobs that just didn't require much effort because there wasn't much work to be done. Was always just bored AF at those jobs. It was like being in detention, just showing up and watching the clock tick.
That said, I understand why people in a lot of lines of work are fed up with the idea that everyone should go above and beyond even if the rewards of their efforts accrue to other people. But I'd just rather seek out more meaningful work than stay in a job and mail it in myself.
What's wrong with just doing the job?
For most jobs, there is no reason to do extra work on "your time". Likewise, there is no reason to do a s#hitty job when you are on the clock and getting paid do do the job right, a job that you accepted. If they change the agreement after you are hired that's a different deal.
When I was a kid in the 70s, my dad was an engineer at Raytheon. I remember very vividly how he would come home everyday at 5:30 almost on the dot. He had family health insurance, life insurance, a pension plan and got 4 weeks paid vacation. He actually considered going to work for the government when he was applying for a job with Raytheon because they pay was better. We had enough money to have a 2000 sq ft house in the burbs, two cars and my mom stayed home with the kids. We were not rich. My mom was an expert penny pincher and coupon clipper. My dad never called a repair man and painted the house by himself. But back then, even with all the turmoil in the economy, a college education translated into solid employment with excellent benefits and plenty of vacation time even when unemployment surged.
In the 80s, my father got promoted into management. Everything changed. New hires got switched out of the pension plan into 401ks, only got 2 weeks paid vacation and the health plan started requiring out of pocket contributions. My father went from working 9-5 to basically working all day and at least half the weekend. My parents were divorced by that time and when I would visit my dad on vacation, he still had to do work. He at least had the carrot of a potential EVP position which never materialized. But the biggest change was that everyone in the company was constantly being told to cut the fat, downsize and push everyone to work harder. For all overtime exempt white collar employees, the 40 hour work week became extinct.
When I first started practicing law in the early 2000s, 60-70 hour work weeks for new associates was considered standard. I worked an entire year and a half without a vacation when I started. Then, for the next 10 years or so, I would take a week off over Xmas and a week off over the summer. I was never on a partner track and got raises and bonuses that were right at the median for the market.
I am all for quiet quitting. The only reason people are expected to be on the clock from sun up to sun down is because it is just a way for the capitalists to get a larger share of the excess business income from the worker's labor. Businesses got away with this for the past few decades because people feared downsizing and unemployment and would do anything just to keep their jobs. But after 1 mil died during COVID and another 500k can't work due to COVID complications/concerns and lots of boomers have cashed out, the shoe is on the other foot. It is time to return reasonable limits to the workplace. 40 hours a week is enough for any job.
When I was a kid in the 70s, my dad was an engineer at Raytheon. I remember very vividly how he would come home everyday at 5:30 almost on the dot. He had family health insurance, life insurance, a pension plan and got 4 weeks paid vacation. He actually considered going to work for the government when he was applying for a job with Raytheon because they pay was better. We had enough money to have a 2000 sq ft house in the burbs, two cars and my mom stayed home with the kids. We were not rich. My mom was an expert penny pincher and coupon clipper. My dad never called a repair man and painted the house by himself. But back then, even with all the turmoil in the economy, a college education translated into solid employment with excellent benefits and plenty of vacation time even when unemployment surged.
In the 80s, my father got promoted into management. Everything changed. New hires got switched out of the pension plan into 401ks, only got 2 weeks paid vacation and the health plan started requiring out of pocket contributions. My father went from working 9-5 to basically working all day and at least half the weekend. My parents were divorced by that time and when I would visit my dad on vacation, he still had to do work. He at least had the carrot of a potential EVP position which never materialized. But the biggest change was that everyone in the company was constantly being told to cut the fat, downsize and push everyone to work harder. For all overtime exempt white collar employees, the 40 hour work week became extinct.
When I first started practicing law in the early 2000s, 60-70 hour work weeks for new associates was considered standard. I worked an entire year and a half without a vacation when I started. Then, for the next 10 years or so, I would take a week off over Xmas and a week off over the summer. I was never on a partner track and got raises and bonuses that were right at the median for the market.
I am all for quiet quitting. The only reason people are expected to be on the clock from sun up to sun down is because it is just a way for the capitalists to get a larger share of the excess business income from the worker's labor. Businesses got away with this for the past few decades because people feared downsizing and unemployment and would do anything just to keep their jobs. But after 1 mil died during COVID and another 500k can't work due to COVID complications/concerns and lots of boomers have cashed out, the shoe is on the other foot. It is time to return reasonable limits to the workplace. 40 hours a week is enough for any job.
Good post.
One comment: Take your first paragraph and ask how did that situation ever even exist as opposed to why is it not here anymore?
One question: Is "quiet quitting" doing poor quality work within normal working hours or is "quiet quitting" refusing to work nights and weekends?
I don't see how doing quality work within normal working hours is "quitting".
When I was a kid in the 70s, my dad was an engineer at Raytheon. I remember very vividly how he would come home everyday at 5:30 almost on the dot. He had family health insurance, life insurance, a pension plan and got 4 weeks paid vacation. He actually considered going to work for the government when he was applying for a job with Raytheon because they pay was better. We had enough money to have a 2000 sq ft house in the burbs, two cars and my mom stayed home with the kids. We were not rich. My mom was an expert penny pincher and coupon clipper. My dad never called a repair man and painted the house by himself. But back then, even with all the turmoil in the economy, a college education translated into solid employment with excellent benefits and plenty of vacation time even when unemployment surged.
In the 80s, my father got promoted into management. Everything changed. New hires got switched out of the pension plan into 401ks, only got 2 weeks paid vacation and the health plan started requiring out of pocket contributions. My father went from working 9-5 to basically working all day and at least half the weekend. My parents were divorced by that time and when I would visit my dad on vacation, he still had to do work. He at least had the carrot of a potential EVP position which never materialized. But the biggest change was that everyone in the company was constantly being told to cut the fat, downsize and push everyone to work harder. For all overtime exempt white collar employees, the 40 hour work week became extinct.
When I first started practicing law in the early 2000s, 60-70 hour work weeks for new associates was considered standard. I worked an entire year and a half without a vacation when I started. Then, for the next 10 years or so, I would take a week off over Xmas and a week off over the summer. I was never on a partner track and got raises and bonuses that were right at the median for the market.
I am all for quiet quitting. The only reason people are expected to be on the clock from sun up to sun down is because it is just a way for the capitalists to get a larger share of the excess business income from the worker's labor. Businesses got away with this for the past few decades because people feared downsizing and unemployment and would do anything just to keep their jobs. But after 1 mil died during COVID and another 500k can't work due to COVID complications/concerns and lots of boomers have cashed out, the shoe is on the other foot. It is time to return reasonable limits to the workplace. 40 hours a week is enough for any job.
By the way, if you think capitalism is bad, try another system out and see what you get. LOL
Just reminded me of another job I had that was in professional sports. I'm not going to say which league. This was a long time ago. But we started our day at 8am and wrapped up at 5pm, but with games starting up at 6pm-7pm and some on the west coast starting at 10pm our time, we were expected to work extra hours to "keep the show going". This was before remote work. It became an around-the-clock job, and when we had several people quit we almost lived in the office for awhile.
I had a beer with one of my co-workers one night and he basically said "this is just not healthy". This was 2004 and we were seeing a major cultural shift in the move to mobile and our users being "always on". Back then, we didn't know how to handle the enormous expectations - not from a tech standpoint - but from a human limits standpoint.
And 17 years later, we still haven't solved the problem on how to not overwork ourselves.
This is exactly the situation that I don't want to be in if I can help it. Everyone's situation is different (the tradeoffs may be worth it), but I would be actively looking for different opportunities. The pay would have to be very high to accept an "always available" type work situation. Some industries are just like that. For me, I'd find a different industry.
I'll tell you how that happens. It's called getting your "dream job" as your first job out of college. Desperate to make a good impression, people please, and ultimately worry about your future prospects if you botch your first job. And because it's your dream job, you are naturally going to grind yourself into the floor because you've told yourself for a decade that you needed to be there in that role.
The biggest issue becomes...."now what?" Passion becomes just another task that you need to do. Abuse of power through leadership makes you question if your true passion is really truly run by inept, insecure man-babies who talk down to you the minute you start encroaching on their position. I got out OK, but I can see how demoralizing it can be for some people who are so dependent one particular goal for self worth.
Thats working at a 100 index. Honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. Straight up. Good to go. That’s what we (employee and employer) agreed to.
I think “quiet quitting” would be working, during normal working hours, at below a 100 index. Working in a way that might get you fired, but you are clever enough to not get caught. Knowing full well that you are half assing it.
I guess I have never worked at a job or heard of anyone in corporate America who had a job that represented a 100 index and an honest day's pay.
Isn't this just capitalism though? The employer is attempting to squeeze out every cent they can from you while the employee is trying to do the same. Of course there is balance in that the employer can't go crazy or no one will work for them and the employee can't do nothing or they will be fired. But its the push and pull of capitalism and this is employees pushing back in a moment of power and daring their employers to do something about it.
Anyone who is a capitalist should be in favor of employees doing the minimal amount of work to stay employed.
Bullsh-t. You let the corporate vultures and their oligarch overlords, and of course the political forces that allow them to feed from the social contract itself, off the hook WAY too easily here. Employment is simply another portion of the social contract between the structure of a place and its citizens. In a reasonable system, the oligarchs are simply not allowed to exist, or exist greatly reduced by regulatory structures that limit their predatory capacity. In such a system, they are not able to buy the political/tax/regulatory processes and must balance their thirst for our very souls with the needs of the citizenry.
That hideous feeling of endless exploitation and utter valuelessness that exists among many workers in America is the result of all of the reasonable processes and rules having been tilted/rigged almost exclusively for the benefit of the oligarchy and their thin first rank of elites/executives/political functionaries. A very cursory look at the American economy and SES strata/data will demonstrate that there exists an ever-thinning rank of extreme affluence and endless access to spoils, sitting on top of massive numbers of those who now struggle to maintain any sort of reasonable quality of life in the US.
Even the once strong middle class has been hollowed to the point that even those educated and well-employed are typically ONE negative life event away from personal catastrophe that can easily lead to ruin and even homelessness. This is all pretext and provides context to the discussion points in this thread about work environment, and it's easy to see that employment in the US consists almost entirely of glorified gig/casual/contract people. You may see yourself as a salaried and valued employee, but you are truly a glorified casual who can/will be dumped at the next poor quarter. Tenuous. Exploited. Dumped at will.
And you want to avoid discussing the genuine evil that obviously underlines and underwrites this system we live in?
I said it above. Show me a genuine DEFINED BENEFIT PENSION with reasonable vesting and excellent benefits and I'll show you a massive supply of hard-wording and loyal employees. You don't want to offer those? P-ss off.
What are you talking about? The dude said you have to look out for yourself and NOT to work outside of normal work hours unless you truly believe it's beneficial to you.
Also, if you think that basic economic fundamentals in many industries have not been impacted by China and other countries using slave labor in sweatshop working conditions you are just being willfully ignorant. It's basic math, bro.
Bottom line, it's on you to not get taken advantage of. Don't believe the BS that an employer says. Believe what they actually do. Be a good worker, but also look out for number one. It's a dichotomy. That's just real life.
Read more carefully. The US, as the most important economy in the world, was never FORCED to accept cheapest goods made with cheapest labor from China. That NEVER had to happen and we certainly were never forced to allow pensions to disappear, healthcare plans to become so meager, all of the other benefits melt away. Corporations were allowed to chase dirt cheap labor AND to kill off pensions and benefits.
Our regulatory state was taken over such that corporations were allowed to chase the last penny on cheap Asian labor and were allowed to kill and gut pensions. They have been continuously allowed to gut everything that makes a vibrant middle class. Those are the factors underlining the garbage modern American work force dynamic. There is MUCH more to all of this than whether someone decides to cut themselves some slack at work.
Besides, somehow, some way, workers in European countries, economies that ALSO buy much from Asian manufacturers, still retain excellent pensions, universal healthcare, great time-off benefits, and much more. America is the stingiest, most worker-unfriendly industrialized modern economy in the world besides China, and it's because our captured government regulatory bodies ALLOW all of it to happen. And yes, the corporate and oligarchic power players are evil, or at best cravenly greedy and selfish.
It's all shameful and yet some want to reduce these macro issues to whether or not employees are grinding hard enough. Open your eyes.
When I first started practicing law in the early 2000s, 60-70 hour work weeks for new associates was considered standard. I worked an entire year and a half without a vacation when I started. Then, for the next 10 years or so, I would take a week off over Xmas and a week off over the summer. I was never on a partner track and got raises and bonuses that were right at the median for the market.
I am all for quiet quitting. The only reason people are expected to be on the clock from sun up to sun down is because it is just a way for the capitalists to get a larger share of the excess business income from the worker's labor. Businesses got away with this for the past few decades because people feared downsizing and unemployment and would do anything just to keep their jobs. But after 1 mil died during COVID and another 500k can't work due to COVID complications/concerns and lots of boomers have cashed out, the shoe is on the other foot. It is time to return reasonable limits to the workplace. 40 hours a week is enough for any job.
Great post, Precious Roy! As are most of your posts.
Where did I say it was "slaking" or something bad? It just is what it is, doing the job without looking to do more and move up in the company.
I would say the term “doing the bare minimum” has a connotation and a meaning that is very different from just doing a good job at your job, doing quality work within the scheduled workday. night and day difference between this two in my opinion.
There are 2 kinds of quiet quitters. One does a good job from 9 to 5. The other does as little as they possibly can without getting fired. The 1st has merit the 2nd is just a lazy person. However, neither is actually quitting their job.
It's an infuriating term. Why are the consent manufacturers trying to rebrand "doing your job" as "quiet quitting?" I mean, I could tell you but then I'd launch into a giant rant. As I think I saw another poster point out, it's literally just responding to the economic incentive. "B-b-b-but I have to go above and beyond so they'll promote me" - that's cute that you think the average workplace is a meritocracy. If you have actual, measurable targets to hit that you KNOW will get you promoted (i.e. it's written in some sort of binding agreement), sure, work your ass off and get that bag. But most people don't have that, and in that hypothetical situation where promotion criteria are explicitly codified, you're just doing the minimum anyway depending on your own personal goals. Basically what I'm trying to say is there's no point busting your hump in hopes that some manager you may not even work closely with (this is how it is in my company) will have the beneficence to grant you a promotion. There are no guarantees, so why not try to stay sane so you can enjoy the ~8 waking hours you have away from work?
"There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm…Second, there are the hard-working intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard-working, stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office."
-- General Erich von Manstein, Nazi war criminal, showing this concept is timeless and universal
Nonsense! That is a huge part of the problem. Leave your feelings at home. No one should stand for disrespect or mistreatment, but in this day and age it is about feeling good and anything less is called mistreatment. Stop it! Most do not recognize bad treatment and disrespect. Most do not want to earn that respect, and pay their dues. Quiet quitting is a move based in 2 negatives, laziness and entitlement.
I'm, 51 working for a terrible, family-run dysfunctional company. I'm on the outside looking in and planning to leave whenever something better comes along. 'Easy decision.