Why Quiet Quitting Shouldn't Be Trending
What is quiet quitting, and where did it come from?
Quiet quitting is the newest hot phrase trending across the internet. This trend is being covered by middle-aged media analysts tripping over themselves to blame young people's work ethic, secretly worried over its implications for their stock portfolios. Is it the next step after the great resignation? Is it going to affect companies’ bottom lines? Why doesn't anyone want to work anymore?
Gaining popularity on TikTok, where all serious business news happens, this idea has astronomically resonated with the younger generations. However, despite the name, quiet quitting is not quitting at all. Rather it's the commitment to do only what you are paid to do and nothing more. If you are paid to work 40 hours a week, then you work precisely 40 hours. When the work day finishes, you don't stay an hour late to wrap up loose ends. You go home. If a big deadline is coming up, you don't take your work home and finish it over the weekend. You don't answer calls or emails on your personal time or take on extra projects to "help out." In short, you do what your contract says.
While the idea isn't new, this modern version is different for this new generation. The hustle culture mentality that seems to invade us from every social media platform is telling us that we should constantly be working or we are failing. Couple that with a lack of respect from managers that string workers along without support or adequate compensation, and it's no wonder the newest working generation isn't jumping to volunteer any of their limited free time to cover work that should be going to a new hire.
So many people have become disillusioned with the idea of working. In the past, a job meant stability to provide for a family, buy a house, and save for retirement. As these once common goals become further and further out of reach for a significant portion of the workforce, is it any surprise that they are losing motivation? During the Covid 19 pandemic, companies showed us that they genuinely don't care about us. Laying people off, refusing to rehire once profits pick up, putting shareholders' purses above employees' livelihoods, and pushing people to return to work while there is still covid running rampant are just a few examples. Why should an entire generation grind away their lives day after day for profits they will never see and a paycheck that is never enough to cover growing inflation?
Jobs have long used manipulation and false promises to extract the most work from each employee. Stealing time from the working class and not giving them fair compensation is one of America's proudest traditions, dating back to the industrial revolution when our mighty titans of industry were born on the backs of worker abuse and wealth hoarding. Workers have started to see that this isn't paying off as they work away their whole lives to stay in underpaid and under-respected positions. Unfortunately, in this dystopian corporate hellscape where your coworkers are family and unhealthy work-life balance is glorified, corporations continue taking countless hours of our time asking us to go above and beyond for a job that will never appreciate us. No matter how many dollars we earn for the suites, we will not see a single hot cent as a bonus or raise. We should be grateful to work for poverty wages and two personal days a year.
In reality, quiet quitting isn't something special, and it shouldn't even be worth talking about. In truth, it's just the practice of doing the work you are paid to do. That would be the expectation and nothing more in a normal, sane world. However, we do have to talk about it because of its implications. In a society built on the poorest people contributing the most, a generation of quiet quitters is dangerous for our infrastructure. The working class's biggest weapon is a collective failure. As more people refuse to be used without compensation, our systems begin to crumble.
A perfect example is America's rampant teacher shortage. There is, of course, not a shortage of teachers but rather a shortage of teachers willing to be overworked, underpaid, and scapegoated by parents and administration alike. At the same time, all their concerns are being ignored. America has tons of qualified, hard-working teachers who are fed up with the extreme expectations of staying after contract hours, taking work home every night, and students and parents contacting at all hours, all for a poverty wage. They are also expected to finance their own classroom in addition to doing all this unpaid work.
Many people are complaining about the lack of quality teachers, but those same people need to ask themselves an important question: would you put up with all of that for a wage so low you have to have a second job? Of course not. And the sad reality is that while education is a glaring example, it is far from the only industry with this exact problem.
It's no surprise that with the newer generations’ focus on mental health and rejecting displays of useless pomp and circumstance, they would find fault with the tawdry, tedious song and dance of every manager interaction. Between the astonishing entitlement of middle managers and the constant bombardment of "hustle and grind" content online, it's ridiculous that we even have to have a term for this trend of fulfilling your contract and nothing more.
What's next for workers? Let us know your opinions in the comments
