So… Doing your job well is “quiet quitting” now? I don’t want my boss to think I’m quiet quitting, I Guess I’ll have to underperform instead.
Quiet firing on the other hand is giving raises that are under inflation. Companies should stop this quiet firing shit.
Giving raises? My employer quiet quit that more than a decade ago. Meanwhile inflation and price gouging march on.
What proportion of people have jumped ship in the last ~8 years as a result? (Understand you could have good reason for sticking around.)
It’s a very small company. About 1/3 have moved on. The attraction is that it’s relatively accommodating for other things in your life.
Ahh, flexibility definitely compensates for a good bit of opportunity cost. Know people who stay in easier remote jobs to avoid the responsibilities and demands that come with moving to certain higher-paid positions.
There’s also freedom from corporate culture, which I have had enough of in the past. Overall I think I’m happier keeping my perfectly tolerable job in its place and earning less, though I can see how others make a different choice and would negatively judge what I do.
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I fail to see how we are responsible for the emotional well being of our management. Did I do my job? Yep! Did I do it well? Yep! Stand and deliver thy raise O manager, or face the wrath of my competing job offer.
News organizations have employees as well. It doesn’t surprise me that they are in on the gaslighting.
If they don’t play ball, you think they’ll keep their job?
I am not placing blame, just observing that News Companies still have staff and could be on the side of the Capitalists when it comes to worker rights.
Edit: I think I understand. I agree, not all staff writers (or any?) could be in a position to refuse the editor when they say “write me a piece on quiet quitting”.
I think they mean the orgs, not the employees.
this. every so often someone posts an article on how wages are beating inflation and im like. where? who? this is not my experience.
If you want an inflation beating raise, you need to get a new job. Companies have long since stopped caring about employee retention.
Probably if you take an average and include the multimillionaires getting bigger raises.
I’ve taken a pay cut two years in a row for that reason. Last year was somewhat understandable with the insane inflation but this year kind of stung
How is taking a pay cut when there’s massive inflation even remotely understandable? Inflation means that they need to pay you more, not less; your costs are rising.
Businesses don’t care about your costs. They care about paying as little as possible for as good a quality as they can.
Same way you don’t care if your grocery store mega chain got hacked and lost $300 million, that’s not your problem, if they raise the price of bread you’ll go somewhere else.
I mean it’s understandable that they didn’t give everyone 6.5% raises. That’s a pretty huge raise
Find another job. You’ll quickly find out if you are worth the raise you wanted. My bet is you are.
I’ve got my feelers out there but I’m gonna stick it out here for another year - currently working on a certification to switch to a higher-paid position and the company is paying for it
I can’t wait until AI hits these middle managers that were just enough good at their jobs to earn a promotion and now spend their days sending angry emails to the people that actually do the work, while collecting more income than the workers… 🖕
AI’s can do their job right now. Haven’t you ever seen an AI not work right?
(Most managers suck, I like mine right now, and it’s odd. He’s stuck in meetings all day so I’m not. )
stop this
Bosses everywhere: taking notes “no… more… raises.” sets down the notepad “see, now they are speaking my language!”
“Quiet quitting” is a bullshit term meaning to do your job but nothing above or beyond that. Joshua Fluke has done multiple videos on this BS, and at this point there are plenty of other idiotic terms thrown around to try and make workers look bad.
It was always a stupid fucking term that equates doing a job with quitting.
Not increasing pay isn’t quit firing, because there is no firing. It is just businesses being stingy.
Edit: Guess I wasn’t clear enough that I am responding to the general statement that not giving raises is constructive dismissal, and didn’t add a footnote that not giving raises to specific people could be part of constructive dismissal. Nuance is hard.
Not increasing pay isn’t quit firing, because there is no firing. It is just businesses being stingy.
it’s constructive dismissal.
I feel like meeting that to a legal level is a stretch. Minor cost of living raises that don’t meet inflation doesn’t rise to that level in my uneducated understanding
Yeah it wasn’t entirely serious.
Only if it targets specific employees with the goal of getting them to quit. If the business doesn’t give raises in general they are just being cheap.
Not increasing pay with inflation is a pay cut because your pay is literally worth less without it.
In a sane world, if the fed is dictating the money supply, with their actions directly impacting inflation, every workers pay should be indexed to inflation. Same goes for taxation, welfare payments, etc. Companies raise their prices regardless.
I agree it’s a dumb term, so I made up my own dumb term. (At least I think I made it up)
Employees are allowed to be just as stingy as businesses.
Quiet quitting is the practice of meeting minimum expectations with low moral or engagement. Underperforming could lead to termination for not meeting minimum expectations.
Woosh.
Also quiet quitting isn’t anything except a bullshit term dreamed up by capitalist crybabies.
More like inexperienced middle-management. Discussing the team member’s reasons for disengagement could lead to a solution for them, or even multiple team members. Saying “I have nothing to complain about” proves ineffective leadership looking for cause to terminate.
The only solution I would accept involves guillotines for the rich and the immediate end to the exploitation of the proletariat globally, so I don’t think that’s going to work for most middle managers.
That’s fine. I’m just saying the managers in that headline are the problem, not the employees.
You are saying it in a way that sounds like someone doing their job is disengagement.
Engagement and morale are measured independently from performance. The blurb states that the employees are meeting minimum expectations of performance, so the manager has “nothing to complain about.” I’m saying that’s bullshit leadership. If your employees are unhappy, you should ask them why and address any work-related dissatisfaction.
Engagement and disengagement are effectively separate forms of labor expected of an employee, though, and they’re virtually never formally codified. If I’m a coder and my job is to write code, don’t expect me to be enthused about writing terrible medical billing software. Enthusiasm and engagement are emotional labor, which I’m not compensated for, and which, to some extent, you can’t realistically expect me to demonstrate. I’m not able to “be engaged” beyond performing my tasks and whatever technical or administrative duties I’ve been assigned. Expecting me to contribute in a way orthogonal to that requires my job to be fundamentally different from what it actually is.
That’s fine if that’s how you like to work. All I’m saying is if an employee is silently quitting by doing the same work but shows less engagement/low morale, the solution isn’t for the manager isn’t to shrug their shoulders because you can’t fire them. That implies the manager’s goal is to terminate due to low performance, which is really shitty leadership.
The issue many people have is how some bosses redefine underperforming as “not doing enough unpaid overtime”.
Well that’s completely fucked. I don’t work for free. That’s also illegal.
Well that’s completely fucked. That’s also illegal.
Exactly. But a little illegal activity never stopped a corp. Wage theft is rampant, estimated at $50 billion a year.
I don’t work for free.
And that’s called quiet quitting in OP’s post.
I said this in another thread, but I’m not criticizing quiet quitting. I’m criticizing the managers’ response to it. If your employees are meeting expectations but unhappy, you should try to improve their work life, not shrug your shoulders because you don’t have a reason to fire them.
Then just make the minimum 30 pieces of flair 🙄
Quiet quitting: doing what you’re paid for
Normal working: doing what you’re paid for but also asking managers for more work when you’re done -> that’s what’s expected from management and also takes some load off their shoulders, they love that
Over achievement: doing what you’re paid for and more without asking management -> management will promise you a seat at the table of you continue doing that long enough!
If there’s advancement opportunities try to do the second one until you reach a point where you’re happy and then do the first one :)
Hahaha someone’s living in fairy land.
If they deep throat the boot hard enough, maybe they’ll get to wear it someday!
I’m a skeptic when it comes to lots of things where the common man is getting fucked.
May I ask y’all how highly-paid individuals in high positions came to be that way?
Are they ALL the results of nepotistic practices, ALL inheritors of wealth? Or 80% got there that way?
(In the SF Bay Area, certainly seems I know high performers who work their asses off, make shit tons of money, get promotions before jumping ship to other companies, work at startups that get acquired…)
Disclaimer: not endorsing neglecting your family or personal life for a pipe dream of prosperity, just sharing one perspective
Edit: I forgot, the argument could easily be “the vast majority of high earners got there by job hopping”!
The Bay Area is a well known warp in reality. Don’t expect your experiences there to map to experiences elsewhere.
And even so, it’s usually who you know, how well you can sell to VC, and luck that determine success out there.
:) good point. Can be a nice reality warp, for the non-super commuters who can enjoy the weather by the Bay/Pacific.
Edited in an obvious miss:
Edit: I forgot, the argument could easily be “the vast majority of high earners got there by job hopping”!
Luck really helps too. Pretty much a necessity.
A good point on the luck aspect, and you reminded me of the fact that people who already have money have “better luck” in the respect that they have more opportunities to try new things.
It’s like one of those carnival games where you throw darts at balloons. Middle-class kids might get one or two darts while wealthy kids get 10. And the poor kids are the ones working at the carnival.
Something like 20% of businesses fail in their first year, and 80% are gone by year 5. If you can afford to start 5 different businesses, your odds of one surviving long enough to get bought up by Google or something are much better than somebody who put their life savings into their company.
Absolutely!
We built some proof for the darts phenomenon in an economics class. Professor gave everyone a certain number of pieces of candy. Everyone was allowed to trade for a while, then we counted candy at the end. (Might’ve been stipulations on how trades worked, can’t recall). As you’d imagine, any kid who started with 10 pieces of candy ended with more candy than any kid who started with 3 pieces. Powerful example 🍭
In the current climate, internal promotions are a rarity. They say that you should be changing companies roughly every 3 years to ensure you’re getting paid what you’re worth, as pay raises don’t keep up with experience. New responsibilities come quickly while promotions and pay raises come slowly. The number of times I’ve heard somebody say that they left a job for an immediate 10-30% (or even 50%!) pay raise and reduced responsibilities for even the same job has gotten to the point where I just expect it now.
Like everything else, it varies, but company loyalty is long dead.
Ah yes! Had to add:
Edit: I forgot, the argument could easily be “the vast majority of high earners got there by job hopping”!
Yeah, and there’s the old saying, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” Even ignoring the nepotism that that can obviously be applied to, there’s something major to be said about social networking and finding a good job (whether that’s a new job or a promotion within a company or even changing fields entirely).
When I was in college over a decade ago, our school had a program set up with GDC (the Game Devlopers’ Convention) to send 3rd year students and put them up in a hotel for the duration of the convention so that they could meet industry professionals and see what was new in the industry. And right from the first day, our professors expressed how important going to the convention and getting to know the people in your major were because they could potentially lead to you getting your next job, whether your first year out of school or decades later. And that was years before the current climate of the job sector had really taken off. Some of those guys had been making games since the 80s or 90s.
Make a good impression on someone, and they might call you about a new job opening before it’s publicly posted.
Makes some sense, eh? The social creature thinks to those with whom it has relationships when deciding who to nominate for an employment relationship.
Certainly downsides, like missing better candidates you’ve never met and a bias against introverted or socially anxious candidates. That said, not a phenomenon I imagine changing much. So many applicants for every post - an IRL filter is effective at, if nothing else, shrinking the pool significantly.
If you don’t have any advancement opportunities where you’re working change job or work your wage. Same if you don’t want to move up, work your wage.
I don’t know why you guys don’t get it…
Can’t work your wage if it doesn’t keep up with inflation, you’d just earn less every year.
Then change job or try to get promoted, living on the street won’t help you solve this shit.
Tell me you’re 14 and have never worked a day in your life without telling me you’re 14 and have never worked a day in your life.
Gonna have to add a couple of decades to that number buddy.
Ah, just never had to work a day in your life then.
I work a job that requires a highschool diploma and that offers advancement opportunities and people at my level and higher are younger than me.
In fact, my manager two levels above me is quite a bit younger than me and he started at the most basic level years before me, so I guess these opportunities are open to people younger than me… Huh…
Also, very funny that you’re taking to a millennial like they were a boomer…
OK boomer.
This person is a manager
Not a manager, just someone who did exactly what I said, worked a bit harder for a year and a half, moved two steps up the ladder and now sitting cozy doing exactly what I’m paid for and nothing more as I don’t want to move any higher because it would mean being in a position of authority.
Do you really think I would tell you to aim to reach a point where you’re happy and then start to work your wage if I was a manager?
Or crawl so far up management’s ass while throwing all your coworkers under the bus. THAT is how you get ahead. Stepping on your coworkers.
I actually got promoted because I was the guy helping everyone do their job…
I actually thought you were joking until the last sentence
Get off your knees, you slave
“you slave”
He said to the guy telling others to reach the point where they’re happy with what they’re doing and to then work their wage and nothing more.
If I was on my knees in front of management I would be telling everyone to just keep working harder forever, not to stop doing it once they don’t have or want advancement opportunities.
I’ll simper to no one for “advancement”
Then work your fucking wage and that’s it then, don’t bitch when others decide to put a bit more effort in order to move ahead if you’re expecting to be offered the same opportunity without showing that you’re actually able to do more than what is asked of you.
If I see someone eating the same meal every day I will come to the conclusion that they’re either unable or unwilling to cook something else so I won’t ask them to cook me something else.
See? There’s that slave mentality again
“Master won’t like you unless you work harder!”
If you don’t have any initiative don’t be surprised if you never achieve anything in life.
I had an employee review with my manager this week, at my request. She told me she wasn’t comfortable uptraining me right now even though they badly need the help in the position I asked to be crosstrained for, because they’d rather hire someone just for the role; but we could talk about it again in two months. After a little digging, I found that (A) they can’t afford to lose me from my lower-paid role and (2) they know I’m looking for another job and don’t want to train me until I demonstrate I’m planning to stay.
My response is that (A) well you’re definitely gonna lose me now and (2) I’m definitely no longer willing to stay.
Similar situation on my end awhile back. Location had begun losing people. I was in a bottom rung management position, more title than authority, and the team knew it. However, I was also the only manager willing to be consistently on later shifts. Due to pretty intense compartmentalization issues were often isolated and fixed by managers within each department. Except later on at night I was alone with a smaller team. This presented a bit of a situation:
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If a problem came up I was expected to text or call a manager. As you can imagine, they did not often reply or pick up.
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Many problems require rather immediate solutions.
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I wasn’t being trained to receive the skills necessary to deal with many situations so I began enabling key members of the evening team and standing in front of them if mistakes were made, acting as a wall.
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Due to all of this, and a lot of work being handled by a smaller team, (and some issues going consistently ignored by senior management) we saw several people leave. In the middle of all this I was isolated and made out to be the reason for some systemic issues, told I could no longer take the initiative to help, and the team caught wind.
Eventually I began looking for other jobs. When I let my bosses know boy were they surprised. By the time I left one manager had claimed to have started having anxiety attacks during their shift, the whole unreachable during situations thing became a problem for upper, and well…long story short shit and fan began to meet.
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If a problem came up I was expected to text or call a manager. As you can imagine, they did not often reply or pick up.
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Many problems require rather immediate solutions.
These are not your problems. If management has enacted a procedure that doesn’t work, don’t change it or you will be blamed for any failure.
Send a few emails to document your opinion that there are problems. Otherwise, do exactly what was recommended. You want the policy to fail. Don’t try to improve it without management support.
I learned this in my previous job. We were a city-owned theater, which came with all of the trappings of government bureaucracy. But we were also open after hours, and did a lot of technical work for our shows. The city’s IT would log off on Friday at 5pm, and not log back in again until 8am on Monday. We were one of the few departments that was open over the weekend and after hours, (often until 1 or 2am when loading shows out.)
So naturally, we butted heads with IT a lot. Because we didn’t have access to change things we often needed to change. Whenever we needed to urgently troubleshoot something before a show started, our hands were almost always tied by IT. And IT’s given solution was always the same. Submit a ticket, and we’ll get to it when we get to it. But when you have 2000 people waiting on a show to start at 7pm on a Saturday, you can’t wait for IT to get back into the office on Monday.
Historically, the solution was to use our own gear. Every technician had their own personal laptop, so they could use that instead of the city laptop. But this caused issues of its own, because we couldn’t connect to any of the city-controlled gear as the city network was MAC filtered, (and IT obviously wasn’t going to allow our personal devices to connect to their network.) We worked with what we had, worked around problems we couldn’t fix, and it was a lot of extra stress for no extra benefit; The higher-ups didn’t see a problem because the shows were never visibly impacted. And IT didn’t see a problem, because the higher-ups weren’t complaining.
Eventually, we just started letting it burn. Shows suddenly started 15 to 30 minutes late, (which was unheard of in a building where even 2 minutes late was considered unacceptable.) Clients didn’t get equipment they had paid for, because it was broken on Friday evening and we couldn’t troubleshoot it over the weekend. Projectors didn’t have video feeds, because techs stopped using their personal laptops for shows. Et cetera, et cetera. Instead, the techs simply started noting every time they wanted to fix something but couldn’t because their hands were tied.
And wouldn’t you know it, the system got fixed. IT was suddenly required to keep someone on call for weekend tickets. Because when people stop propping up the broken system, all of the flaws get discovered and heads roll until shit gets fixed.
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I remember doing self assessments before reviews, I just gave myself 5s because they were going to change everything to 3.5 anyhow unless you invented cold fusion and sucked everyone’s dick
Well, Mr Chalupapocalypse, your breakthrough on cold fusion is really profitable for the company, but the VP of marketing was disappointed you didn’t cup his balls during last week’s blowjob session, so…best we can do is a 3.9
Woah check out this guy’s resume
(A)
(2)
I do this shit all the time haha
Nice, how did you do your digging? Some key relationships in the company?
I asked questions during the review. My.manager was evasive but it wasn’t hard to put together. In the restaurant industry, everyone is hiring right now as they expand for patio season. That won’t be the case as much in two months and we both know it; if I’m going to leave it’ll likely be in the next two weeks.
Hope you secure something likely to be slightly or WAY better soon buddy 🔥
Somewhat related, advice about being irreplaceable is bad for this exact reason. The more replaceable you are, the easier to promote you and take longer vacations. Sure you might be able to get fired more easily, but most managers won’t put forth the effort.
Not trying to be an asshole, but this is privilege in action. For low paying jobs, managers will fire you at the drop of a hat. Jobs that pay better are more secure.
To be fair (2) is kinda understandable, but this has to be the most incompetent management ever.
Nope. Just standard corporate management.
If they communicated better, and offered the training/position/salary increase as incentive to stay, that would (imo) be a better course of action. This just feels rude and incompetent
Well I mean I am awful with people, but this problem even I could solve. They had about 3 possible holes to fit the peg through, but no, they just threw the toybox out of the window.
MAYBE OP is just awful at their job. But if they wanted to keep him where he was, that makes little sense.
Additional info: I typically work the least desirable shifts because of family obligations. Me leaving this position or even dropping to part time would leave a hole in the schedule, and she’s very lazy when it comes to the schedule. I’m offering to take the same shift in a different role.
She’s thoroughly mid. She has strengths but connecting with her supervisees is not one of them. I’ve had worse.
At this point, you don’t fucking care. Go to their manager and tell them about it.
Saving that for my exit interview.
Doing your job at a high standard is a problem? Who makes this garbage up?
It’s companies gaslighting us that we are either looking for new roles, or we are working hard to make more money/ask for a raise or else we’ll find a new role.
Managers see both these things as “not being part of the fam”, but really they just want to take more and give less while playing the victim.
Yeah I always thought ‘quiet quitters’ referred to people checking out of their jobs emotionally and doing just barely enough to not get fired, so actually underperforming, not because they couldn’t do better but because they stopped caring at some point. In that sense they have already quit, quietly. But now it seems that anyone who doesn’t go above and beyond can be a ‘quiet quitter’? Doesn’t make much sense to me.
Nah, quit quitting is just the new term for it. Boomers called it working to the letter of your contract. Quit quitting isn’t doing less than your job duties. It’s simply refusing to bend over backwards and give your employer all of your free time. You don’t take on extra responsibility. You don’t come in early or stay late. You come in on time, do your exact job duties as written, then you go home.
But this terrifies employers, who have historically relied on manipulation and coercion to get employees to work beyond the scope of what they were hired for. So they’ve started calling it “quit quitting” in an effort to rebrand it as something negative.
They’re just toeing the line for their corporate masters. Capitalists want 150% effort for 100% pay since the profit margin on that extra 50% alone is huge.
I’ve known people who are the best workers on their team, but put in like 40% effort. Does that count as quiet quitting? IDK.
To be clear, I’m not excusing the article, which is a bad joke. That being said, there are plenty of people out there that are really good at their jobs, but don’t put in full effort. I don’t have a problem with these people at all (really who does 100% effort all of the time?).
really who does 100% effort all of the time?
Idiots
They don’t just want your work output; they want your soul.
They want the old days where people were 100% believers in their jobs at places like WeWork, Uber, Tesla, and Facebook…before the general public became disillusioned with tech companies specifically and companies in general more broadly. They want “evangelists” and the belief of the mid-Obama years back…
The only problem is that many have looked at things over the last ten years and found that the euphoric promises made by the management of companies were lies.
Because people cannot like you and you still feel obligated to earn your paycheck and you have honor. Unlike the dip shits you are quitting from because they are drunken assholes that can’t see past their whiney little emergencies.
I think it is meant as satire
Neither the site nor the author point to any of this being satire, unfortunately.
They’re just that much detached from reality.
You are right, I assummed it was like the onion, but appears the irishtimes business section plays to the businesses it attracts ( of shitty companies avoiding taxes in their own country)
There’s a great reply to this in the same publication: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2024/04/27/quiet-quitters-or-good-workers/
Sir, – I read with interest Olive Keogh’s article (“Quiet quitting: You always had workers who did 9-5 but it’s a creeping malaise, employers say”, April 25th).
The article defines working one’s contract hours as a form of quitting, a contortion of fact that I have struggled to grasp since laying eyes on it.
It is asserted that employees are obliged to put in extra hours, do additional work and recalibrate their work-life balance for the “benefits” of social capital, “wellbeing” and career success.
I have a novel proposal. Pay employees in actual capital for the additional time they are expected to work.
Dispense with the relaxation classes on their lunch breaks and the sweet treats and the tokenistic attitude of management to the labour that drives their business.
Instead, resource staff sufficiently to complete work within business hours, respect the rights of staff to a fulfilling life not defined by their day jobs, and stop using gaslighting terms like “quiet quitting” for fulfilling the terms of their contract of employment.
This may seem radical to those managers who have been around the block, but KPIs (key performance indicators) don’t spend time with my loved ones nor do they put food on the table. – Yours, etc,
SHANE FITZPATRICK,
Dublin 7.
That letter is way too polite for the “go fuck yourselves” that I had in mind… I honestly think we should start actually spitting in the faces of managers of that kind that we happen to know in private life, be it family or neighbors, just show them disdain and disgust coming from people whom they have no power over.
Agreed. However, the letter you or I might have written probably wouldn’t have been published. Haha.
Unionize people. I joined a union and there’s no “we’re a team” bullshit or the boss going “do me a favor”. 4pm hits, you drop what you’re doing and go home. You get paid for your job, and the union fees are nothing considering the pay is way higher for union workers in my field.
Depends on the Union, sadly. My wife was a Union rep, she had a grievence, the higher up union leaders and the employer met ahead of her scheduled meeting and screwed her over in the grievance meeting. I’m not sure if she was more mad at losing the grievance, or having to pay dues to be screwed by the union.
This happens at my job too. Overall the benefits of my union far outweigh how shit they are and the union dues. I’d rather have a crappy union than none at all.
I know my company would screw me over much worse than my union and company combined if there was no union.
I’ve found having a spine is much more beneficial than remaining at a job a person hates and expected some union rep to do the looking out for yourself on your behalf.
Being in a union is as much about sticking up for your fellow workers as is it is about “looking after No1”.
Sure, if you don’t like your job you could just quit and move on, but that’s not always a choice. You could organise as a workforce that fights to make work better not just for yourself and your colleagues, but for your fellow countrymen and your children’s generation too.
you don’t have a spine or a brain. I bet you vote for Trump.
My unionized company changed our mandated hours from 45 hours a week to 50 hours a week like 2 weeks after I joined it was one of the shittiest jobs I ever had. Pay was good but only because I was forced to sit there for 10 hours a day lol
Imagine how shitty that job would have been without a union!
Unions dont make shitty jobs better, dude, get a clue.
I don’t think these problems should be dismissed out of hand. There is guidance out there on how to take back a shitty union.
The UAW has long been neutered with poor leadership, and sometimes leadership that gets thrown in jail for good reasons. They’ve recently rebuilt and are making huge gains.
I’m in the UAW, we used to not be able to vote on leadership. Now we can, and with a guy like Shawn Fain in the big chair I feel like we’ve already come a long way. I voted for him and I’ll do it again.
It’s fine though I quit it and got a normal non union job that’s incredible. Better starting pay better benefits more time off no forced OT while I can work as much OT I want. Gravy job so glad I quit.
Oh don’t forget the matched 401K that’s cool
One of the very few interviews in my life that I ended early was the one where in the third hour of it, they usually mentioned that the (competitive) salary was based on a 45 hour work week, with “occasional” mandatory overtime as the needs of the company dictated.
Knowing from earlier that they were very short at the position I was interviewing for, I asked for a more specific answer on what I could expect as “occasional” and the response was, “Well the work for your position has been backlogged since the previous employee quit, so for the first 3 to 6 months you can expect to work 50-60 hours each week, every week. After that, it will probably only be two weeks a month. But you can work those extra hours on the weekends too, so it’s not as bad as it sounds!”
I was already done but I did some quick mental math and realized that dividing even their higher salary by that many more hours, not only was it insanely more work but was actually like a 15% pay cut, in terms of hourly rate, than the job I currently had.
I explained this to the guy and asked how much wiggle room there was on salary and he basically said something to the effect of, “Maybe in a few years you can negotiate salary, but coming in you’re really in no position to argue for more pay.”
So I thanked him for his time and told him the interview was over.
They don’t just need an employee, they need 2.
If they are completing their assigned workloads where does the quitting happen?
Quiet quitting has always referred to the extra bullshit that employers pressure employees into doing.
In America we’ve fallen into this work culture that implies you aren’t really part of a team unless you are constantly putting forth more than what the employer is paying you for.
The undertone of this headline is that managers feel uneasy because so-called “quiet quitters” won’t take on extra work or unpaid hours or exhibit overwhelming enthusiasm, but just do literally what they have to at a passable or high quality.
The gaslighting part is that those workers aren’t doing anything wrong, but they aren’t bending over backwards for their employers, so corporate America wants to paint the picture that those workers are awful time thieves instead of just burnt out wage slaves.
I hear some countries in Asia are CRAZY bad for these kind of expectations and have been for a long time.
Oh absolutely. In Japan for example if you are unable to work or you get removed from your career, it is socially understandable for you to consider suicide. Lots of Japanese citizens put their job before even their families or the potential of having a family.
It’s actually pretty fuckin crazy what Japanese work culture does to their citizens.
I’ve been reading Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs and evidently they don’t fire people in Japan. If they want rid of you, they just give you less and less to do until you’re sitting in the office all day getting paid to do nothing, and the cultural expectation is that you quit out of shame rather than just accepting money for nothing.
How do I get one of those jobs as a WFH employee in the United States? I’ll gladly accept my shame.
Oh I’m so ashamed. Whatever will I do. Please don’t pay me MORE money that would make the shame even greater!
Oh no, not a bonus! The shame, it burns!
It only works for cultures where individuals have to sepukku if they bring shame on family.
In the USA, bringing shame upon family is considered a rite of passage so it doesn’t quite have the same effect
I wouldn’t recommend anyone become a software engineer but its worked for me
Heh. I already am that, but I do have to work. It’s not as hard as when I was digging ditches for a living, but it’s definitely still work. Sometimes it’s slow, sometimes there’s a million things to do.
Where do I sign up?
I wonder if this also has something to do with the company itself avoiding shame too. Like firing an employee is a sign of weakness, that you hired someone like that in the first place? Or potentially a difference in benefits or a pension that they have to pay?
That’s a thought I had as well, and based on my extremely limited knowledge and research I think it’s the conflict that’s being avoided. Rather than dealing with the person directly, you use indirect actions that signal the expected result when taken in that social context and then let the pressure of those expectations generate the result you need without you ever directly doing anything. My understanding is that the pressure is pretty enormous, your coworkers will basically shun you out of fear of being targeted themselves and resentment for all the work you’re not doing that they have to pick up instead.
Geez… how about my workload drops to zero and I commit sudoku instead?
Look up China’s 669 practice. South Korea is also known for having an especially brutal work culture. The two manage to make even Japan’s work culture look almost reasonable by comparison (Japan famously requiring long hours and lifelong dedication to your employer).
The idea is that they complete tasks ahead of schedule and then slow play results to the predetermined deadlines. It’s hilarious to me that people are saying this is a genZ thing, since this shit has been going on in tech fields forever. Literally everyone I have ever known has taken “working vacations” by pretending some work is taking longer than it really is.
Bonus points if you are smart enough to still turn it in a day early to keep the heat low.
It used to be called “looking busy” and people have been doing it ever since working at a job was a thing.
And thus is my greatest weakness cause I hate being bored so if I run out of work I look for more.
Get a second job. Start a hobby. Start your own side gig.
If you just do extra work for the megacorp for no extra compensation, then they’re just using you.
Yep just me doing extra work for no salary… well. I dunno. Company just implemented a new bonus structure based on the hours you record per project. I know it’s just so they can see who’s underperformed to fire, but I might get quarterly bonuses now for working longer hours.
The next time they’re denied a raise.
“Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.”
– George Carlin.
I had basically this exact conversation with my supervisor last week. She was like, “I like to have ___ done by Thursdays,” because I was sick on Thursday and said I’d do it first thing Friday morning. So I said, “Ok, so is the deadline for this task Thursdays then? Because that’s never been communicated to me.” And she said, “Well, I like to have it done by Thursdays.” Holy fuck, JUST TELL ME HOW MANY PIECES OF FLAIR I NEED.
Anyway, I’m looking for a new job because I can’t work in a place that wants to penalize people for not living up to expectations they didn’t know existed. My entire review (first one in 2 1/2 years) was a series of “Remember this thing from months ago? Well we didn’t like how you did that but we never said anything and just sat on it until now.” Cool, thanks for setting me up to fail, appreciate that.
Remember this thing from months ago?
Remember the most basic principles ever?
Exactly. I’ve always known my boss was great at most of her job but not very good at people management (because I don’t think she particularly wants to do it), but being blindsided with things it’s too late to even address was so demoralizing. What the heck am I supposed to do about a phone call from December about an issue that’s been long since resolved?
Unfortunately all you can do is try to thicken your skin and attempt to “manage upwards”.
“I appreciate the feedback and I’ll bear that in mind in the future, but there’s nothing I can do about this months later. Next time let me know when I still have an opportunity to correct the issue and I’ll gladly course-correct.”
And refuse to sign the review. Be specific that you don’t accept being penalized for mistakes you made months before you were told the rule.
You can push back while being polite and professional in some places, so it’s worth a shot if you’re already being shit on or are on the way out.
If you’ve tried it and gotten nowhere though, just disengage and try to stop caring so much.
Your manager’s failure to communicate is their problem, not yours.
the manager in that scene is Mike Judge and knowing that makes his bit so much more enjoyable to watch
It’s time to rematch office space
It’s time to rematch office space
Rematch it to what?
(I know what you mean)
Rematch with two chicks at the same time
That’s it? If you had a million dollars, you’d rematch with two chicks at the same time?
Damn straight. Chicks dig a dude that rematches.
I could rematch it against The Cube and see which scenario is worse
Trading Places needs a reboot. Speaking of old movies that got it.
“Jill, I’m afraid we have a problem. Your quality of work is very high, as always. But you don’t look enough like your job isn’t soul crushing. I’m not saying you look like you’re bored out of your mind or that I think working here is depriving you of your will to live. I’m just saying that there are times when you’re not smiling like a completely unhinged person and that makes me question whether you really want to be here.”
Reminds me of my art professor’s story about getting her doctorate, in which a bunch of tenured professors came together to review her work to give her the degree. One professor disagreed with giving her doctorate because apparently she didn’t look like she had a tough time getting it. That sent my art professor over the edge because she’d worked so hard and suffered so much for it so she started crying in front of the professors and told them she wasn’t going to bother getting her doctorate anymore and that she was quitting right there and then. The other tenured professors were quick to convince the other to change their mind and eventually gave the degree, but my art professor still remembers how shitty it was to decide something so important to her on the basis that she suffered much less than her peers in producing something good or better work.
Shes just working there…menacingly!
If your business model depends on me doing extra work for free, then you aren’t a great business person
That’s the whole deal of maximizing profit. If you can get your employees to work extra for free, you have a very successful business model.
If you think this is sad then maybe you’d agree that we need a change.
Yes, but you need to throw in some consideration for your employees, either material or symbolic.
That would be the nice and fair thing to do… However people are often happy with just a pat in the back so that’s what they get.
Thanks for explaining it! That’s it, right? I was wondering what tf it was trying to allude to as “quiet quitting”. This isn’t satire, then?
There’s always been a push towards seeing working as a value in itself, but it was easier to trick people into working around the clock when wages allowed to reach one’s goals (a house, financial stability, sending your kids to college). It’s more difficult when workers live paycheck to paycheck and know that they won’t be economically able to retire.
So, in other words, the boss has nothing to complain about
But they have an uneasy feelings!
I’ve got that stressful uneasy feeling
And I know youre going to let me down
Because I’m already standing
On your neck
Followed by “Stop Takin’ It Easy”
And yet, here they are, complaining, while also whining that nOboDy wAnTs tO wOrK!!11112 🤦♀️
Moreover, the boss now has to work a little harder and negotiate performance goals that track with increased performance. Employees aren’t going to do that themselves anymore.
As organized labor gains more steam, this is the kind of bullshit that’s going to be thrust in front of our eyes on the “news” more, and more, and more.
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https://www.epi.org/publication/union-membership-data/
Overall, it shows union rates being mostly a wash in 2023, but that’s due to a large increase in total jobs that year; raw number of members went up, rate slightly declined. Black workers made up almost the entire grid increase.
The point that maybe relates most to what OP was saying:
These statistics don’t capture the number of workers who want to join unions. Evidence suggests that in 2023, more than 60 million workers wanted to join a union but couldn’t do so.
This reply came more from the big wins Labor has experienced the last two years, such as the auto, rail, and writers’ strikes being resolved, not individual stats.
I think there’s also the problem of certain sectors of work, like tech or retail, which should be unionized but aren’t. Either because a lack of a history of unionization or because companies can too easily close a location and open another one across the street.
Quiet quitting is when I do my work
Oh yes. The company where I work at does these performance reviews: doing 100% gives you a ‘C’ (as a grade). I do everything that is expected from me without anything to complain about? Yeah, that’s not good enough.
Fuck that.
There is the silent complaint that you could do more… Give up your spare time for your work. Work yourself tired and burn out for your company! That’s what they want to see.
I’m looking for a new job while I still work there.
Oh man I would just make it a point to celebrate getting a C with my colleagues. “Champion Rank” or something lol.
