"Quietly quitting" or simply, "working quietly"

August 23, 2022. Some old ideas get new labels and then a lot of attention for the superficial mainstream media, not just bloggers, pundits and editorial writers. Take "quietly quitting" for instance, and this re4cent reflection on the term by Ann Althouse.

Quiet quitting — "renouncing hustle culture, quitting 'the idea of going above and beyond at work'" — is "resonating strongly" with "Gen Z and millennial knowledge workers."

Writes Taylor Telford in "'Quiet quitting' isn’t really about quitting. Here are the signs. Burnout is at an all-time high. Here’s what managers should be on the lookout for" (WaPo). What managers should be on the lookout for? This column is oriented toward management! What about the workers who are claiming entitlement to their own mind and their own time and consciously limiting their work to what they are paid to do? The column quotes Joe Grasso, a "senior director of workforce transformation at Lyra Health," who cites warning signs like "withdrawing from the team, limiting communication and interaction to only what’s required" and "cynicism or apathy" or "complaints from colleagues... [who] feel frustrated by having to pick up the slack or feeling shut out." It's like a disease!

“Much like quiet quitting is becoming a trend on social media, it could also become an infectious attitude in the workplace as employees start to compare notes and recognize that they are having similar experiences about work taking more than it’s giving.” Employees sharing opinions about whether they're paid enough for what they do? Heavens!

Let's look at the top-rated comment over there:

Doing what you're paid for and not killing yourself to work overtime isn't quitting - it's living a sane life. I think the concept is right, calling it "quiet quitting" gives managers the idea that people are loafing instead of just doing their jobs but not being on call 24-7. Other countries manage this - to call doing your job and then leaving to live your life revolutionary is a sad commentary on American values.

Exactly.

How is doing the job you are paid to do worthy of being labeled as "quietly quitting"? In my college days, studying labor relations, the term was called, "working to rule," and was a pejorative term used to describe union workers who insisted on doing only the work specified in the contract, and no more. And in my experience at Bethlehem Steel, this had nothing to to with "work-life balance." For instance, one colleague used the minimal effort routine at Bethlehem to allow him to hold another full-time job; he rested during work at the steel plant, primarily because of union featherbedding that added unnecessary workers, the way Tony Soprano would organize a work site in New Jersey. And we all know what came of the heavily unionized American steel industry: inflated wages, Cadillac benefits, and low to zero increases in productivity, then blaming "cheap foreign competition" as the cause of their self-created problems.

Odd that the term "work ethic" or, God forbid, "protestant work ethic," is never used anymore. Or "the American Dream." Even the ultimate slacker, Barack Obama, claimed that "hard work" should get you ahead in this country, not "quietly quitting." And he was still wrong because working "hard" is insufficient and even sometimes unnecessary to "get ahead." The term widely used is, "work smarter, not harder." Maybe that's the real precursor to "quietly quitting." In any case, the use and popularity of this facile term is a sign of the times, a time where every good deed gets punished and many bad deeds get rewarded, where 700 violent and deadly riots in one year can be termed as "mostly peaceful," because 4,300 other protest were not violent. Seven hundred not peaceful George Floyd protests earn progressive approval while one January 6 protest, aided and abetted by the capitol police and where a protester -- not policemen -- was killed, is judged to be an existential threat to America.

Exactly.