Quiet Quitting

I'm 48 and won't put my work email on my phone. I actually just had a customer ask me to text her because she's off today. Not going to happen. I replied to her email with the answer to her question, though. I will not give a customer my cell number. I haven't done it in the 10.5 years I've been here.

I can’t say I blame the younger generation and I understand the disaffection. It used to be that people could rely on one job for many years, and even for their entire career, and the reward was a decent life. Being able to purchase a house, pay bills, raise children, save for retirement; in other words, achieving the markers of a middle class life.

Most of the younger people I know now are saddled with huge school loans, facing a housing market with prices beyond their reach, facing another possible recession where their jobs could be eliminated in a heartbeat, etc, no matter how much they hustle. Wages have not kept up as the cost of living has rapidly increased.

Corporate America has always been about the bottom line and anyone who thinks they’re irreplaceable because of how many hours they put into work hasn’t paid attention to what happened to the generations prior to theirs. In the Great Recession alone, we lost close to 9 million jobs, and vast numbers of people were not able to recover fully. The financial damage it wrought on Millennials and Gen X, the hardest hit, is still resonating to this day. Is it any wonder Gen Z doesn’t consider work as the be-all-end-all?

I just can't let go of the idea that if you are on the clock, you SHOULD be working. You shouldn't be coasting. If your task is done, you should ask for another. I think that is vastly different than being pushed to go go go and sacrifice personal time to your job. 

I work for two entrepreneurs. They "work" in one way or another 24 hours a day. It was a struggle in the beginning for them to realize I would give them my full attention and effort while I was at work, but they hired me to work Mon-Fri 9-4. I am not available outside of those hours. That is not even something they consider for themselves so it was an adjustment in thinking. BUT...I also let them know if my workload is light and I can take on something else during those hours. I don't spend time on personal calls or on social media when I'm working. I give them what they pay me for. 

MY 23 yo son just joined the workforce as a back end programmer.  He had two offers: one in the midwest which had a 100% in office policy, made no bones that he would work 50 hours a week minimum, had lots of mandatory ra-ra time,etc; the other was here in the Silicon Valley which has complete flexible work location, he gets one Friday off a month and his birthday as holidays, and he has only worked maybe 42 hours a week so far.  Obviously he chose option 2.  His free time is very important and while he likes his work, his music and hobbies are his life.

ETA:  The salaries were close and his money would have gone farther in the mid west, but in the end, his free time won out.

I don't think quiet quitting is a bad idea at all.

This generation figured out that the "Work hard, give freely of your time, and it will pay off!" crap we were raised with isn't true in today's world. Or maybe it has never been true. Anyway, good for them for figuring it out and having the guts to say, "That's not in my contract."

Know your value and act accordingly. I'd sure do things differently if I were to go back to the classroom.

I am a retire/rehire SLP. We are short-handed at the moment, and it will be a very busy year. One thing that I am happy about is that I am paid hourly.

Sure, I’ll bring work home on the weekends when I have to. But I get to bill for it, and that makes it a bit easier. I would love to get everything done at work, but when I write IEPs and ETRs, I need a block of time, and quiet. It isn’t always possible at school.

I'm 50 years old, so solidly Gen X. I was raised to work very hard and always give 110% to your job. I have always gone above and beyond and done whatever it takes.

I have really been working on myself in the last several months. I am getting to the place where I realize that the attitude of "ms. dependable" is really a weakness and not the strength I have always taken it for. I was listening to the podcast "we can do hard things" (which is 1000% the best podcast on the planet) and there was an episode with Brene Brown. They were talking about Brene's ability to "dig deep and always get the job done" as a superpower. The conversation circled around and the (paraphrased) statement of "that dig deep has to come from somewhere. What you are actually doing is taking soil from places it rightfully belongs - family, health, friends, etc. It sounds much less benevolent to say I rob soil from important aspects of my life to fill the one hole for instant gratification". That thought hit me right between the eyes.

I have stopped working weekends and nights after my kiddo is in bed. I'm trying to prioritize my health and my family as much as I prioritize my job.

The biggest change at work that I've noticed is : absolutely nothing. No one has come to me and complained that I wasn't here on a Saturday, just like they didn't praise me when I was. I spend more time with my family. Now I am a work in progress. I still do the extras, but not all the time. I am making me as much as a priority to take care of as I do EVERYTHING else.
I have some younger co-workers that are in the "if you want more, pay more" category and I do sometimes still struggle with thinking less of them or think they're lazy. It's hard to unwind all of that indoctrination we've had our whole life.

I feel like all things this is a pendulum. We swung hard to one side in the 80-90's with "work work work" and I feel now we've swung hard to the other side. I suspect that in the next decade, we'll find a middle ground

I definitely relate to this article right now! I'm at the point in my life (age 50) where I'm not interested in putting in extra effort or going above & beyond. I get my assignments and projects done but I'm not volunteering for more projects. I did do that for years and when I was in sales in benefitted me greatly with added commissions! Now that I shifted roles and am not a direct seller I am no longer taking calls or answering emails on vacations and after hours. I'm for sure not interested in company happy hours, kickball, etc especially if the activity is outside of working hours.

I've been with this company for 19 years and I get 6 weeks of PTO and I take every single day....I know several people that never/rarely use their PTO and they hold it up as a badge of honor...I don't get that at all! They also make comments to me about using my PTO - damn right I'm going to take it, I've earned it!!

I took the impression that they had never started doing that in the first place!  I get your point though.

My situation is a bit different because I work for government but I have definitely found myself relaxing a bit and not working as hard.  I have become very jaded about government work and being at the mercy of politicians who decide if we get a measly 2% raise each year and what we have to give up to get it.  We cannot hire staff because entry level staff are so poorly paid that target pays more.  I manage a department that deals with the public and we are all burnt out listening to businesses cry poverty and yell at us about the unfairness of it all but then fail to read the detailed instructions written to be understood by someone with an 8th grade education and then yell at us some more when it doesn’t go their way.  I’m burnt out and fed up and I get paid exactly the same whether I make my unit’s monthly quota or exceed it.  

I agree with you. That is what a work ethic is. Work life balance goes both ways. Work time is work time, life time is life time. If you're buying a machine to jiggle your mouse to make it look like you are at your desk working from home, you are a cheat.

if the management doesn't want this or doesn't take these suggestions, then I'm not going to spend any more mental energy or time trying to give them ideas for ways to improve.  I don't feel guilty about that any longer.  

And depending on the job / position / company, there is ALWAYS paperwork, filing, etc. that NEVER goes away.  There may literally NEVER be a 'caught up' time, ever.  My previous job was like that, due to the # of employees who would start and quit within a few days-- the paperwork that was generated would NEVER stop.  There WAS no being 'caught up' or being 'finished' with it.  EVER.  I didn't feel guilty giving myself a mental break now and then from the tedium of doing all that data entry, either. 


There's plenty of time 'wasted' at work with social chit-chat amongst offices, social gossip between managers before / after / during meetings, etc.  I've seen plenty of it (that's one of the things that irritates me most about meetings-- when they start late and/or go long because of off-topic conversations.)  I'll generalize and say that most people, even those executives who are old-school wanting warm bodies at desks all day long, do NOT do 8 hours worth of actual work in their workday, either.   

Could it be your boss is on salary rather than hourly. Salary meant you worked to get the job done, no matter the hours and hourly meant you were paid for every minute you worked. I don't remember all the details, but where I worked, they evaluated every position and determined if it qualified for hourly or salary per the labor law guidelines. I know on the supervisor level, you had to supervise 2 or more emplooyees and be able to hire and fire to be considered salary. Being slaray was a drag at times because I did take my work home many a times, but I could also take an afternoon off and not be docked for those hours.