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.
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.
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:
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.
Many problems require rather immediate solutions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
the manager in that scene is Mike Judge and knowing that makes his bit so much more enjoyable to watch
"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."
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
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.
Quiet quitting is when I do my work
TIL: I’m looking for a job I can Quiet Quit at for the next 20-30 years.
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.
tacit admission that you started a business but you really wanted to start a cult. tell you what: you start paying me as much as you possibly can regardless of our employment agreement, I'll start working as much as I possibly can regardless of our employment agreement.
"we have nothing to complain about, but we'll still complain because fuck the poor, am I right?"
ROFL This is madness! I’d love to know who is behind this push to gaslight people into believing that having a great work/life balance is something to be frowned upon!
Oh shit, uneasy feelings for managers... :)
Clearly a national emergency.
So they just work?
"They asked us to pay them in money and not pizza parties, then the janitor came in and said "Wait you guys are getting Pizza Parties? I can't even get some cleaning agent to wipe the god damn toilet down properly with, I've been spitting on it and waiting for management to notice the smell and order more fucking cleaning agent and they're just giving you guys free pizza?" it's a mystery why they keep leaving., maybe we should try putting in an Air Hockey table that they'll never have long enough breaks to actually us?" - Management
This has gotta be bait. There's no fuckin way.
Irish Times is known for their clickbait articles. Not too long ago, an article that was written just to generate outrage (fake tan is cultural appropriation), was found to be generated by AI, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was also the case. My advice is to ignore anything Irish Times is writing. (I've been living in Ireland for well over a decade, and I learned to regard IT as the low end of the already poor media landscape here.)
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