If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, if you open it all the time, if you save it for an escape or forward it to friends and family and have conversations about it— consider becoming a paid subscribing member. Forgive me. I somehow missed the first flush of discourse about “quiet quitting”: a phrase that proliferated last week on TikTok to describe a supposed movement in which people (particularly younger people) are no longer going above and beyond expectations at work…..but not actually quitting their jobs.
Third Gen union member here. There is an actual labor relations term for this practice. It’s “work to the letter.” That means doing only what the contract specifies. No overtime, no staying 10 minutes longer to finish a meeting, no taking work home. In short, nothing for while a union member is not compensated. It is a way for unions to stage slowdowns without strikes - often a very effective way.
Late Gen X here. I just call this having good work/life boundaries. I'm very fortunate to be a public librarian who is part of a union (also 3rd gen union member). I'm the daughter of a public school teacher and an autoworker. I definitely model my work life more after my father than my mother. He worked his hours and went home. Teachers can't do that. Fortunately, I can. There are many librarians who do bring work home with them or stay late, etc. The only work-related task I do at home is reading, which I would be doing anyway. In librarianship there is this thing called "vocational awe" which makes many librarians believe that their job is some sort of noble calling and that society will collapse if they aren't there to keep it running. I'm not buying it. I can still help a whole lot of people during work hours, and then go home and watch a lot of Netflix.
I'm a millennial but was a little too young for Office Space when it came out (around 9 or 10), and only saw it years after the fact. I've been trying to think of what was the piece of massmedia for people around my age that introduced these ideas... maybe The Devil Wears Prada? Up in the Air?* In any event, I feel I personally was introduced to this idea as, literally, "work to rule", because my partner is in a trade union and very knowledgeable about the specifics of labour practices.
While I don't resent Gen Z for not knowing about coasting/slacking/work-to-rule/whatever and for coining their own term, I don't love that it's called "quiet quitting". It's not quitting, and it's not even consciously choosing not to do parts your job. It really is something like work to rule; you do what you've been hired to do, but you don't give your job more than it will give you. I was actually told that by a longtime employee when I started at my university earlier this year: she literally told me, "Never give them more than you really need to, because it will never be rewarded." I have taken that to heart, and I don't do that for my employer unless I derive a direct personal benefit from doing so – sometimes there's a learning opportunity that I think will serve my career goals or personal interests that aligns with "going above and beyond". I love my job, but my working conditions are not actually good (part-time 4-month contracts that I have to reapply for each time), and I can't justify giving the employer more than they deserve.
I am also in a union (the local is for specific contract employee groups at the university), and they are what make my employment conditions bearable.
*"Two Days, One Night" was, I think, not widely seen enough to have been as impactful in a mass culture sense, but that one is really great in terms of depicting the misery and futility of late capitalism and its impact on the little guy.
I'd love to take this conversation one step further and talk about how quiet quitting or resisting wage theft intersects with the disability studies concept of 'crip time'. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5824/4684
Anne Helen Petersen, 100%. We are having these conversations about quiet quitting in my circle, although I hope that I'm not being dismissive of Gen Z's response. I just see this for what it is: quiet quitting is not quiet quitting, it is about RESISTING WAGE THEFT. And it is just SO HARD to do, because the overall culture is so dismissive and meritocracy is so frustrating. I don't know if that makes sense, I have brain fog, but I'm WITH YOU, AHP!
Apparently I've been quietly quitting for twenty-five years - since my first job out of college, I reasoned that if I'm working diligently throughout my shift and it's not enough time to get everything done, then it's on my employer to adjust either their expectations or hire additional employees. Of course, that's an incredibly privileged way of seeing work, and I'm aware that not everyone can afford to risk their jobs by refusing to toe the "evenings and weekends" line, but as someone who has never felt the urge to hustle for anything, it was more of a sanity saver than anything else.
Hey there, one thing that turned me off the “Quiet Quitting” message is that on my social media feed its source seemed to be a WSJ article. Which to me suggests it’s really about promoting those “kids today” message. Also: did you see the article last week in the NYT (I think) about the rise in employee monitoring? I think corporate America may be pushing this to make the scrutiny of employees look justified.
In union parlance, this is called “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.” It’s been core to the labor movement for decades, but has been uprooted by worker surveillance and productivity measures that Amazon and others have “perfected”!
This was a great read. I figured out how to quiet quit early in my career, while also creating the illusion of being high performing. I learned very quickly that corporate work was basically theater after watching mid to late career professionals kicking back in their cushy jobs. I got very good at assessing expectations, identifying the power structures that mattered, and delivering on only what I needed to do.
I loved this discussion and the Ann Friedman article. It is WILD that we are in a place where just ‘doing the job you are paid for’ is called ‘quiet quitting.’ Resisting wage theft is great framing. The knowledge worker class being convinced/ thinking they don’t need unions has been so problematic.
What is the “bare minimum” for a lot of white collar jobs is so difficult to gauge. When I worked for a newspaper, the union negotiated starting salaries and holidays off. Aside from story and tweet quotas, the ways to “gauge performance” were so subjective. A story that someone worked the bare minimum on could get thousands of clicks, but a well-reported story that someone worked hard on could barely register.
Ann Friedman’s piece is terrific — thanks for linking to it!
I am fascinated by this phenomenon of “quiet quitting,” as it just highlights how demoralized American workers have become. The responses to every article or twitter thread on this topic are almost uniformly from workers who used to go above and beyond at their jobs — only to discover that there were few, if any, rewards for working longer hours or taking on additional projects. I’m a Gen-Xer, so I’m too old for TikTok trends, but I am right there with them. I’m taking back my time once and for all.
I just finished reading "Can't Even" last night, so this felt especially timely for me (elder millennial). So much of that book rang true for my and my friends. While I'm not a parent, the chapter on trying to be the "right" parent spoke me to as a chronic illness patient. If I just did the "right things", I'd be cured by now, so it must be my own fault for not working hard enough (seeing the right doctors, taking the right pills, doing enough physical therapy, etc). Our society needs to change or we're going to become a mess of burnt out zombies!
I’m Gen Z and I really wish my cohort would be quiet sometimes because quiet quitting is…sort of useless if you’re the only worker doing it. And could potentially backfire if your other co-workers are the ones left picking up the slack.
Speaking of, I think the main difference between slacker-dom and quiet quitting (which I’m sure the business heads will ignore) is that a slacker does *less* than the bare minimum and purposely chooses the least efficient route. Slackers engage with nonsense to run down the clock.
I think the Elle *What Comes After Ambition?* article renders these really stark economic decisions in a way that’s very woo-woo. It’s focused on a very specific kind of white-collar worker that can afford to quit, just like 80% of the other myopic Great Resignation thinkpieces that keep coming out. The basic premise is that women’s ambitions are not actually enough to get them to the top, because sexism, so they’ve…given up.
Which, I want to be 100% clear here — that’s a perfectly reasonable and valid response. No use doing extra work if you’re not going to be rewarded. But the article presents this, IMO, as a feelings-based decision. Because women are gonna follow their hearts and will, *of course*, choose to prioritize all of that community/family stuff over their careers.
It doesn’t look that much different from the constant “well of COURSE it’s the women who want to step out of the professional world and be stay-at-home parents, motherhood is totes fulfilling” discourse.
**MY APOLOGIES** FOR MESSING UP THE 'JUST TRUST ME' LINK FOR SUBSCRIBERS! HERE IT IS!!!! https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-man-who-bought-pine-bluff-arkansas
Third Gen union member here. There is an actual labor relations term for this practice. It’s “work to the letter.” That means doing only what the contract specifies. No overtime, no staying 10 minutes longer to finish a meeting, no taking work home. In short, nothing for while a union member is not compensated. It is a way for unions to stage slowdowns without strikes - often a very effective way.
Late Gen X here. I just call this having good work/life boundaries. I'm very fortunate to be a public librarian who is part of a union (also 3rd gen union member). I'm the daughter of a public school teacher and an autoworker. I definitely model my work life more after my father than my mother. He worked his hours and went home. Teachers can't do that. Fortunately, I can. There are many librarians who do bring work home with them or stay late, etc. The only work-related task I do at home is reading, which I would be doing anyway. In librarianship there is this thing called "vocational awe" which makes many librarians believe that their job is some sort of noble calling and that society will collapse if they aren't there to keep it running. I'm not buying it. I can still help a whole lot of people during work hours, and then go home and watch a lot of Netflix.
I'm a millennial but was a little too young for Office Space when it came out (around 9 or 10), and only saw it years after the fact. I've been trying to think of what was the piece of massmedia for people around my age that introduced these ideas... maybe The Devil Wears Prada? Up in the Air?* In any event, I feel I personally was introduced to this idea as, literally, "work to rule", because my partner is in a trade union and very knowledgeable about the specifics of labour practices.
While I don't resent Gen Z for not knowing about coasting/slacking/work-to-rule/whatever and for coining their own term, I don't love that it's called "quiet quitting". It's not quitting, and it's not even consciously choosing not to do parts your job. It really is something like work to rule; you do what you've been hired to do, but you don't give your job more than it will give you. I was actually told that by a longtime employee when I started at my university earlier this year: she literally told me, "Never give them more than you really need to, because it will never be rewarded." I have taken that to heart, and I don't do that for my employer unless I derive a direct personal benefit from doing so – sometimes there's a learning opportunity that I think will serve my career goals or personal interests that aligns with "going above and beyond". I love my job, but my working conditions are not actually good (part-time 4-month contracts that I have to reapply for each time), and I can't justify giving the employer more than they deserve.
I am also in a union (the local is for specific contract employee groups at the university), and they are what make my employment conditions bearable.
*"Two Days, One Night" was, I think, not widely seen enough to have been as impactful in a mass culture sense, but that one is really great in terms of depicting the misery and futility of late capitalism and its impact on the little guy.
I'd love to take this conversation one step further and talk about how quiet quitting or resisting wage theft intersects with the disability studies concept of 'crip time'. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5824/4684
Anne Helen Petersen, 100%. We are having these conversations about quiet quitting in my circle, although I hope that I'm not being dismissive of Gen Z's response. I just see this for what it is: quiet quitting is not quiet quitting, it is about RESISTING WAGE THEFT. And it is just SO HARD to do, because the overall culture is so dismissive and meritocracy is so frustrating. I don't know if that makes sense, I have brain fog, but I'm WITH YOU, AHP!
Apparently I've been quietly quitting for twenty-five years - since my first job out of college, I reasoned that if I'm working diligently throughout my shift and it's not enough time to get everything done, then it's on my employer to adjust either their expectations or hire additional employees. Of course, that's an incredibly privileged way of seeing work, and I'm aware that not everyone can afford to risk their jobs by refusing to toe the "evenings and weekends" line, but as someone who has never felt the urge to hustle for anything, it was more of a sanity saver than anything else.
Hey there, one thing that turned me off the “Quiet Quitting” message is that on my social media feed its source seemed to be a WSJ article. Which to me suggests it’s really about promoting those “kids today” message. Also: did you see the article last week in the NYT (I think) about the rise in employee monitoring? I think corporate America may be pushing this to make the scrutiny of employees look justified.
In union parlance, this is called “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.” It’s been core to the labor movement for decades, but has been uprooted by worker surveillance and productivity measures that Amazon and others have “perfected”!
This was a great read. I figured out how to quiet quit early in my career, while also creating the illusion of being high performing. I learned very quickly that corporate work was basically theater after watching mid to late career professionals kicking back in their cushy jobs. I got very good at assessing expectations, identifying the power structures that mattered, and delivering on only what I needed to do.
I loved this discussion and the Ann Friedman article. It is WILD that we are in a place where just ‘doing the job you are paid for’ is called ‘quiet quitting.’ Resisting wage theft is great framing. The knowledge worker class being convinced/ thinking they don’t need unions has been so problematic.
What is the “bare minimum” for a lot of white collar jobs is so difficult to gauge. When I worked for a newspaper, the union negotiated starting salaries and holidays off. Aside from story and tweet quotas, the ways to “gauge performance” were so subjective. A story that someone worked the bare minimum on could get thousands of clicks, but a well-reported story that someone worked hard on could barely register.
That Sinema piece is excellent.
For a different (more sharply critical) review of the Courtney Martin book, there's this: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/09/martin-learning-in-public-diangelo-nice-racism/619497/?fbclid=IwAR3B7di7cOcWaqHxjL47JdZL2nXlOEchr0JhCxjnzY6NYUd0x1_AqkRbJaw
Ann Friedman’s piece is terrific — thanks for linking to it!
I am fascinated by this phenomenon of “quiet quitting,” as it just highlights how demoralized American workers have become. The responses to every article or twitter thread on this topic are almost uniformly from workers who used to go above and beyond at their jobs — only to discover that there were few, if any, rewards for working longer hours or taking on additional projects. I’m a Gen-Xer, so I’m too old for TikTok trends, but I am right there with them. I’m taking back my time once and for all.
I just finished reading "Can't Even" last night, so this felt especially timely for me (elder millennial). So much of that book rang true for my and my friends. While I'm not a parent, the chapter on trying to be the "right" parent spoke me to as a chronic illness patient. If I just did the "right things", I'd be cured by now, so it must be my own fault for not working hard enough (seeing the right doctors, taking the right pills, doing enough physical therapy, etc). Our society needs to change or we're going to become a mess of burnt out zombies!
I’m Gen Z and I really wish my cohort would be quiet sometimes because quiet quitting is…sort of useless if you’re the only worker doing it. And could potentially backfire if your other co-workers are the ones left picking up the slack.
Speaking of, I think the main difference between slacker-dom and quiet quitting (which I’m sure the business heads will ignore) is that a slacker does *less* than the bare minimum and purposely chooses the least efficient route. Slackers engage with nonsense to run down the clock.
I think the Elle *What Comes After Ambition?* article renders these really stark economic decisions in a way that’s very woo-woo. It’s focused on a very specific kind of white-collar worker that can afford to quit, just like 80% of the other myopic Great Resignation thinkpieces that keep coming out. The basic premise is that women’s ambitions are not actually enough to get them to the top, because sexism, so they’ve…given up.
Which, I want to be 100% clear here — that’s a perfectly reasonable and valid response. No use doing extra work if you’re not going to be rewarded. But the article presents this, IMO, as a feelings-based decision. Because women are gonna follow their hearts and will, *of course*, choose to prioritize all of that community/family stuff over their careers.
It doesn’t look that much different from the constant “well of COURSE it’s the women who want to step out of the professional world and be stay-at-home parents, motherhood is totes fulfilling” discourse.