Kids today are spoilt and lazy. That’s a refrain that has been heard for generations and, the truth of the matter is, they are, compared to earlier generations. And, why not? After all that is our ultimate goal, isn’t it? To suffer the trials of today for the benefit of our children of tomorrow. But, now, they’re doing the bare minimum. They call it “quiet quitting” and it’s happening for a reason.
As many know, I am not originally from this country. I emigrated from Australia almost a quarter of a century ago. Therefore, when much ado is made of the so-called “work / life balance” my response is one of indifference. What Americans herald as work / life balance, Australians call “business as usual.”
The idea that working harder reaps more rewards is almost axiomatic and dates back at least to ancient Greece. The story of the ant and the grasshopper is still told to children to highlight how hard work pays off. The problem, however, is that often it doesn’t. We work harder and yet get nothing in return. This is particularly true of salaried employees who work overtime and yet, can go through an entire career without advancement or additional financial reward.
Thus, we hear the phrase “work smarter, not harder.” Unfortunately, this is not always possible. After all, that’s what your boss is doing when they hold that carrot under your nose and ask you to work on the weekend or late at night. It’s a Tom Sawyer move to get you to advance them. They’re working smarter, getting you to do the work so they don’t have to.
That’s certainly a route that a person could take; to follow the path of manipulation, coercion and amortization to get others to do their bidding. The unfortunate consequence is that one runs the risk of projecting one’s ambitions. Higher management and executives are recalcitrant to promote for a very interesting reason. In order to achieve a high position in a company, many people opt to walk on others around them. Their goal of greatness is paramount in their minds.
Once their ambition is realized, they are plagued with an uneasy feeling: because, they rationalize, they have crushed others in their blind quest to dominate, they assume that everyone will. Remember when we talked about each of us being the center of our own universe? For many people, this center of the universe is the model for all people. Because I am this way, surely you are, too. Thus, many “horrible” bosses are not horrible because they’re intrinsically cruel or intentionally jingoistic, it is a defensive mechanism. Because I screwed over my boss, I’m sure that my employees are trying to screw over me. As a result, they overcompensate by being abrasively assertive and domineering, attempting at all times to “keep you in your place”.
This is blatantly false logic – not everyone is like you and not everyone even wants your job, let alone will screw you over for it. Yet, unfortunately, so many people think this way about so many things – because I do, everyone does. Furthermore, they rationalize, if they used deception to achieve their goals then it is natural for them to project deception onto others. Therefore, any attempts to honestly placate any concerns will fall on skeptical ears. As a result, many of us do what is now termed: quiet quitting – doing the bare minimum.
The truth is, we should have been doing this all along. What Ron Livingston said in the 1999 film Office Space (mandatory viewing for anyone in management) is true, that they only get you to work just hard enough to not get fired.
And really, that’s the way it should be. The reality is that many of us blaze through business with a false impression that extra work will be rewarded. Unless you’re on a wage and work simply for pecuniary reward, it won’t. Hard work is exploited. If your boss can get more for nothing, then why should they give anything – bonuses, extra vacation time, promotions, anything? Why? Fear of losing you? Admitting that would take away their power to fire you.
There is no incentive and the carrot that is dangled is just like a carrot that leads on a donkey – as you move closer to it, it will always get further away and you will never get there, while the person dangling it gets a free ride on your back. Therefore, the more important question is: what is more valuable to you? People work for many reasons of which money is only one and many people in the US are realizing that time with friends and family is more important to them than a few more bucks in their pay cheque, particularly when jobs these days come with hollow incentives and false promises.
A healthy business relationship is one where everyone knows where they stand, even management. An employee should stand firm that their time is their own and as valuable as their bosses (regardless of salary; despite attempts, human worth is not reduced to dollars). This way bosses will know what to expect of their workers and workers will know what is expected of them, concentrating on the task at hand rather than running off on some mystical quest to please the boss. A boss could respond by looking for more voracious employees but then they run the risk of finding another version of their ambitious selves.
Quiet quitters aren’t quitting. Their fulfilling their job description and that is all that should be asked of them. They are standing up for their right to do the job as described. No more, no less. The demand to go “over and above,” once a sign of flattery to an employer, has now degraded to an expectation; an exploitation where one is chided or even dismissed for refusing.
Quiet quitting is asserting one’s own worth and the value of one’s time and efforts as equally as valuable as that of the company. It is not dropping out of “work society”. Older generations in the US, those who hold the so-called Protestant Work Ethic question this attitude and mislabel it laziness. Part of it is. Well-deserved laziness; a reward of living in a mechanized and computerized age, but then they ask why these younger generations aren’t driven. Don’t they want to get ahead? Don’t they want to make a difference? Don’t they want to make more money?
For my boss? Not particularly.
