Quiet quitting has taken TikTok by storm, but what exactly is it? Everyone talks about it, but does anyone do it? Quiet quitting is doing the bare minimum at your job. “Minimum wage minimum effort” type of mindset. It’s not outright quitting, but rather, putting zero enthusiasm at your job that you might as well not work there anymore. And well… Is it right?
For years workers have asked for decent pay, benefits, and the bare minimum. So quiet quitting begs the question:
If we aren’t receiving the bare minimum, should we be producing the bare minimum?
Politicians have said, “a hungry dog is a working dog,” which is easily interpreted as describing working people as animals. I understand the workforce’s frustrations, living paycheck to paycheck in a world that doesn’t treat you fairly. Quiet quitting is the consequence of greedy businessmen exploiting their workers, thinking nothing can happen. It’s unbelievable to assume that this came out of nowhere, when really it’s been building up for decades.
Is it ethical? Is it right to quiet quit? As a psychology student, I began deep diving to learn more.
Organizational citizenship behavior is what’s currently being discussed. These are behaviors that are not part of an employee’s formal job description, and employees are not formally awarded. Such as being courteous, helping coworkers, and the customer service voice. It can be debatable, if people quiet quit, then what happens to courtesy in the workplace? Quiet quitting can range from simply doing your 40 hours and clocking out to extreme cynicism and removing oneself from any social aspect of their work. Although, that’s exactly why many people quiet quit. It’s the “not part of an employee’s formal job description” part that makes people mentally quit. But is it fair to drop workplace civility and negatively affect coworkers and potentially create a toxic/hostile work environment? You be the judge.
But does it work? I feel like it depends. Does it work for the individual? Well, quiet quitting may lead to better work/life balance and improved boundary setting. However, it could negatively impact career advancement opportunities and colleague relationships. Quiet quitters make up 50% or more of the average workplace in the U.S., and nearly 57% of quiet quitters say it improves work/life balance. It depends on each case, since race and gender also plays a role in quiet quitting. Women have reported it’s more difficult to quiet quit since they’re an easier target compared to their male counterpart.
A key takeaway is to not misconstrue quiet quitting as a form of laziness or entitlement but rather the collective burnout and exhaustion from generations of hard workers. People who have to sacrifice time spent with family time and time again to go to work. People burn themselves into the ground trying to be the best employee with hopes to climb the corporate ladder just to realize they never had a chance in the first place. It’s brutal, and it’s not new. Doing the bare minimum at work has been around for a while, and just last year, 47 million people in the U.S. left their jobs (aka the Great Resignation).
What does quiet quitting provide to the average worker? Quiet quitting is the symptom of abusive power crumbling onto the everyday person. Stress and burnout are intertwined and grow exponentially when companies don’t respect your time and don’t value you as a human being with rights and needs. Quiet quitting can be rooted in a lack of boundaries (managers pressuring you to do 15 hours of unpaid overtime and you feel as though you don’t have a choice), “hustle culture” or grind/get that bread (you do realize working 80 hour weeks just to get by is ridiculous?), and most importantly: burnout. Chronic workplace stress can lead to exhaustion and cause someone to mentally check out. However, don’t confuse quiet quitting to be the same as burnout. Quiet quitting is often seen as a response to burnout and stress, a symptom of being employed in a demanding work environment.
Is the quiet quitting trend over? Hell no. It’s not brand new and it’ll most likely never be over until employers begin to treat their employees fairly with courtesy and rights. Many big corporations and banks produce propaganda saying it’s over, or fake statistics that 87% of people don’t believe in quiet quitting… Well, who did you ask? What’s the evidence behind this statistic? Many times people read a headline and flock to it without doing any previous research. “Quiet hiring” and “loud staying” are more futile attempts to skew how quiet quitting looks on the company. Rather than doing something, companies would rather invalidate the feelings of hard-working employees and brush them off as laziness or entitlement.
In conclusion, quiet quitting is usually beneficial for a healthy work/life balance, and it’s an opportunity to set boundaries. It’s being self-aware that you are just a small piece to a big puzzle, and you can instantly be replaced. Again, not to sound cynical at all, but I also firmly believe in workplace courtesy. I mean, is it hard to just be kind toward coworkers? *If they’re not assholes.* There are always two sides to a coin, and I wanted to emphasize and amplify the voices of those unheard employees, working hard day and night just to live paycheck to paycheck.