It’s the rallying cry of a growing chorus of voices on social media, including r/antiwork, a subreddit for job appeals with more than 2 million members.
Redditors on the forum argue that referring to the phenomenon as any kind of “resignation” means employee misbehavior, when in reality the viral term simply means completing job descriptions and setting healthy boundaries. r/antiwork’s posters, with the motto “everyone unemployed, not just the rich” during the pandemic, accused the media of wildly covering the notion of a new trend that should be seen as the norm rather than shame. Others see the new slogan as a tool employers can use against employees who don’t work more than their contracts (and pay levels) dictate.
They call it Quiet Quit, But it’s really just doing what you do during normal work hours Asking people to have a good work/life balance and not answering work emails at 10pm is not giving up it’s just a common man who owns a life and sets healthy boundaries People pic.twitter.com/uEto7i42VP
— LinkedIn (@LinkedIn) August 18, 2022
On TikTok, Shini Ko, 28, agrees there is something wrong with the word. “The idea of letting go of the hustle and bustle culture instead of going above and beyond is basically having healthy work-life boundaries. I just don’t think quiet exit is the right word because it sounds so negative,” she said in an interview . “It’s dangerous, not empowering.” Ko lives in Eastern Ontario, working as a software developer to pay the bills and fund her passion project: Bao Bao, a four-pointer she started last year One acre organic farm specializing in traditional Asian vegetables. Ko points out that setting clear boundaries at work doesn’t mean you’re not doing your job well. “Farming is expensive, and I couldn’t start my farm without my skilled salary,” she said. “It’s very important for me to remember this because at the end of the day, I still need to do my job.” For Rahaf Harfoush, an anthropologist who studies digital and work-life culture, the discussion around word choice Should be as part of the debate as whether a quiet exit is a good idea. “The actual term itself is an unintentional, very suggestive choice of words about the hustle and bustle culture,” she said in an interview. The term exposes the internal conflict people face when setting work-life boundaries . “Silent quitting is almost a shame, people admit it, because if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t call it silent quitting.” Harfoush published a three-year study on hustle and bustle culture, Hustle and Float , which explores the way workers remain deeply entangled in the ideal of sacrifice, giving their all and exceeding expectations— — even if it can lead to illness, exhaustion and burnout. “Those are ideals buried in our subconscious. So even though we may want to have a work-life balance, when I hear people talk about quitting quietly, I’m like, ‘Ah, we haven’t completely given up on it,'” she said. Say. Commenters also argue that all the focus on quiet resignation reflects more of a company’s reliance on unpaid labor than any individual employee’s work ethic.
If someone destroys themselves in order to “exceed expectations” it is “meeting expectations”, not “quiet” “Resigning” just makes the manager or company realize how the organization is built on extracting labor that doesn’t match wages, salaries, or the original job description
— Karen K. Ho (@karenkho) August 16, 2022
Hundreds (or thousands) as long as employees feel that all of their overtime has a chance of being rewarded Unpaid work hours can be considered worthwhile. However, many workers, especially the younger generation, no longer see it add up. Wages have not kept pace with inflation, while soaring rents and a housing affordability crisis have put basic quality of life and major milestones out of reach. Harfoush said the quiet trend of departures (whether named appropriately or not) is part of a wider adjustment in the labor market. “Many generational promises made to people are broken. We’ve all been told that if we work really hard, if we work harder, if we work hard for a promotion, the reward will be being able to afford a house, being able to go to school , to be able to get a good job, we’ll be able to get promoted,” she said. “We were told that in exchange for labor market sacrifices, there would be benefits. Now we see that, at least among millennials, those promises are not true.”
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