Quiet Quitting

I woke up one morning last week and my news and social media feeds were all referencing this term "quiet quitting." I was surprised to see so many different sources picking up on this phrase that I'd never heard of before. I think I'm too old. It started on Tik Tok with Gen Z and my Gen X/Millenial ass is not on TikTok, but fortunately, the Wall Street Journal has an article that explains it pretty thoroughly.

Something struck me about this. Quiet quitting is the idea that embraces doing your job, but not doing extra. Not worrying about work when you clock out. Not checking emails after hours or on the weekends. And not feeling bad about any of that. Shouldn't quiet quitting just be called "meeting expectations"? Clearly that's not what we (the collective we of society) think, or this would not be the viral thing that it is. When Gallup recently conducted a study of people in the workforce, more than half of 20-somethings reported feeling this way. The statements that describe quiet quitting are synonymous with the statements that other Gallup surveys would assign to an employee that is "not engaged."

In hospitality, working more was always the expectation. We worked when we were sick, and felt superior to the wimps who called out, hating on them for leaving us with more to do and more weight to carry. I had a friend who worked as a line cook at a fine dining spot in the Napa Valley and they had something called "Love Time" where you came in earlier than your shift to set up your station and prep before service. Love time was unpaid and was the expectation put on the kitchen team to avoid paying overtime.

As a manager of a new cafe, I worked hours upon hours at the store. Way over the 40 I was being paid for. I remember feeling resentful of people who called out, irritated by time off requests which were difficult to cover. I had no personal life and when I did get a personal life and started dating someone steadily, my boss sat me down for one of those, "how are you feeling about your work?" conversations, implying that my performance had slipped - despite still working more than 40 hours a week.

I've been the manager that thinks of employees as needing improvement when they weren't going above and beyond. Staying late for a deadline, or to make one more sale. Requiring attendance to staff meetings and team buildings that are normal working hours, and being sour if they were sour.

I have worn a badge of honor in the past for my overachieving, highly committed, worried all the time dedication to the work I did. And even now, when I stepped back in hours and started my own business because I am also a mom to two toddlers and volunteer for their school, and say yes to other activities in support of things that I probably shouldn't, I feel like I am not doing enough, more often than not. That's crazy. Why do I feel that? Because we all do. We all have. And that's a shame.

So I'm here to express my appreciation for the sentiment behind quiet quitting. Enough should be enough. The minimum expectation should be enough, not viewed as underperformance.

My only critique is that I wish that instead of quietly just plugging along and doing the job and avoiding the extra, that it weren't quiet. I'd rather celebrate someone for setting a boundary, out loud and in front of others. Let's normalize that.