I Am A Quiet Quitter

You may know a quiet quitter and not even realise it

HAVE YOU EVER WORKED 45, 50, even 60 hours a week because you were expected to? Did you ever miss any of your children’s milestone moment’s because you had a report in which the deadline was fast approaching?

Hustle culture is out, it’s so 2010. There’s a new philosophy in the workplace that’s literally scaring CEOs, managers, middle managers, and anyone who manages a team: It’s called “quiet quitting.” It’s not what you think; it isn’t a mass exodus of workers heading to the Department of Labour to claim benefits.

“Quiet quitting” isn’t the same as the “Great Resignation” where people actually quit. It isn’t a form of the hustle-culture hamster wheel mentality where one must work all day every day, working harder, faster, and longer relentlessly in pursuit of their professional goals. Quietly quitting is nestled comfortably in between.

The philosophy is about doing their job, nothing more, nothing less. It’s about working their contracted hours, nothing more, nothing less. It’s about respect, nothing more, nothing less.

Fellow Medium writer Dustin Arand claims rightly so that “quiet quitting” basically means doing what you’re paid for and nothing more. It’s about refusing to go along with the “hustle” mentality that says you always have to go above and beyond if you want to “succeed.”

“QUIET QUITTING” IS AT ITS core about employees acting on their workplace dissatisfaction. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report found that job dissatisfaction is at a staggering all-time high and unhappy and disengaged workers cost the global economy $7.8 trillion in lost productivity [read: unpaid overtime.]

Workers are pushing back against the part of their job descriptions that reads, “and other duties as assigned.” They’re resetting their work-life balance and creating new boundaries with their employers.

They’re refusing to work 40 hours a week and then put in another 10, 20, or 30 hours for free. They’re fed up with unpaid overtime being an expectation, an assumption, a baseline. According to a World Health Organization [WHO] study, working at least 55 hours a week kills more than 745,000 people a year. Their report asserts that…