The current obsession with "quiet quitting", a term apparently created on TikTok to mean people who go to work and do their jobs without taking on extra, has really steamed me.
How did we get to a place when merely doing your job, the tasks you were hired and paid to do, was in some way slacking, implying dereliction of duty?
The consistent creep of job duties over the past couple of decades has normalized overworking to such an extent that many employers now view overworking as the baseline required - not the exception to the rule but the norm. In many salaried employee contracts, overworking is even written into the contract!
So where does that leave employees who are doing more than ever for the same pay -- in effect experiencing a reduction in their wages per hour or salary because the obligations have increased. It leaves them with a organizational expectation to spend their own time to complete work that the employer has assigned without remuneration. It leaves them working longer hours for the same pay. And EVEN IF there is overtime pay involved, the expectation to complete more work cuts into an employees personal time, reduces the recovery time off needed to be a great employee, and introduces shame/guilt as a tactic to "motivate" more work out of them.
I haven't seen a conversation anywhere about how this defacto reduction in wages is being addressed or even acknowledged --NOPE what we see is a label being applied to it that implies employees are in some way slacking from their duties.
I call Bullshit to using the term "Quiet Quitting" to define "Doing your Job" -- Let's start naming the expectation of overwork for the abuse of the employer/employee relationship that it is.
Terms like "Expected Extras", "Task Creep", "Freebie Assumptions" are all much more honest depictions of what the culture of the workplace is. "Quiet Quitting" doesn't even come close to naming the revolution in the workplace that is happening.
I, for one, applaud those workers who have looked at what their work lives have become, how they have taken over much of their private life and their own brainspace, and said enough. I will do my job to the best of my ability and no more.
If employers cannot get the work of their organization done in the time of the work week with the employees they have, it is time to rethink the business model, hire more people, and honour the efforts of those already working for you.
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