QUIET QUITTERS

Shhhhh! Are you a quiet quitter? 

God bless tabloid journalists for coming up with nonsensical headline grabbing labels to apply to specific groups of the population at large.  Their latest offering ‘quiet quitters’ almost made me pee my pants!  And for once baby boomers are not to blame for this apparent newsworthy phenomena.

 

The Times - Saturday

As described by Helen Cahill in her article that appeared in Saturday’s edition of The Times, a ‘quiet quitter’ is not someone tiptoeing silently out of the local library but is a younger person who only fulfils the minimum terms of their employment contract.  In a nutshell, someone who just does the job they’re paid to do and nothing more.  Helen, I think you’ll find that this encompasses most of the working population and not just younger millennials.

‘Quiet Quitting’ is nothing new.  For over 40 years I’ve worked with folks whose sole purpose is to get through the office day doing as little as they can legally get away with and then take the pay.  They’re not interested in career development, taking on additional responsibilities, working overtime, joining project groups or coming up with any new cost saving initiatives – they just want to rock up, do their hours then go home.  No stress, no hassles, no effort – just give me money at the end of each month.  Thank you very much.  Who can blame them?

 

FRAN - sums it up perfectly

You’ve only got to look at what happens to those who do climb up the greasy career pole.  I know I’ve been there.  Burnt out by the age of 45 with nothing but an empty social calendar to remind you that whilst you’ve burnt the midnight oil for that promotion, every one of your friends has dropped you like a just-filled doggy poo bag.  

Patiently plodding baby boomers like me didn’t get the memo until much later on in life advising that there was such a thing as a LIFE/WORK balance.  We were too busy fretting over career advancement to notice the years slipping away.  Our younger millennials with their apps and busy social iphone lives quickly cottoned on to the fact that work is not the be all and end all.  Life is for living NOT for working a 60-hour week.

I feel that perhaps ‘quiet quitting’ is a form of passive revolution in the working classes after years of being promised the earth by employers only to find that all those silver lined clouds disappear as soon as the bottom line gets shaky.  Employers want to employ monkeys for peanuts then expect those monkeys to want to take on extra work for the same piteous handful of peanuts.  Seriously, do you think people are that stupid?

 

INKCINCT - that's the way it goes

The tide is turning in the world of work.  People are beginning to realise that their time is too precious to be squandered in a work place.  Many have realised they can actually get by without all the materialist consumerist trappings we’re constantly encouraged to buy so prefer to be time rich and cash poor rather than end up an overpaid, over promoted loser who has never had a day’s fun in their over-worked life. 

If employers want to retain the workforce of the future then perhaps the LSE’s study shows that maybe now is the time to re-define traditional working patterns and job descriptions to better suit the modern life and fit in with millennial life expectations.  Sometimes monkeys want more than just peanuts!

Sometimes I wish I was paid my weight in chocolate Brazil nuts