Quiet Quitting Doesn’t Exist
I have an issue with the latest buzzword
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I usually hate a buzzword but I actually quite liked ‘Quiet Quitting’ when I first heard it. It’s the idea that if you are feeling burnt out in your job you should slow down and do the bare minimum.
It makes sense right?
Gone will be the feeling of having to get involved in every project or staying over your contracted hours to finish up. Some articles suggest deleting slack off your phone and not answering messages and emails in your free time. It’s all about not going above and beyond for your employer.
At first, I saw it as a positive thing, we should all be willing to set healthy boundaries in our lives, especially at work. However, the more I looked into it, the more I realised that many of the things people were being told to ‘quit’ were things none of us should be doing anyway.
When did actually doing your job become the same as quitting it all together?
My biggest issue with the concept of quiet quitting is the assumption that doing more is the standard.
If you have slack on your personal mobile delete that now. You do not get paid to be checking messages in your free time. If you work somewhere that has the kind of emergencies that they need you to be on call for this needs to be part of your role and you need to be paid for taking on that work. Let’s face it though most office jobs do not have emergencies, most emails can wait 24 hours (if not more) to be answered. We all like to think of ourselves as indispensable and important but in reality, a lot of our work can wait and there’s a nice power in realising that, it saves a lot stress.
We need to normalise actually doing the job you get paid for. Many of the articles I’ve seen about quiet quitting imply that going above and beyond is the expected way to be in a job. One particular article said that if you quiet quit your job you can expect to be passed over for a promotion.
Why is it we think this? If you are doing the job you were hired for this should be enough. This shouldn’t be seen as rebelling in any way.
