Has got to be one of the stupidest phrases of the last few months. But it seems like it's picking up steam at least in corporate media. The notion that people are finding a healthy work-life balance is "quitting" makes no sense.
Quiet Quitting
- Thread starter WDSMHAWK
- Start date
Has got to be one of the stupidest phrases of the last few months. But it seems like it's picking up steam at least in corporate media. The notion that people are finding a healthy work-life balance is "quitting" makes no sense.
Probably the same idiots that complain they don't get paid enough.
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I would guess this attribute applies to a fair amount of HORTers.
Not me, of course. I am a stellar multitasker.
Not me, of course. I am a stellar multitasker.
I really quit in April. Haven't gone back yet but am just starting to look. When I do go back, I'm going to set much better boundaries on my personal time.
It shouldn't. What they're referring to are groups that have been understaffed and staying understaffed because people are busting their a$$to cover. That's why I left. If people stop putting in dozens of extra hours and/or working in perpetual "fire drill" mode, it will force companies to either staff appropriately or task appropriately.
And any company that doesn't see it will continue to burn people out and have trouble keeping good staff.
This has been done already. There's a God of this and everything.
The company I worked for up until a few months ago had a working MO, anyone is replaceable. A company of 35 with six that were untouchable, everyone else expendable. I'm glad I got out when I did.
I hope you're right. I can't think of another time when employees had this much power.
Everyone is replaceable to an extent, and I don’t have a problem with that mindset, necessarily, but if the underlying key to your business model is expecting people to work 1.5 FTE all the time, then you’re going to get a rep as a sh1tty place to work and your business model isn’t great.
To a big extent, employees have this much power because they started using it. We all always have the power to quit or to not accept a crappy job offer. It will always sway back and forth, but with millions of Boomers retiring every year, we’re not going back to where we were 5 years ago soon.
And you end up with 20% turnover in headcount each year. They're stepping over dollars to pick up dimes, pure stupidity.
We are a couple months into the new work model of folks being able to work 3 days remote and 2 in the office. It’s a complete shit show. It will not work. We just fired the first administrative assistant for falsifying time. She got caught in an epic way. I had a customer meeting in downtown Ft Lauderdale to discuss issues with an elevator at the Publix. While leaving the meeting I saw her shopping for food. I called her and asked if she could send me some files for my meetings. She lied about what she was doing. Took pictures and called HR. We waited for her self reporting of her time and then boom….canned her
Good luck giving somebody a PIP that is meeting the expectations of the job, and good luck getting HR to go along with terminating them without a PIP unless it's something that can be a for-cause termination.
Management and HR can always re-write the job requirements and set expectations through annual goals but still, you're a year off from even giving somebody a PIP.
Management and HR can always re-write the job requirements and set expectations through annual goals but still, you're a year off from even giving somebody a PIP.
100%.
My old group had our long-time director retire in spring 2021. Shortly after, 2 of his long-time right hands left for other jobs. Then they played games with his position, dangling it in front of a couple of us senior managers for 6 months. Literally less than 10 days from the then most recent update that they didn’t know what they were doing with the position, they announced the hire to the whole group on a conference call, blindsiding those of us who wanted a crack at it. One of my peers immediately left. In the months that followed we bled staff and I was totally burned out and realized that I could not be successful with that staffing model. 4 more people have left since I did and several more are looking. They’re going to wind up in a spot where there’s nobody with any tenure or back history on the team with a bunch of new hires right as they’re trying to bring in a new system and not impact business.
But hey, congrats on the cost savings, I guess.
Ok, I have a question about this. She’s dumb for lying about it, but you thought you “trapped“ her because she ran out for food? Back before I went remote (years ago, been remote since 2010), I would sometimes run errands from the office and it was literally never a big deal unless I was skipping something critical in that moment.
Did you already think she wasn’t being productive enough or did you just see her at the store and try to corner her? Serious question. I’ve had non-performers that I’ve fired/managed out who simply weren’t doing their job, but I’ve also never cared if people flex their time around wherever they’re able.
Dumb name for a trend. It honestly just sounds like people being content with their 8 hours and not being dictated by the powers that be to do more without additional compensation. Not exactly sure why it’s newsworthy other than it runs counter to the previous generation’s attitude of work as hard as you can no matter the cost.
Why would you want to give someone a PIP if they’re meeting the expectations of the job? If they’re 15-pieces-of-flair/doing the bare minimum, you can handle that through low raises, small/no incentive pay, etc. If the job description says “handle 5 widgets per year” and that person is handling 5 widgets per year, what’s the basis for a PIP?
She wasn’t a performer. She abused the work from home. If she was a high performer I would have just said hello
If I'm reading his post right she was an hourly employee and paid herself to run errands. You just can't do that.
She was. The other admin openly talks about how she hates coming into the office because she got used to her afternoon nap.
Ok cool. I’ve known some managers who hated having employees out of their sight….to the point where even in office, they’d have other managers go walk by break rooms or water coolers to see if people were congregating. That’s lazy management.
The point was more the phone call. He even said, if it was a performer, he’d have just said hi. She is also an idiot for lying. If she had simply taken the call and told her boss she ran out for a minute and would be back at her desk in 20 min and send the files and then clocked that time out, she should have been fine….but she’s clearly an idiot. I was just curious whether ihh was the kind of manager that tries to trap workers in a corner.
Yeah looks like there are two topics in there that are a little different. Why she was termed and what led up to it maybe? Anyway, I agree about the not trusting people and thinking your catching them doing something, I ain't got time for that shit. If I don't think you're doing your job we're going to sit down and discuss it, you continue along that path and you will be gone. I'm not a babysitter.
Not the performers. Pre Covid I used to defend my sales reps who worked hard but would arrive at home at 3 and send proposals and email. My boss used to think they were just screwing around. Covid hits and the world has flipped.
And if there is anyone with tenure left, their daily lives are over because all they will be doing is training. Just amazes me.
There's no reason to, I thought that was the gist of this(?) People are doing what's expected of them
Good grief.
First of all, I'm all for it...you do the job they pay you for, if you're being overworked or underpaid, most definitely go find another job. I'm never for people feeling like they should allow themself to be exploited. It's like the best time in human history to be trying to find a job for God's sake.
But holy cow, we get about 1000 think pieces a day about the crushing weight of capitalism and crisis of pandemic burnout, especially among millenials. About the how people simply can't cope anymore, and can't even accomplish simple tasks of life, like feeding and cleaning themselves, balancing their accounts, sleeping, etc.
I'm about ready to call bullshit.
I get that the pandemic was tough. Especially for people with kids that all of a sudden needed to be schooled at home, and then restaurants closing, health services interrupted, having to chase toilet paper all over town, etc. Not being able to see friends and family, not being able to have the support of your faith community, etc.
But for the love of God, this constant drumbeat two years on of people barely even being able to drag themselves through the gauntlet of daily life, let alone their jobs, is just going way overboard.
Kids are back in school, and yet millions and millions of people now work at home after the pandemic, saving traffic and commute time. Unemployment is functionally zero if you don't like your job. You can now postmate your every meal as well as your toothpaste. For the 13% of people with student loans, you've gotten like a two year hiatus from paying them.
I'm not saying there aren't some bad things in the world. Inflation sucks. Political divisiveness sucks. But holy shit, people are acting like their suffering through the darkest and most difficult time in human history.
It's crazy how nearly day after day we read about how people...just...can't...go...on...much...longer. My theory is that the people that set this narrative, writing for gawker and buzzfeed and Huffington Post and Vox and what not are indeed miserable. Ultimately, those are pretty sucky jobs, with little security, and little demand. Most people writing them probably do feel like their dreams have been betrayed. These are people trying to make their way in in coastal urban centers on a shitty salary and dim prospects. I'm sure life does suck when you're trying to make it in NYC as a freelance culture blogger or an urban farming activist.
I am by no means one of these "the kids are pussies" or "back in the good old days" type people. I firmly believe each generation is smarter and better than the last, including Millenials, and then Gen Z. Quite the opposite, it's actually the authors of this doomism that seem to think people under 40 are the most constitutionally weak humans in history. Stop acting like brushing your damn teeth, getting your kid dressed to school, eating three meals a day is some sysyphean task. Every generation in human history has managed to do it with less. Encouraging people to constantly wallow in the daily tasks of life, if anything, keeps them from making actual change.
TLDR:
First of all, I'm all for it...you do the job they pay you for, if you're being overworked or underpaid, most definitely go find another job. I'm never for people feeling like they should allow themself to be exploited. It's like the best time in human history to be trying to find a job for God's sake.
But holy cow, we get about 1000 think pieces a day about the crushing weight of capitalism and crisis of pandemic burnout, especially among millenials. About the how people simply can't cope anymore, and can't even accomplish simple tasks of life, like feeding and cleaning themselves, balancing their accounts, sleeping, etc.
I'm about ready to call bullshit.
I get that the pandemic was tough. Especially for people with kids that all of a sudden needed to be schooled at home, and then restaurants closing, health services interrupted, having to chase toilet paper all over town, etc. Not being able to see friends and family, not being able to have the support of your faith community, etc.
But for the love of God, this constant drumbeat two years on of people barely even being able to drag themselves through the gauntlet of daily life, let alone their jobs, is just going way overboard.
Kids are back in school, and yet millions and millions of people now work at home after the pandemic, saving traffic and commute time. Unemployment is functionally zero if you don't like your job. You can now postmate your every meal as well as your toothpaste. For the 13% of people with student loans, you've gotten like a two year hiatus from paying them.
I'm not saying there aren't some bad things in the world. Inflation sucks. Political divisiveness sucks. But holy shit, people are acting like their suffering through the darkest and most difficult time in human history.
It's crazy how nearly day after day we read about how people...just...can't...go...on...much...longer. My theory is that the people that set this narrative, writing for gawker and buzzfeed and Huffington Post and Vox and what not are indeed miserable. Ultimately, those are pretty sucky jobs, with little security, and little demand. Most people writing them probably do feel like their dreams have been betrayed. These are people trying to make their way in in coastal urban centers on a shitty salary and dim prospects. I'm sure life does suck when you're trying to make it in NYC as a freelance culture blogger or an urban farming activist.
I am by no means one of these "the kids are pussies" or "back in the good old days" type people. I firmly believe each generation is smarter and better than the last, including Millenials, and then Gen Z. Quite the opposite, it's actually the authors of this doomism that seem to think people under 40 are the most constitutionally weak humans in history. Stop acting like brushing your damn teeth, getting your kid dressed to school, eating three meals a day is some sysyphean task. Every generation in human history has managed to do it with less. Encouraging people to constantly wallow in the daily tasks of life, if anything, keeps them from making actual change.
TLDR:
I think the real problem is that there was already a trend towards remote work, flexibility and employees having at least a little more power, but COVID changes accelerated it well ahead of what companies were prepared to manage. Some companies were already raising the minimum wage they would pay their workers and the boomers were already rapidly approaching retirement, particularly with the stock market boom over most of the last decade.Good grief.
First of all, I'm all for it...you do the job they pay you for, if you're being overworked or underpaid, most definitely go find another job. I'm never for people feeling like they should allow themself to be exploited. It's like the best time in human history to be trying to find a job for God's sake.
But holy cow, we get about 1000 think pieces a day about the crushing weight of capitalism and crisis of pandemic burnout, especially among millenials. About the how people simply can't cope anymore, and can't even accomplish simple tasks of life, like feeding and cleaning themselves, balancing their accounts, sleeping, etc.
I'm about ready to call bullshit.
I get that the pandemic was tough. Especially for people with kids that all of a sudden needed to be schooled at home, and then restaurants closing, health services interrupted, having to chase toilet paper all over town, etc. Not being able to see friends and family, not being able to have the support of your faith community, etc.
But for the love of God, this constant drumbeat two years on of people barely even being able to drag themselves through the gauntlet of daily life, let alone their jobs, is just going way overboard.
Kids are back in school, and yet millions and millions of people now work at home after the pandemic, saving traffic and commute time. Unemployment is functionally zero if you don't like your job. You can now postmate your every meal as well as your toothpaste. For the 13% of people with student loans, you've gotten like a two year hiatus from paying them.
I'm not saying there aren't some bad things in the world. Inflation sucks. Political divisiveness sucks. But holy shit, people are acting like their suffering through the darkest and most difficult time in human history.
It's crazy how nearly day after day we read about how people...just...can't...go...on...much...longer. My theory is that the people that set this narrative, writing for gawker and buzzfeed and Huffington Post and Vox and what not are indeed miserable. Ultimately, those are pretty sucky jobs, with little security, and little demand. Most people writing them probably do feel like their dreams have been betrayed. These are people trying to make their way in in coastal urban centers on a shitty salary and dim prospects. I'm sure life does suck when you're trying to make it in NYC as a freelance culture blogger or an urban farming activist.
I am by no means one of these "the kids are pussies" or "back in the good old days" type people. I firmly believe each generation is smarter and better than the last, including Millenials, and then Gen Z. Quite the opposite, it's actually the authors of this doomism that seem to think people under 40 are the most constitutionally weak humans in history. Stop acting like brushing your damn teeth, getting your kid dressed to school, eating three meals a day is some sysyphean task. Every generation in human history has managed to do it with less. Encouraging people to constantly wallow in the daily tasks of life, if anything, keeps them from making actual change.
TLDR:
We stuffed 5-10 years of operational change into like an 3-6 month window, fast-forwarded to a completely new paradigm and then too many companies tried to wholesale dial it back to November 2019. Change is messy and COVID pushed a lot of normal evolution out to the bleeding edge.
If I had my own company and I could get 75% of work done with my staff remotely and all my systems are already cloud-based, it allows me to pay for a lot less corporate real estate. I can coordinate schedules so that we have a small contingent always in the office (depending on the business, there may be a physical customer-facing need) or I might time-share office space and have us all come into the office on the same days. The challenge right now is that so many companies found that their workers could be productive remotely, but now are trying to figure out what to do with 5-, 8-, 10- or more year leases in expensive office buildings and high-rises. If this would have evolved over 5-10 years, companies could have had more productive pro-active planning on how to balance in-person/remote/hybrid roles and how to better plan their physical office space needs. That’s just not the world we live in now, thanks to COVID.
Maybe a little yelling at the cloud but also some good points.Good grief.
First of all, I'm all for it...you do the job they pay you for, if you're being overworked or underpaid, most definitely go find another job. I'm never for people feeling like they should allow themself to be exploited. It's like the best time in human history to be trying to find a job for God's sake.
But holy cow, we get about 1000 think pieces a day about the crushing weight of capitalism and crisis of pandemic burnout, especially among millenials. About the how people simply can't cope anymore, and can't even accomplish simple tasks of life, like feeding and cleaning themselves, balancing their accounts, sleeping, etc.
I'm about ready to call bullshit.
I get that the pandemic was tough. Especially for people with kids that all of a sudden needed to be schooled at home, and then restaurants closing, health services interrupted, having to chase toilet paper all over town, etc. Not being able to see friends and family, not being able to have the support of your faith community, etc.
But for the love of God, this constant drumbeat two years on of people barely even being able to drag themselves through the gauntlet of daily life, let alone their jobs, is just going way overboard.
Kids are back in school, and yet millions and millions of people now work at home after the pandemic, saving traffic and commute time. Unemployment is functionally zero if you don't like your job. You can now postmate your every meal as well as your toothpaste. For the 13% of people with student loans, you've gotten like a two year hiatus from paying them.
I'm not saying there aren't some bad things in the world. Inflation sucks. Political divisiveness sucks. But holy shit, people are acting like their suffering through the darkest and most difficult time in human history.
It's crazy how nearly day after day we read about how people...just...can't...go...on...much...longer. My theory is that the people that set this narrative, writing for gawker and buzzfeed and Huffington Post and Vox and what not are indeed miserable. Ultimately, those are pretty sucky jobs, with little security, and little demand. Most people writing them probably do feel like their dreams have been betrayed. These are people trying to make their way in in coastal urban centers on a shitty salary and dim prospects. I'm sure life does suck when you're trying to make it in NYC as a freelance culture blogger or an urban farming activist.
I am by no means one of these "the kids are pussies" or "back in the good old days" type people. I firmly believe each generation is smarter and better than the last, including Millenials, and then Gen Z. Quite the opposite, it's actually the authors of this doomism that seem to think people under 40 are the most constitutionally weak humans in history. Stop acting like brushing your damn teeth, getting your kid dressed to school, eating three meals a day is some sysyphean task. Every generation in human history has managed to do it with less. Encouraging people to constantly wallow in the daily tasks of life, if anything, keeps them from making actual change.
TLDR:
I’d add that it probably depends on the sector or the industry. In some, there are plenty of people who are willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead. If that means fighting a commute and being in the office 69 hours a week because that’s what the CEO wants, they’ll do that. If that means the extra stuff outside the office like “optional” dinners and networking events, they’ll do that. In many cases, those folks will likely rise faster and further than those whose goal is work-life balance and making my own job. Neither is a bad choice, but they’re choices.
Speaking of multi-tasking torbee…..how’s your work on the downtown arena moving along?
