"Quiet Quitting" - some more American nonsense pushed onto the world?

[JazbayGrapes]

And like... its a bad thing?

I tend to think of "work to rule" being a more vocal, unionised protest in order to get better pay/conditions. Whereas "quiet quitting" is just that - quietly only doing what you are paid to do, with no fuss and not necessarily wanting more pay, just better work/life balance.

I just went vaguely freelance, but DH is a civil servant and is pretty much at the quiet quitting stage, too much take, take, take yet staff are just kicked to the curb with no thought when cuts have to be made. No one remembers the unpaid overtime, worse than that it is expected. I see it on Mumsnet all the time, people almost bragging about their insane commutes and 60hr weeks, only getting paid to do 40. How it's expected and that's just what real adults have to do 🙄 Except we don't have to.

In the US, if you are paid wages (a certain amount per hour), it's easier to "work to rule" because the law requires that time in excess of 40 hours has to be paid as overtime at a higher rate. Of course, lots of people like overtime because it means they get paid more.

If you are salaried (paid per week or month), you are exempt from the wage and hour laws and there really is no upper limit to the hours you may be expected to work. I have been in jobs where 60 plus hours a week was the expectation.

There are legal guidelines about which jobs can be exempt (basically they are supposed to be management or professional positions, like law, etc.), but salaried jobs are often the ones where employers' expectations are that you will work above and beyond the basic work week.

As with so much else, the pandemic changed the way people worked, and in many cases, the hours they worked, so there has been an intensification in the US of the discussions around work-life balance, and 'quiet quitting" is part of that discussion.

If you don't like the term because it is perceived as an Americanism, there is a simple solution: don't use it.

"The phrase annoys me, but that's because I'm now Old and therefore get annoyed when the younger generation reinvents something and writes earnest articles as if it's a totally new concept."
Agreed why English people, want to talk like Americans I do not get at all.
See also - REACH OUT - LIKE - KINDA - HEY - WASSUP
If some talks to me like that I just do not reply

No problem with people doing the bare minimum but then they cry when the guy who does more than that gets a pay rise / promotion

I did this years ago. Got asked to do overtime - said yes if you pay me for it. Got criticised for not doing overtime - said tell the boss to pay me for it and I’ll do it. Declined to attend training courses unpaid on my day off. It was just tough when I didn’t know how to do certain things that I hadn’t been trained on.

I've been doing this my entire working life! 🤣

Also one of the problems with the expectation of working above and beyond is that it often penalizes women, who often also wind up bearing the brunt of most family responsibilities.

Since everyone agrees it’s basic and right for people to only work their hours/set job. How will you support nurses, doctors and teachers who routinely “do more”.

I'm massively in favour of tax rises to hire more of them (and the many other public servants who routinely work many, many more than their contracted hours) and a reduction of bureaucracy for teachers in particular, which make their jobs particularly burdensome in the UK.

@JassyRadlett as a retired nurse with many teacher friends both those “industries” are horribly miss managed.

So where does quitting come into all this?

Once you reach a certain age you see things come back around. Take "mansplaining" for example.

We already had a word for that, "patronising"

It's just fodder for pseudointellectual hacks to get paid.

Pay it no attention and it shouldn't bother you.

Most of these annoyances only exist online, in the corporate press, on the "news", and with younger people.

Stick to doing what you enjoy, hanging out with the people you love, and just avoid modern society. I've realised that once you hit about 40 it just all gets so tiresome.

Good luck.

I've worked for two different companies where they described themselves as a big happy family. In both instances, the workplace was a toxic mess of dysfunctional cliquey backstabbers with a narcissistic sociopath for a manager. 😂

As for quiet quitting, well, I've been doing that for years.

I do get it now it's been explained... but initially I thought it meant just quitting a job without explanation or complaint (so rather than voicing a concern or asking for more support, you just disappear off and find something else)

Doctors get paid more than enough to cover any extra work. Nurses and teachers should be paid more.

Although they are starting to do “quiet quitting too”. My son’s teacher was absent and the supply teacher declined to mark previous work because it was handed in before she worked there - she was only paid to mark this weeks work, not last weeks. And when my Gran was in hospital the nurse refused to take her to the loo because she knocked off in 5 mins and that would take her past the end of her shift, she told Gran to wet the bed and the next nurse would change it when she came on duty.

Once you reach a certain age you see things come back around. Take "mansplaining" for example.

We already had a word for that, "patronising"

But they aren't the same. "Patronising," even though it has a root which refers to a masculine figure, can be done by a man or a woman. "Mansplaining" is a great word for a man bloviating to a woman on a subject she knows just as well.

It sounds like just doing your job in a normal way as a normal human being. I have had several jobs where you are expected to be some demented workaholic elf with no life outside work and no caring responsibilities, but sacked them off as soon as possible.

Never heard the phrase myself.

I think the Chinese have got a similar phrase which is ‘lying flat’.

People are "quitting" the unpaid extras that so many companies/workplaces expect (and depend on this goodwill/unpaid work for their profitability/business model.)

(Although many workplaces have a long hours culture that is actually no more productive than if people worked their actual hours and were managed better - poor management is a chronic contributor to the UK's sluggish productivity. We don't invest in management, don't have decent systems, and managers mistake hours worked with actual outputs.)

I definitely think this is an Americanism to address an American work cultural phenomenon of presenteeism. Most people I know work, leave after they are done and get paid.

I don’t believe this is the same as work to rule because I’ve experienced work to rule and parts of my job that we do by being flexible to help out management were not done in those times.

I think this is very informed by personal experience. I've worked in the US, Australia and the UK and my experience has been they're all as bad as each other, but use different levers to encourage/enforce presenteeism particularly in certain sectors/industries.

Sounds like it's how most people outside of the USA already work. I'm paid for my hours and time in lieu if I need to stay late

See also - REACH OUT - LIKE - KINDA - HEY - WASSUP
If some talks to me like that I just do not reply

I'm embarrassed at how any American reading Mumsnet would perceive some of these comments. As for ignoring people who talk a certain way, that's just ill mannered.
Some things we see as Americanisms were actually standard English in the 1700s, the language died out here, but is still in use in the US.