To think that the “quiet quitting” trend is just an excuse for people who are too lazy to do their jobs?

[DandyLeader]

If you’re “quitting” without quitting, maybe you should just leave instead of draining the life out of the workplace.

All of those jobs have been run on (usually unpaid) employee goodwill for far too long. I absolutely support the right of everyone - but especially those who are in highly stressful jobs like the ones you cite - to do the job they're paid to do and no more.

What’s stopping you?

I think the whole employer / employee relationship has fundamentally changed

Far less loyalty on both sides and much more transactional

In my first role, I felt very much part of the company "family", including fairly minor stuff like tea breaks, birthday lunches

Subsequent employer, we won a national award. How did they celebrate? An email to say congratulations, followed 30 mins later by another email "don't be complacent"

Guess which employer got my loyalty and commitment?

This sums up my view exactly!

@simpledeer I'm moving house within the next month. Too much on my plate right now. Once that is done, then I can start looking for another job in earnest.

Also this.

Why do you need a new job? Just do the original job you were recruited to do, and no more.

@simpledeer the job I was originally recruited to do 5 years ago bears no resemblance to what I do now. I don't have a formal review process with HR or anyone else for that matter, so it has been difficult to raise the issues. I did formally raise my points with HR after Christmas and they came back with their offer two weeks ago. I'm not impressed, so once I have the bandwidth I will see what my other options look like.

I think the whole employer / employee relationship has fundamentally changed
Far less loyalty on both sides and much more transactional

I think this is a large part of it - wanting staff with skills but refusing to pay for training - lots of reducancies and little rewarding of hard work - lot of staff trunover from both sides.

What does surprise me is how many employers seem taken aback that employees are mirroring back their attitudes and not being automtically loyal.

Good luck @MargoLivebetter . They don’t deserve you! 💐

Interestingly I've received a PR this morning about uk businesses utilising tracking tech to battle quiet quitting and quiet vacationing.

For me, my boss (micro company, and I have no real colleagues) is asking for more and more and more. I've adopted Gen-AI into my workflow as a result, and time freed up is spent on life/family/home admin. No shame here. The work is the same if not better, I'm producing more, and getting more free time - which is much needed as I'm approaching burnout.

Meanwhile, my dp is a council accountant, and they now are so short staffed that he and another colleague have won paid overtime (pretty rare where they are) and are splitting an entire second person's full time job between them in the evenings, every single night, for the foreseeable. Apparently if they don't do this extra work, they can't do their own jobs. So I'm having to pick up some slack at home, and manage 2 small children (1 won't sleep, 1 won't poop) and all their school/nursery/surgery for one madness. At least dp is getting paid for his overtime.

I wish more people would do their jobs, do them well, but not feel obligated to burnout over them. My mum was like this, spent 6 months in bed when I was very young following a breakdown. She's not changed, is endlessly complaining and screaming and martyring herself. I won't be her.

The worst thing is that I don't think managers actually respect the people that go above and beyond. They may benefit from it but I sometimes get the vibe that they feel real contempt for these people.

Or... if you're stupid enough to go above and beyond for an employer who's bottom line is usually profit.....and burn yourself out in the process... go for it.

Usually quiet quitters are people who have been burnt out by the workplace, so the issue is really the employer, who let them get to that stage.

Our value as human beings is not defined by our work or our output.
Employment is nothing more than a contract to fulfil. There is no requirement to go above and beyond the terms stated in the contract and no one gets a badge of honour for doing so.
Corporations try to manipulate people into thinking that their value increases the harder they work which is simply not the case. I’m glad the younger generations have woken up and aren’t allowing work to dominate their life.

Yes. They do.

Not at all. I’ve gone ‘over and above’ in previous roles and it’s gone unrecognised so now I don’t bother. I figure that my employer has purchased 37 hours a week of my time and XX skills, listed in my JD. If they want more time, or more skills, they can pay for it. If not, I’m doing nothing wrong by just ‘doing my job’.

@Paganpentacle I don't think it is stupidity. I think in most cases the increases in workload happen slowly, almost imperceptibly. Someone leaves or is signed of sick or there is some kind of emergency situation and an employee takes on something extra to help out, quite often they are helping a co-worker. This creeps forwards or the department changes or the boss changes and because things aren't written in stone, an employee finds themselves with a whole load more work without any extra time or remuneration for doing it.

Certainly in the field of public services people aren't taking on more work to fuel the profit of their employer.

Too much work (Out of hours emails etc)
Too much tax!
No time for family
No time for life
State pension age is 68 for lots 🧐

Or maybe it’s a way of pushing back on the ever increasing, relentless expectation of employers with less resource?

Even ‘quietly quitting’ I’m doing more than most… and I’ve had enough of it.

For me it’s if we are given a task, and I used to do say 70 and colleagues would do 10
i don’t get paid extra and nobody valued it so now I do the same as everyone else and no extra

I speak as someone who works in HR—often seen as the “HR police” or, let’s be honest, the absolute wankers of the workforce. I’ve heard it all. I see the policy side, the operational pressure, the people problems—and I also see how hard employees are expected to graft, often without recognition, meaningful reward, or even basic respect.

To me, “quiet quitting” is just a pejorative term used to demonise workers for doing what they were contracted to do. It feeds into a dangerous narrative that paints people as lazy, uncommitted, or somehow failing the system—when in truth, the system is failing them. Wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living, workloads have increased, and well-being has taken a nosedive in many sectors, despite some people making a good industry out of it and some firms claiming well-being is why they are trying to shoehorn workers into ways of working that have no solid evidence for wellbeing enhancement.

What we’re calling “quiet quitting” is often just people setting a boundary to protect themselves from burnout.

Let’s be real: no one owes their employer unpaid labour. If someone does go above and beyond, that’s a gift. It’s not a baseline expectation.

Yes, some organisations build amazing cultures where people want to give more. But those cultures are built. They are earned through trust, fairness, development, compassion, and, crucially, pay that reflects the value of the role.

And if an employer isn’t offering those things? Then sticking faithfully to one’s job description is not “quitting”—it’s professional integrity. Shit, it's still professional integrity if they DO offer those things and you just want to stick to your job description.

We need to stop blaming workers and start looking at how the workforce is treated. Language matters. When we call this quitting, we make the worker the problem. But the real question is: what kind of leadership and culture have we created that doing the job as described is seen as a dereliction of duty?

I am sick of this narrative, and I have been part of the machine for a very long time. We need to do better.

Now granted he was working shifts but my other half finished at the end of his shift (police inspector) and came home . He’s not a bonkers people pleaser like me though who took a long time to realise that working loads of extra hours wasn’t achieving anything other than quietening the guilty / shame voice in my head.

Luckily thoughts aren’t facts.

I actively encourage my team to 'quiet quit'. In reality I am encouraging them to work what they are paid to do, and no more.

But then I care about my team and their work life balance and their mental health.