To think that quiet quitting without looking for something better is just an attitude problem?

[ThatJadeSwan]

I get why people disengage from toxic workplaces but if you’re quiet quitting and not even trying to find a better role, then what’s the point? At that stage, it’s less about setting boundaries and more about settling for misery.

Isn't it just self-sabotage to stay in a job you hate without making moves to leave? Or do some people genuinely believe this is a long-term solution?

I’m as cynical as they come about the workplace (and now happily self employed) but I’m not sure.

In most industries/orgs there will be busier times and quieter ones, and to my mind a healthy team / organisation is one where during the busier times those who can say the equivalent of, “There’s something that needs doing here, and we need to do it even though it’s beyond our contractual hours or remit.” The flip side of that is “There’s nothing to do this afternoon, so I’ll head off early” (knowing that no one will blink an eye).

If the org is healthy/supportive and flexible but you have one or two people working to rule, of course it can bring everyone else down and breed resentment.

Obviously if the org is dysfunctional and Joanne is the only one making a stand against crap management or underresourcing, that is a different matter.

After decades of going above and beyond, I’ve realised this 👆is correct. It suits people to have very able dogsbodies.

It is a hard habit to break though…

Sometimes you just don’t have another option. I’ve looked and I haven’t found anything of a similar pay yet. I’ve had 3 meetings in total that went nowhere.

So I’ve stopped taking on tasks A, B, C and D when my job is actually only A and B and my coworkers barely scraps task A and is told he’s doing great and only needs “more confidence”.

So, "quiet quitting" is ... not quitting? If it's doing what's in your contract or job description and no more, I can see how that's a problem in some positions because the job description doesn't spell out everything and a lot of initiative and leadership and flexibility really are implied and expected parts of the job. But for a lot of lower-level individual contributors, who do have exact job descriptions or contracts, that IS the job and quitting is a weird and confusing way to describe staying on and working to a satisfactory standard.

And I don't think it's necessarily self-sabotage that someone who once expended a lot of extra effort in a role has decided to stop doing extra; they may have been extending the extra effort in the hope of a reward or benefit that they've now concluded will never come. They don't owe the corporation extra work beyond what's contracted if there's no benefit for them beyond the stated salary and benefits. Whether or not they leave, and when, has to be up to them.

Quiet quitting is doing the bare minimum you can get away with. You would not volunteer ideas, time, or anything really you are not mandated to do. It would impact on colleagues, especially at busy times or when the company needs to find creative ways to solve problems or develop new products or services.

Quiet quitting isn’t leaving without another job. Rather I think it’s more often the opposite - keeping your head down and disengaging until something better comes up.

I disagree slightly with what some are classing as quiet quitting here. You can stay within your contracted working hours and take a lunch break yet not be quiet quitting, that’s just having healthy boundaries. Anything over that means sacrificing time with my DD. I know which of the two I’ll regret.

Quiet quitting is doing the bare minimum, as little as you can get away with. Whilst staying within my contracted hours (although flexed both for company or myself at times) I can completely transform departments I run. The outcome being a far more efficient and streamlined operation, saving the companies I work for a lot of money. This is generally never in my job description and thus countering the argument of quiet quitting being working your contracted hours.

I don’t think I could ever quiet quit without trying to either rectify or find another job, however it’s easier when you only need to consider how your role works with 1 child in terms of school, clubs and holidays clubs. I am also in a senior role with a skill set in a higher demand where I can easily negotiate other roles

I think this is what the phrase should mean if used correctly. Working to rule and quiet quitting are not the same thing at all and no one working to rule should be accused or accuse themselves of quiet quitting if they are adequately doing their job.

I took it to mean scaling back your efforts.
In particular efforts where you’re going the extra mile.

Because you’ve learnt a bitter ( financial ) lesson that you get no increase in salary and maybe passed over for promotions because you’ve made yourself too useful where you are.

That's what I took it to mean.
And I'll never agree with doing the bare minimum to get by, whilst taking the same wage as your colleagues but leaving them more to do.

This is what suprises me, people who aren’t worried about being unemployed. The job market is brutal atm.

that said, quiet quitting is more of a post Covid thing when employers were desperate for staff. I haven’t heard anyone talk about it for years until now.

Really? You hear it all the time on TikTok and YouTube. Mostly from Gen Z. So I actually disagree with the idea this is mostly rife among those 20 years into a career who learned the hard way that going above and beyond is pointless. There are young people who are at the start of the working life going in with a ‘quiet quitting’ attitude. And it certainly isn’t working to rule and having boundaries, it’s doing the bare minimum to stay employed, perhaps to fund a side hustle that isn’t generating enough income to live off yet.

Are you an employer of people you consider to be quiet quitting?
if not, why are you bothered as to why people do it……..not really any of your concern why they do so long as they’re doing the job?

But even so, we all know that being that person might not get you sacked, but it’ll have you marked as first out when the restructures and redundancies come. Maybe as you say, these are people who earn so little they don’t have serious commitments yet.

I’m not agreeing with this approach, I’m just explaining that it still exists and wasn’t a temporary situation immediately after Covid when companies were struggling to hire. A Gen Z worker still living at home can afford to be at risk of redundancy, and therefore can afford to ‘quiet quit’. There was a thread not long ago of a young lady who quit a job 3 weeks in with nothing to go to because she didn’t like the workplace… after only 3 weeks. She lived at home and didn’t pay rent (like so many young people) so she could afford to not be resilient / stick something out for longer. If I had done that at her age I would have been homeless. There’s just more opportunity to quiet quit in the first place these days.

Depending on what you mean exactly, I am quiet quitting. I work hard and I work my contracted hours. But I do not do overtime or aim for promotion. I do not come up with new plans for this or that. I do not bitch to other staff members or complain. I put up with whatever corporate bullshit I have to do and quietly do whatever is required. But I no longer stress about work. If I can’t fit something in, I say so. I have no intention of getting another job.

Why would colleagues have more to do? That’s on the managerial staff to plan for, not colleagues.

Id say that is firmly just doing your job tbh, which is absolutely the right thing to do

If a department, say a FOH reception team, is adequately resourced, in terms of people power Vs jobs to be done, and one person decides that actually they're not going to do their quota due to "quiet quitting" that clearly then leaves their direct colleagues under more pressure. That's simple. And not okay.

Thing is, us oldies will die off and the new generations attitude of working until it suits them and just doing your job will become the new norm. Thank God. Going above and beyond does 0 for the person.

But I am saying that quiet quitting means they do the job to the required standard, they just don’t go above and beyond.

Then you missed me, and others, saying we understood it to be different.

If someone wants to go to work, and work to the explicit rule of their job descriptions (mind mine always say "and duties as deemed fit") and do the bare minimum, and stick to their hours, that is their absolute right.

I really don’t think that most people are talking about just doing their job with no extras when they talk about quiet quitting. That’s a fairly normal phenomenon quiet quitting is doing the minimum to avoid performance management.

Working overtime isn’t even a given for people to take away.

Whether my colleagues choose to do more is totally up to them and nothing to do with me. I am fed up with the whole ‘you are letting the team down’ that some managers or companies use to pressure you into doing work or hours that you don’t want or have to do.

A bit of a long story but back in the very late 80's I worked for a company in West London that was taken over by a company in King's Lynn. After a year or so, they decided to close the London operation and move production to Norfolk; I was one of two of the London staff who were relocated, everyone else lost their jobs. The problem was that they didn't understand our market and after banging heads with the MD several times he said "If you don't like it, you can quit", fine I replied, write me a cheque and I'll go today, which he did. I drove home thinking "holy fudge, what have I done, I've got a mortgage to pay and no job". As I walked through my front door the phone was ringing, it was a recruitment consultant looking for a quality manager for an IT company in West London; I stayed at that company for 8 years. As one door closes another one opens, follow your gut feeling on this one.