1y ago

What kind of institutional gaslighting is this?

273 comments

So... Doing your job well is "quiet quitting" now? I don't want my boss to think I'm quiet quitting, I Guess I'll have to underperform instead.
Quiet firing on the other hand is giving raises that are under inflation. Companies should stop this quiet firing shit.
- Giving raises? My employer quiet quit that more than a decade ago. Meanwhile inflation and price gouging march on.
  
  What proportion of people have jumped ship in the last ~8 years as a result? (Understand you could have good reason for sticking around.)
- I fail to see how we are responsible for the emotional well being of our management. Did I do my job? Yep! Did I do it well? Yep! Stand and deliver thy raise O manager, or face the wrath of my competing job offer.
- News organizations have employees as well. It doesn't surprise me that they are in on the gaslighting.
  
  If they don't play ball, you think they'll keep their job?
- this. every so often someone posts an article on how wages are beating inflation and im like. where? who? this is not my experience.
  
  If you want an inflation beating raise, you need to get a new job. Companies have long since stopped caring about employee retention.
  
  Probably if you take an average and include the multimillionaires getting bigger raises.
- I've taken a pay cut two years in a row for that reason. Last year was somewhat understandable with the insane inflation but this year kind of stung
  
  How is taking a pay cut when there's massive inflation even remotely understandable? Inflation means that they need to pay you more, not less; your costs are rising.
  
  Find another job. You'll quickly find out if you are worth the raise you wanted. My bet is you are.
- I can't wait until AI hits these middle managers that were just enough good at their jobs to earn a promotion and now spend their days sending angry emails to the people that actually do the work, while collecting more income than the workers... 🖕
  
  AI's can do their job right now. Haven't you ever seen an AI not work right?
  (Most managers suck, I like mine right now, and it's odd. He's stuck in meetings all day so I'm not. )
- stop this
  Bosses everywhere: taking notes "no... more... raises." sets down the notepad "see, now they are speaking my language!"
- "Quiet quitting" is a bullshit term meaning to do your job but nothing above or beyond that. Joshua Fluke has done multiple videos on this BS, and at this point there are plenty of other idiotic terms thrown around to try and make workers look bad.
- It was always a stupid fucking term that equates doing a job with quitting.
  Not increasing pay isn't quit firing, because there is no firing. It is just businesses being stingy.
  Edit: Guess I wasn't clear enough that I am responding to the general statement that not giving raises is constructive dismissal, and didn't add a footnote that not giving raises to specific people could be part of constructive dismissal. Nuance is hard.
  
  Not increasing pay isn't quit firing, because there is no firing. It is just businesses being stingy.
  it's constructive dismissal.
  
  Not increasing pay with inflation is a pay cut because your pay is literally worth less without it.
  In a sane world, if the fed is dictating the money supply, with their actions directly impacting inflation, every workers pay should be indexed to inflation. Same goes for taxation, welfare payments, etc. Companies raise their prices regardless.
  
  I agree it's a dumb term, so I made up my own dumb term. (At least I think I made it up)
  Employees are allowed to be just as stingy as businesses.
- Quiet quitting is the practice of meeting minimum expectations with low moral or engagement. Underperforming could lead to termination for not meeting minimum expectations.
  
  Woosh.
  Also quiet quitting isn’t anything except a bullshit term dreamed up by capitalist crybabies.
  
  The issue many people have is how some bosses redefine underperforming as "not doing enough unpaid overtime".
  
  Then just make the minimum 30 pieces of flair 🙄
- Quiet quitting: doing what you're paid for
  Normal working: doing what you're paid for but also asking managers for more work when you're done -> that's what's expected from management and also takes some load off their shoulders, they love that
  Over achievement: doing what you're paid for and more without asking management -> management will promise you a seat at the table of you continue doing that long enough!
  If there's advancement opportunities try to do the second one until you reach a point where you're happy and then do the first one :)
  
  Hahaha someone's living in fairy land.
  
  Tell me you're 14 and have never worked a day in your life without telling me you're 14 and have never worked a day in your life.
  
  This person is a manager
  
  Or crawl so far up management's ass while throwing all your coworkers under the bus. THAT is how you get ahead. Stepping on your coworkers.
  
  I actually thought you were joking until the last sentence
  Get off your knees, you slave

I had an employee review with my manager this week, at my request. She told me she wasn't comfortable uptraining me right now even though they badly need the help in the position I asked to be crosstrained for, because they'd rather hire someone just for the role; but we could talk about it again in two months. After a little digging, I found that (A) they can't afford to lose me from my lower-paid role and (2) they know I'm looking for another job and don't want to train me until I demonstrate I'm planning to stay.
My response is that (A) well you're definitely gonna lose me now and (2) I'm definitely no longer willing to stay.
- Similar situation on my end awhile back. Location had begun losing people. I was in a bottom rung management position, more title than authority, and the team knew it. However, I was also the only manager willing to be consistently on later shifts. Due to pretty intense compartmentalization issues were often isolated and fixed by managers within each department. Except later on at night I was alone with a smaller team. This presented a bit of a situation:
  If a problem came up I was expected to text or call a manager. As you can imagine, they did not often reply or pick up.
  Many problems require rather immediate solutions.
  I wasn't being trained to receive the skills necessary to deal with many situations so I began enabling key members of the evening team and standing in front of them if mistakes were made, acting as a wall.
  Due to all of this, and a lot of work being handled by a smaller team, (and some issues going consistently ignored by senior management) we saw several people leave. In the middle of all this I was isolated and made out to be the reason for some systemic issues, told I could no longer take the initiative to help, and the team caught wind.
  Eventually I began looking for other jobs. When I let my bosses know boy were they surprised. By the time I left one manager had claimed to have started having anxiety attacks during their shift, the whole unreachable during situations thing became a problem for upper, and well...long story short shit and fan began to meet.
  
  If a problem came up I was expected to text or call a manager. As you can imagine, they did not often reply or pick up.
  Many problems require rather immediate solutions.
  These are not your problems. If management has enacted a procedure that doesn't work, don't change it or you will be blamed for any failure.
  Send a few emails to document your opinion that there are problems. Otherwise, do exactly what was recommended. You want the policy to fail. Don't try to improve it without management support.
- I remember doing self assessments before reviews, I just gave myself 5s because they were going to change everything to 3.5 anyhow unless you invented cold fusion and sucked everyone's dick
  
  Well, Mr Chalupapocalypse, your breakthrough on cold fusion is really profitable for the company, but the VP of marketing was disappointed you didn't cup his balls during last week's blowjob session, so...best we can do is a 3.9
  
  Woah check out this guy's resume
- Nice, how did you do your digging? Some key relationships in the company?
  
  I asked questions during the review. My.manager was evasive but it wasn't hard to put together. In the restaurant industry, everyone is hiring right now as they expand for patio season. That won't be the case as much in two months and we both know it; if I'm going to leave it'll likely be in the next two weeks.
- (A)
  (2)
  I do this shit all the time haha
- Somewhat related, advice about being irreplaceable is bad for this exact reason. The more replaceable you are, the easier to promote you and take longer vacations. Sure you might be able to get fired more easily, but most managers won't put forth the effort.
  
  Not trying to be an asshole, but this is privilege in action. For low paying jobs, managers will fire you at the drop of a hat. Jobs that pay better are more secure.
- To be fair (2) is kinda understandable, but this has to be the most incompetent management ever.
  
  Nope. Just standard corporate management.
  
  If they communicated better, and offered the training/position/salary increase as incentive to stay, that would (imo) be a better course of action. This just feels rude and incompetent
  
  She's thoroughly mid. She has strengths but connecting with her supervisees is not one of them. I've had worse.
- At this point, you don't fucking care. Go to their manager and tell them about it.
  
  Saving that for my exit interview.

Doing your job at a high standard is a problem? Who makes this garbage up?
- It's companies gaslighting us that we are either looking for new roles, or we are working hard to make more money/ask for a raise or else we'll find a new role.
  Managers see both these things as "not being part of the fam", but really they just want to take more and give less while playing the victim.
- Yeah I always thought ‘quiet quitters’ referred to people checking out of their jobs emotionally and doing just barely enough to not get fired, so actually underperforming, not because they couldn’t do better but because they stopped caring at some point. In that sense they have already quit, quietly. But now it seems that anyone who doesn’t go above and beyond can be a ‘quiet quitter’? Doesn’t make much sense to me.
  
  Nah, quit quitting is just the new term for it. Boomers called it working to the letter of your contract. Quit quitting isn’t doing less than your job duties. It’s simply refusing to bend over backwards and give your employer all of your free time. You don’t take on extra responsibility. You don’t come in early or stay late. You come in on time, do your exact job duties as written, then you go home.
  But this terrifies employers, who have historically relied on manipulation and coercion to get employees to work beyond the scope of what they were hired for. So they’ve started calling it “quit quitting” in an effort to rebrand it as something negative.
  
  They're just toeing the line for their corporate masters. Capitalists want 150% effort for 100% pay since the profit margin on that extra 50% alone is huge.
  
  I've known people who are the best workers on their team, but put in like 40% effort. Does that count as quiet quitting? IDK.
  To be clear, I'm not excusing the article, which is a bad joke. That being said, there are plenty of people out there that are really good at their jobs, but don't put in full effort. I don't have a problem with these people at all (really who does 100% effort all of the time?).
- They don't just want your work output; they want your soul.
  They want the old days where people were 100% believers in their jobs at places like WeWork, Uber, Tesla, and Facebook...before the general public became disillusioned with tech companies specifically and companies in general more broadly. They want "evangelists" and the belief of the mid-Obama years back...
  The only problem is that many have looked at things over the last ten years and found that the euphoric promises made by the management of companies were lies.
- Because people cannot like you and you still feel obligated to earn your paycheck and you have honor. Unlike the dip shits you are quitting from because they are drunken assholes that can't see past their whiney little emergencies.
- I think it is meant as satire
  
  Neither the site nor the author point to any of this being satire, unfortunately.
  They’re just that much detached from reality.

There’s a great reply to this in the same publication: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2024/04/27/quiet-quitters-or-good-workers/
Sir, – I read with interest Olive Keogh’s article (“Quiet quitting: You always had workers who did 9-5 but it’s a creeping malaise, employers say”, April 25th).
The article defines working one’s contract hours as a form of quitting, a contortion of fact that I have struggled to grasp since laying eyes on it.
It is asserted that employees are obliged to put in extra hours, do additional work and recalibrate their work-life balance for the “benefits” of social capital, “wellbeing” and career success.
I have a novel proposal. Pay employees in actual capital for the additional time they are expected to work.
Dispense with the relaxation classes on their lunch breaks and the sweet treats and the tokenistic attitude of management to the labour that drives their business.
Instead, resource staff sufficiently to complete work within business hours, respect the rights of staff to a fulfilling life not defined by their day jobs, and stop using gaslighting terms like “quiet quitting” for fulfilling the terms of their contract of employment.
This may seem radical to those managers who have been around the block, but KPIs (key performance indicators) don’t spend time with my loved ones nor do they put food on the table. – Yours, etc,
SHANE FITZPATRICK,
Dublin 7.
- That letter is way too polite for the "go fuck yourselves" that I had in mind... I honestly think we should start actually spitting in the faces of managers of that kind that we happen to know in private life, be it family or neighbors, just show them disdain and disgust coming from people whom they have no power over.
  
  Agreed. However, the letter you or I might have written probably wouldn't have been published. Haha.

Unionize people. I joined a union and there's no "we're a team" bullshit or the boss going "do me a favor". 4pm hits, you drop what you're doing and go home. You get paid for your job, and the union fees are nothing considering the pay is way higher for union workers in my field.
- Depends on the Union, sadly. My wife was a Union rep, she had a grievence, the higher up union leaders and the employer met ahead of her scheduled meeting and screwed her over in the grievance meeting. I'm not sure if she was more mad at losing the grievance, or having to pay dues to be screwed by the union.
  
  This happens at my job too. Overall the benefits of my union far outweigh how shit they are and the union dues. I'd rather have a crappy union than none at all.
  I know my company would screw me over much worse than my union and company combined if there was no union.
- My unionized company changed our mandated hours from 45 hours a week to 50 hours a week like 2 weeks after I joined it was one of the shittiest jobs I ever had. Pay was good but only because I was forced to sit there for 10 hours a day lol
  
  Imagine how shitty that job would have been without a union!
  Unions dont make shitty jobs better, dude, get a clue.
  
  One of the very few interviews in my life that I ended early was the one where in the third hour of it, they usually mentioned that the (competitive) salary was based on a 45 hour work week, with "occasional" mandatory overtime as the needs of the company dictated.
  Knowing from earlier that they were very short at the position I was interviewing for, I asked for a more specific answer on what I could expect as "occasional" and the response was, "Well the work for your position has been backlogged since the previous employee quit, so for the first 3 to 6 months you can expect to work 50-60 hours each week, every week. After that, it will probably only be two weeks a month. But you can work those extra hours on the weekends too, so it's not as bad as it sounds!"
  I was already done but I did some quick mental math and realized that dividing even their higher salary by that many more hours, not only was it insanely more work but was actually like a 15% pay cut, in terms of hourly rate, than the job I currently had.
  I explained this to the guy and asked how much wiggle room there was on salary and he basically said something to the effect of, "Maybe in a few years you can negotiate salary, but coming in you're really in no position to argue for more pay."
  So I thanked him for his time and told him the interview was over.

If they are completing their assigned workloads where does the quitting happen?
- Quiet quitting has always referred to the extra bullshit that employers pressure employees into doing.
  In America we've fallen into this work culture that implies you aren't really part of a team unless you are constantly putting forth more than what the employer is paying you for.
  The undertone of this headline is that managers feel uneasy because so-called "quiet quitters" won't take on extra work or unpaid hours or exhibit overwhelming enthusiasm, but just do literally what they have to at a passable or high quality.
  The gaslighting part is that those workers aren't doing anything wrong, but they aren't bending over backwards for their employers, so corporate America wants to paint the picture that those workers are awful time thieves instead of just burnt out wage slaves.
  
  I hear some countries in Asia are CRAZY bad for these kind of expectations and have been for a long time.
- The idea is that they complete tasks ahead of schedule and then slow play results to the predetermined deadlines. It's hilarious to me that people are saying this is a genZ thing, since this shit has been going on in tech fields forever. Literally everyone I have ever known has taken "working vacations" by pretending some work is taking longer than it really is.
  Bonus points if you are smart enough to still turn it in a day early to keep the heat low.
  
  It used to be called "looking busy" and people have been doing it ever since working at a job was a thing.
  
  And thus is my greatest weakness cause I hate being bored so if I run out of work I look for more.
- The next time they're denied a raise.

"Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit."
-- George Carlin.

- I had basically this exact conversation with my supervisor last week. She was like, "I like to have ___ done by Thursdays," because I was sick on Thursday and said I'd do it first thing Friday morning. So I said, "Ok, so is the deadline for this task Thursdays then? Because that's never been communicated to me." And she said, "Well, I like to have it done by Thursdays." Holy fuck, JUST TELL ME HOW MANY PIECES OF FLAIR I NEED.
  Anyway, I'm looking for a new job because I can't work in a place that wants to penalize people for not living up to expectations they didn't know existed. My entire review (first one in 2 1/2 years) was a series of "Remember this thing from months ago? Well we didn't like how you did that but we never said anything and just sat on it until now." Cool, thanks for setting me up to fail, appreciate that.
  
  Remember this thing from months ago?
  Remember the most basic principles ever?
- the manager in that scene is Mike Judge and knowing that makes his bit so much more enjoyable to watch
- It’s time to rematch office space
  
  It’s time to rematch office space
  Rematch it to what?
  (I know what you mean)
- Trading Places needs a reboot. Speaking of old movies that got it.

"Jill, I'm afraid we have a problem. Your quality of work is very high, as always. But you don't look enough like your job isn't soul crushing. I'm not saying you look like you're bored out of your mind or that I think working here is depriving you of your will to live. I'm just saying that there are times when you're not smiling like a completely unhinged person and that makes me question whether you really want to be here."
- Reminds me of my art professor's story about getting her doctorate, in which a bunch of tenured professors came together to review her work to give her the degree. One professor disagreed with giving her doctorate because apparently she didn't look like she had a tough time getting it. That sent my art professor over the edge because she'd worked so hard and suffered so much for it so she started crying in front of the professors and told them she wasn't going to bother getting her doctorate anymore and that she was quitting right there and then. The other tenured professors were quick to convince the other to change their mind and eventually gave the degree, but my art professor still remembers how shitty it was to decide something so important to her on the basis that she suffered much less than her peers in producing something good or better work.

Shes just working there...menacingly!

If your business model depends on me doing extra work for free, then you aren't a great business person
- That's the whole deal of maximizing profit. If you can get your employees to work extra for free, you have a very successful business model.
  If you think this is sad then maybe you'd agree that we need a change.
  
  Yes, but you need to throw in some consideration for your employees, either material or symbolic.
- Thanks for explaining it! That's it, right? I was wondering what tf it was trying to allude to as "quiet quitting". This isn't satire, then?
  
  There's always been a push towards seeing working as a value in itself, but it was easier to trick people into working around the clock when wages allowed to reach one's goals (a house, financial stability, sending your kids to college). It's more difficult when workers live paycheck to paycheck and know that they won't be economically able to retire.

So, in other words, the boss has nothing to complain about
- But they have an uneasy feelings!
  
  I've got that stressful uneasy feeling
  And I know youre going to let me down
  Because I'm already standing
  On your neck
- And yet, here they are, complaining, while also whining that nOboDy wAnTs tO wOrK!!11112 🤦‍♀️
- Moreover, the boss now has to work a little harder and negotiate performance goals that track with increased performance. Employees aren't going to do that themselves anymore.

As organized labor gains more steam, this is the kind of bullshit that's going to be thrust in front of our eyes on the "news" more, and more, and more.

Quiet quitting is when I do my work

Oh yes. The company where I work at does these performance reviews: doing 100% gives you a 'C' (as a grade). I do everything that is expected from me without anything to complain about? Yeah, that's not good enough.
Fuck that.
There is the silent complaint that you could do more... Give up your spare time for your work. Work yourself tired and burn out for your company! That's what they want to see.
I'm looking for a new job while I still work there.
- Oh man I would just make it a point to celebrate getting a C with my colleagues. "Champion Rank" or something lol.

TIL: I’m looking for a job I can Quiet Quit at for the next 20-30 years.
- Shit I've been doing that at all my jobs for the last 20+ years. Apparently it's not really a real problem.

tacit admission that you started a business but you really wanted to start a cult. tell you what: you start paying me as much as you possibly can regardless of our employment agreement, I'll start working as much as I possibly can regardless of our employment agreement.
- Spoiler: I won't actually work as much as I possibly can.
  
  Yep. I want a reasonable amount of money for a reasonable amount of work. I have a life outside work, which seems incomprehensible to employers nowadays.

"we have nothing to complain about, but we'll still complain because fuck the poor, am I right?"

Gaslighting isn't real. You sound crazy.
- Electrical lighting is more economical, anyways.

TIL I've been a "quiet quitter" my entire life.
- It feels good to be seen.

ROFL This is madness! I’d love to know who is behind this push to gaslight people into believing that having a great work/life balance is something to be frowned upon!

Oh shit, uneasy feelings for managers... :)
Clearly a national emergency.

So they just work?

This has gotta be bait. There's no fuckin way.

"They asked us to pay them in money and not pizza parties, then the janitor came in and said "Wait you guys are getting Pizza Parties? I can't even get some cleaning agent to wipe the god damn toilet down properly with, I've been spitting on it and waiting for management to notice the smell and order more fucking cleaning agent and they're just giving you guys free pizza?" it's a mystery why they keep leaving., maybe we should try putting in an Air Hockey table that they'll never have long enough breaks to actually us?" - Management

Irish Times is known for their clickbait articles. Not too long ago, an article that was written just to generate outrage (fake tan is cultural appropriation), was found to be generated by AI, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was also the case. My advice is to ignore anything Irish Times is writing. (I've been living in Ireland for well over a decade, and I learned to regard IT as the low end of the already poor media landscape here.)
- I was just going to say, of all places, this gets published by an Irish news outlet? Hah! It has been my experience moving there that in workplaces in Ireland is you go there, do your job and go home. No bullshit, the workplace is not a family, your colleagues are not your friends. In and out. Very efficient while on the clock, couldn’t give a fuck immediately after.

TIL: I'm quiet quitting.
- We're all quiet quitting on this blessed day.
  
  Speak for yourself

So let me get this straight. People are completing jobs then slow rolling it to the end of the day to turn in those completed jobs so they don't have to do additional work? Is that correct?
If someone could clarify what a quit quitter is that would be great.
- a quiet quitter is someone who does their job. they use a lot of tone, insinuation and connotation talking about it, but if you press them for a definition, a quiet quitter is someone who does their job.
- My understanding is the following: In companies, it is assumed that employees will try to reach for the promotion, getting a higher position for a higher pay. Managers have been trained to use that to push people to do more than what is strictly required of them, letting people think that's how they'll progress their career. Quiet quitter are people that simply stopped aiming for the promotion, they do what their job entail and that's it, no more trying to get more, no extra, no internal politics. They don'tgive a fuck about all this, all they wantis the paycheck and to enjoy their life away from all this non-sense.
  They pinned the term quiet quitter, because this is usually the behavior of an employee that is about to quit the company for another position elsewhere, except quiet quitter don't plan on quitting.
- It is a term for people who do their job, but don't do extra work for free. They are not in violation of their contract.
- To me, it's doing your job just well enough that they can't actually fire you for anything, but no so well that you're being taken advantage of.
  I also call it "proper time management" I properly manage my time so I can get all of MY work done in the time allocated to me, it's not my fault other people have terrible time management.
- Sort of? I think the idea is, you do your work, and not an inkling more, by any means necessary
  
  That's...definitionally not quitting, quiet or otherwise. That's literally doing the work you agreed to do when hired.

Get a vasectomy. I don't want to provide more wage slaves to these shitters. Exploited cradle to grave, what a life to leave your children.
- You can always raise quiet quitter to mess with capitalism lol
- The cycle of abuse stops here.

Parkinson's law: Work expands to consume the time available. (1955)
This is just blaming bureaucratic drift on the workforce. Only in the 2020s (or since the late 1980s) companies abandoned any care or concern for their own workers, and are glad to lay them off during growth to maximize profit.
The ownership class will tremble something something. We literally have nothing left to lose but our chains.

I wanna punch Olive.

Funny and strange that the article came from The Irish Times. I live in Ireland, and foreign nationals love to work here because of more laidback working culture. This is not "quiet quitting" in the Irish context, it's "as long as all your work is done, you can do whatever the fuck you want."
I have culture shock hearing from others who worked abroad and say how toxic the work environments are in some places. I had co-workers from Spain and Portugal say you can get pressured to work on weekends, or do tasks outside of working hours. Verbal abuse and shouting also happens more frequently.
- I worked on one of the largest Portuguese tech companies, it was kinda dependent on the business area. In the telcos department I barely had to do any overtime, it was only for emergencies. My colleagues in the banking department, however, wouldn't ever see the light of day. They arrived before sunrise and left long after sunfall. Projects were submitted at a loss to in the hope of netting future projects. Developers were supposed to work overtime to compensate this... If you refused to work overtime your carreer would have end at that company.

I love the desperate calls. But not instantly, you get them like a week later, every single time. Sometimes they schedule a super important meeting where they HAVE TO talk to you and just cancel it a day or two before it because they realize it's futile.

Bro, what can I even say to this??! 😂

Ok working class, we need to talk about your flair
- Nixing Google’s little spyware from the end of that link
  I am not a bot, and this action was performed manually
  
  That is exactly what a bot would say.

Not astonishing, as it is in line with THE major belief of conservatives, i.e. a person's status in live determines their worth and character traits.
As an employee you are a bad person. Simple as.

This has got to be made by the same type of shitheads who churn out clickbait excrement every five minutes, in a different section of the clickbait excrement factory, opposite side of where they churn out
"Physicist Brian Cox's terrifying reveal - CERN at Switzerland unlocked demon forces, world's end by 2025".
Or you're being trolled and got those big red shiny buttons pushed.

Translation: "Workers aren't happy with their pay and we keep refusing to give them a raise despite noticing a ceiling in their productivity."
PAY. THEM. MORE.
Labor isn't free, you cheapskate bastards.

I see a lot of people complaining about the term "quiet quitting." In this thread there are people saying that that's exactly what they want in a job, that that's what they've been doing since before the term existed, etc..
I'm curious what other succinct terms people would use to describe the act of doing the bare minimum and not engaging beyond what is required and asked for.
I'm asking because I also dislike the term "quiet quitting", and I know such an activity has existed forever. At the same time it does seem useful because I can't think of a succinct way to describe what it explicitly describes. In the past it seems like such a behavior was implicit, but with modern "engagement" and "hustle" and "110%" work culture, it seems like we need a more explicit term.
So, is there another term we can use that people don't hate as much?
- Acting your wage.
- If you buy a monitor from Amazon, do you expect that they will thrown in another one for free?
  What about if you hire a plumber to come fixe a leaky pipe, do you expect them to install a new set of water taps for free while they're at it?
  Do you go to McDonalds and expect a posh table waiter, and a complimentary bottle of Beaujoulais wine along with lightly seasoned oregano and olive oil garlick bread, for the price of a Big Mac?
  So why expect that workers will do more work than what they are being paid for?!
  If it's only a business relationship, as those very same managers treat it when it's time for layoffs or when giving below inflation raises because the job market isn't tight and they can easilly find replacements, then it's only fair that workers too treaty it as only a business relationship and only provide the level of service they're being paid for.
  If they want the haute cuisine Michellin Starred service they're gonna have to pay more than McDonald prices.
  The whole calling it "quiet quiting" is just a reflection of the moneyed class wanting to, as the Brits would call it, eat the cake and still have it afterwards.
- I'm curious what other succinct terms people would use to describe the act of doing the bare minimum and not engaging beyond what is required and asked for.
  Working. Doing the job for which you were hired.
- I’m curious what other succinct terms people would use to describe the act of doing the bare minimum and not engaging beyond what is required and asked for.
  Perhaps these aren't punchy, but that's also why we're stuck with awful things like "quiet quitting". But these capture the correct (IMO) sentiment:
  "Adhering to the employment contract."
  "Doing my job."
  "Meeting documented expectations."
  "Following management's lead."
  The last one is important. There's a concept of "modeling" in terms of providing strong examples of allowed/expected behavior in the workplace. If management really wants people to go above and beyond, that change starts with a show of the same on their part. I would bet that a lot of frustrated managers are themselves not putting in the extra effort, or do not make a show of it.
- Work-to-rule
  
  That implies malice though, which I don't like. What's malicious about doing exactly what we agreed I'm paid to do, nothing more, and leaving when the whistle blows? In a job market where promotions are a pipe dream and equitable raises not far from it, why should I waste my time trying to impress someone that won't reciprocate?
- high quality working. individuals really need to lower the bar. when I was young the expectation when hiring minum wage was if you got someone who showed up, on time, consistantly and was not drunk or on drugs. that was a high quality hire. workers need to learn to slack like the 80's.
- Doing your job
- Being normal.
- Back in the big union days, this was called "work to rule", as in you worked exactly to the letter of your job and not an inch more.
  It was a union tactic to fight back if the company wasn't playing fair or wasn't playing ball at the negotiating table

"How dare the slaves have time for other things and not prioritize our profits first?"

Can we stop calling every behavior we don't like "gaslighting" already please?
- It's as if I'm being gaslit into thinking I don't know what the word means!
- gaslighting noun gas·light·ing ˈgas-ˌlī-tiŋ : psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator
  i'd say use of the word is actually accurate here

Is this someone just looking have their name circulated, no matter what? It's a bit over the top.

When "line go up" mentality gets applied to your workforce. God forbid they keep working to the same standard they always have, must be moar! Always moar!

How do I get a "career" that pays more than minimum wage, there's some kind of occult mix of words and body language I'm just not getting. Am I autistic? I don't care.

273 comments