terry_walker•13d agoProlific Poster

I think the "quiet quitting" backlash is overblown

Last month at my office in Austin, I watched a coworker get chewed out for leaving exactly at 5 PM. He'd finished all his work for the day. The manager actually called it quiet quitting over Slack. That term gets thrown around way too loosely. To me, quiet quitting is just doing the bare minimum to avoid getting fired. But this guy was productive and on time with everything. He just refused to answer emails after hours. I don't see how that's a bad thing. Am I missing something, or is this just management wanting free labor?

2 comments

2 Comments

jason_kelly812d ago

Yeah the "leaving at 5 PM" thing really gets me. Your coworker finished his work and just left, that's not quiet quitting, that's having boundaries. Same thing happened at my place in San Antonio, a guy I know got a passive aggressive email about "visibility" because he stopped staying late to help with stuff that wasn't his job. These managers act like you're stealing from them if you don't give them every second of your day. I swear the term quiet quitting got invented so bosses could guilt people into working more for the same pay. If someone is doing their job and doing it well, who cares what time they leave? It's just a way to make people feel bad for having a life.

chen.jenny12d ago

Oh man, I gotta kinda disagree with you here actually. I think "quiet quitting" is a real thing, it's just that people use the term wrong. Like, leaving at 5 PM when your work is done? That's totally fine. But I've seen people at my old office who literally stopped caring, did the bare minimum, ignored emails, and hid behind "boundaries" when really they just checked out. There's a difference between having a healthy boundary and straight up quitting on the job but staying for the paycheck.