From "Quiet quitting: why doing the bare minimum at work has gone global/The meaninglessness of modern work – and the pandemic – has led many to question their approach to their jobs" (The Guardian).
I blogged about quiet quitting 2 weeks ago, here. And I blogged about tangping in June 2021, here. And click my tag "idleness" for various manifestations of my interest in this concept over the years — my blogging years.
But I've been interested in it for as long as I remember. The Guardian article mentions "Bartleby, the Scrivener," which had a big impact on me when I was a high school student. Talk about a quiet quitter!
Somewhat noisier examples from my high school English classes that got into my head: "Walden" and "The World Is Too Much With Us":
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!...
Speaking of quietness, from "Walden":
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats....
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57 comments:
"Quiet Quitting" Oh. So like just about any public sector employee? Like teachers.
"...or volunteering to supervise the boss’s teenager on work experience..."
Whoa, What? Um...if not doing that is a sign of 'lying flat' I don't think I'm a minority in not volunteering. That definitely crosses a line...for most people.
Jughead
I always hated that rhyme, "a sordid boon." It seemed so contrived for Wordsworth, who always wrote so beautifully. It's like that little bit of shell in your lobster roll.
Maybe it's the exclamation point.
Supporting my family always seemed like reason enough to go to work, especially when my wife was at home with my kids. I think that taking that aspect of it away from men, and asking women, who would, many of them, prefer to be home raising children and hanging out with their girlfriends to working, has led to the evisceration of the "meaning" of work.
This are the thoughts that exist in a rich culture. Do you want to see lives of quiet desperation? Go to a third world country and watch what happens when the weather fails.
H D Thoreau was an early hippie who was unwilling to work. He put himself outside society. If the world were full of Thoreaus, the poverty would end overwhelming.
Here’s one from my high school years:
To seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield.
Here is another:
The louder he talked of his virtue, the faster we counted our spoons.
Boys vs. girls? Maybe.
Nothing works anymore.
TikTok posts about quiet quitting may have been inspired by Chinese social media: #TangPing, or lying flat, is a now-censored hashtag apparently prompted by China’s shrinking workforce and long-hours culture.
I've long felt that many of our 'attitudes' that today pervade this country and clearly end up as self-destructive have been introduced and nourished here by our Chinese friends. It's so easy to do. That a most popular app in the West created and run by the Chinese, is one obvious source for the encouragement of the West to stand down, is not a surprise.
I went out to dinner the other night, and for the umpteenth time since covid hit, we were in a restaurant that was understaffed, with crap service, food that was a shadow of what it was pre-covid, and prices higher than we've ever paid. No one wants to work anymore and it shows up in all the little ways of our lives.
These days I'm often reminded of the famous Heinlein quote: "Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
We're entering a long phase of extremely bad luck.
Assuming for argument’s sake that doing meaningful work is a significant part of a full and rewarding life: how much of it do we need, and for how long?
I've never read Bartleby the Scrivener, but this post reminds me of something Thomas Merton wrote. I believe he was describing his conversion to RC while he was living in NYC, and he made a wry observation about how he had finally figured out the purpose of life, while millions of people walking were still walking around Manhattan, convinced that they had important work to do.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
"I always hated that rhyme, "a sordid boon." It seemed so contrived for Wordsworth, who always wrote so beautifully. It's like that little bit of shell in your lobster roll."
It's a figure of speech — I don't know the name of it — where you have an adjective that undoes the noun. It's sort of a joke, like "open secret." This good thing — boon — is actually bad — sordid.
Billionaires hardest hit
I’m rereading a book last read in high school, Ethan Frome. It is beautifully written and a totally different story than i remember.
"'Quiet Quitting' Oh. So like just about any public sector employee? Like teachers."
A stupid remark.
Yeah, I know, but that's not it. I am now satisfied that it is the exclamation point, and I can finally move on.
This makes two in two days. I just heard the song again "Alone Again, Naturally," and realized that the verse was not "the allergy came around," I was always thinking from when I first heard the song as a kid, "what kind of 'allergy' was that that changed his life"I just realized that he was signing "reality came around." So that's another thought I don't need to have anymore.
"It's a figure of speech — I don't know the name of it — where you have an adjective that undoes the noun. It's sort of a joke, like "open secret." This good thing — boon — is actually bad — sordid."
Isn't that an oxymoron?
Ozymoron.
There is actual quiet quitting and then there is what's described here.
Quiet quitting is not the lack of doing after-work activities. Quiet-quitting is the absence of doing anything but the bare minimum DURING work. And by bare minimum, it means the amount necessary to not get fired. That may mean not actually doing your job, but doing enough activities to simply delay or avoid being terminated.
I wish Americans could have the work life balance of Western Europeans. But we can't because or Government has us working...so support smarmy Western Europeans. It's total bullshit.
I did the 60 hour weeks in my 30s and 40s. Now that I'm in my 50s...no more. Plus I'm efficient at what I do, and can get my job done. However there are always slow, unproductive, political, "hour martyrs" at every company that spend 60 hours at work not doing shit.
And fuck training the boss' teenager. I'm torn here. I've worked my ass off in my career. But right now, America is so screwed up, everyone is just running to stand still. And for the Millennials and Gen Z who are priced out of the housing market, and sinking in wasted college debt...how do they get ahead? And extra 10 or 20 hrs a week doesn't solve their problem. Sometimes it's just better to drink more beer.
The "work your ass off and get ahead" part of the American dream is dead. I don't know if it's really "quietly quitting" or setting boundaries with bosses and companies that will run you ragged.
My parents and their generation didn't lay flat. As my Uncle Joe said you never leaned on your shovel or the boss would hand it to someone else.
Laying flat is a sign we've had it damned good for a long time in the USA.
If you can’t find Costanza, try under his desk.
"Now, you know it's up to you whether or not you want to just do the bare minimum. Or... well, like Brian, for example, has thirty seven pieces of flair, okay. And a terrific smile."
Office Space
A “sordid boon”. After the company switched to bimonthly pay and I had direct deposit, a boozed Sunday morning I checked an ATM looking for a $20 I found my entire pay check instead.
I guess the right word is "oxymoron." From Wikipedia:
--------------------
The most common form of oxymoron involves an adjective–noun combination of two words, but they can also be devised in the meaning of sentences or phrases. One classic example of the use of oxymorons in English literature can be found in this example from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo strings together thirteen in a row:
O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness, serious vanity!
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.[11]
Other examples from English-language literature include: "hateful good" (Chaucer, translating odibile bonum)[12] "proud humility" (Spenser),[13] "darkness visible" (Milton), "beggarly riches" (John Donne),[14] "damn with faint praise" (Pope),[15] "expressive silence" (Thomson, echoing Cicero's Latin: cum tacent clamant, lit. 'when they are silent, they cry out'), "melancholy merriment" (Byron), "faith unfaithful", "falsely true" (Tennyson),[16] "conventionally unconventional", "tortuous spontaneity" (Henry James)[17] "delighted sorrow", "loyal treachery", "scalding coolness" (Hemingway).[18]
In freshman English class, the bub asked some mope if he had done the assigned reading, Bartleby the Scrivener.
Of course he responded "I would prefer not to".
I preferred Emerson to Walden. "Well, they had a right to their eye-beams, and all the rest was Fate." He was more of an ironic quitter than a quiet quitter. A querulous quitter.
Decades ago I heard a teacher's union urge a similar slowdown which they called, "Work to rule." Anybody else remember this nominclature?
Ack. No coffee yet.
"How can I do a role that’s more aligned to my values?"
While keeping my access to other people's money.
Ha, that should be "nun", not "bub". Spellcheck preferred not to alert me.
“Oxymoron.” You beat me to it.
Tim in Vermont: I share your view of that rhyme. It is too pat. It brings things to a crunching halt. Not sure what else he could have used —“soon” pretty much strands him with commonplace choices like “moon” or near-rhymes like “June” or “tune,” or weird stuff like “goon.” He would have had to rework the whole thing.
As for “sordid” + “boon” + “!” ? Really? It’s a complex argument and never mind the crashing rhyme, the reader is being asked to stop and ponder how a boon can be sordid, how the compromises and trade offs required by survival are sad, even contemptible, but that’s life. Maybe Wordsworth wanted that pause by the reader; maybe he’s given the reader enough direction and material to work through the ideas; but it looks kinda messy.
I still like the guy. The Romantics did a lot of politico-philosophical damage but they were talented and even inspiring.
Thoreau was quite a loud quitter, true.
He could afford to be. There was plenty of family money to live on.
What about today's quiet quitters? Whose family money are they living on?
To some extent they are just simplifying their lives. Living with 5 roommates instead of their own apartment and such.
Fine by me, but no whinging about not being able to afford a place or roommate problems.
Otoh, some of them are living on your family's money and my family's money.
Sooner or later people get tired of deadbeats.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Has anyone had the experience of working with someone like Good Soldier Schweik? There are more Schweiks than Bartlebys on God's green earth. These are people whose drive and imagination inspires them to find ways of avoiding work or to fobbing off tasks on co-workers. Sometimes their efforts to avoid work are far more draining, both emotionally and physically, than the endurance of drudgery.....The pursuit of money is, by and large, not quite as futile as the pursuit of happiness. A paycheck on Friday gives meaning and significance to the most drear tasks......I read Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier" and "Down and Out in Paris and London". In those books, he describes some really hideous jobs, Welsh coal miner and restaurant worker. Bartleby didn't have it so bad.
I remember I was in Santa Clara at the height of the DOT.COM boom. The radio was full of employment ads. "Come work for us! $10,000 sign on bonus!", "Send a friend to work for us! $500 reward." On and on it went.
I remember thinking, "This is way too good to last. The end is near." It was too. The boom turned into a bust just a few weeks later.
Now I'm hearing about people who are so secure and confident that they see no reason to put any extra effort into their careers.
The end is near.
Quiet quitters have always existed but under the title marginal employees. That's fine- they've made their life choice and taken a stand. No issues with that.
But, in a few years they will start to whine when others, the quiet strivers, are the ones getting promotions and raises and buying bigger homes, etc.
My nephew was a budding quiet quitter in his late teens. He thought high school values, being popular and cool would make him successful. I told him that by the time he was 25, he would see his more serious peers graduating college, buying cars getting homes and, more importantly, start getting more popular with the ladies. He sees that now.
Just because you want off the escalator doesn't mean everyone else does too. That's why they end up on a higher floor than you.
I love all the Althouse posts detailing the phenomenon of “quiet quitting.”
Why quiet quitter when we already have the perfectly descriptive term slacker (slack: Old English slæc ‘inclined to be lazy, unhurried’, of Germanic origin; related to Latin laxus ‘loose’).
I met a basset named Bartleby because of his attitude when any activity was proposed. Even a walk!
There are are always employees who are average at their jobs, at best, those who do what they're asked to do, but nothing more, and there are "quiet quitters," who I perceive to be employees who have realized they're being screwed, taken advantage of, asked to sacrifice their labor and time for insufficient compensation, especially as compared with those who are profiting by their labor...and they decide to reduce their "extra" effort to match their compensation.
Many people work in jobs they dislike for employers who treat them badly and who are paid lower than their labor's worth. They are being exploited. I cannot gainsay those who choose to give less than their best to employers who are paying them less than their worth and are treating them as chattel. Many highly profitable corporations will not hesitate to dispose of hundreds or thousands of jobs at a time simply to reap the profits from the salutary effect job cuts will have on their stock values. As long as any employee is doing enough work to satisfy his or her job responsibilities, who can say the employee should do any more?
I was a hard and empowered worker
Then my company brought in the racist, sexist, religiously bigoted DIE program
Now I'm a quiet quitter.
Because they can FOAD with their racist BS. I hope the "diverse" people who they want will do all the driving forward they need.
Because I won't
"Gosh, this means you won't get those promotions!"
I'm not "diverse", I'm not going to get them anyway. So what's your point?
Robert Cook said...
"'Quiet Quitting' Oh. So like just about any public sector employee? Like teachers."
"A stupid remark."
Hit too close, eh.
“The bub asked some mope…” Now that’s poetry.
"Work to Rule" is a very old labor tactic--using zealous adherence to the contract specs, very carefully. Slows everything down.
Bartleby was one of the few high school readings I recall fondly.
My intelligent, talented, and good looking class clown son went off to college and crashed and burned. He came back here and tried again without getting far. I told him to quit pretending to be a student--especially if he felt some sort of obligation because of my interests and career. (My wife and I spent the money we had put away in a special program for his higher ed.)
He did stop pretending, and had a succession of shit jobs. He's starting to do OK in cabinetry and woodworking but it has taken him a long time to get it together. He just moved into a new place with room for his tools. We'll go see it soon.
To my mind, if he looked at his parent's educations, careers, and accomplishments and decided on a different path from theirs, that's as it should be. I certainly would not have followed my father into accounting and business.
He's 36 (my father died at 39), and some of his friends are already starting second marriages. At least he has spared us that.
Work to rule mostly only works with civil servants and other govt workers.
It is much more of a management than an employee problem. If working to the rule hurts the business/organization, management needs to make better rules.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
The Brits used to (Still do?) call them strivers and look down upon people who work hard trying to get ahead.
I've always been a striver myself, taught my kids to be strivers and my kids have taught their kids.
So far it has worked out very well for all of us. (First day of school today for the oldest GD. Full volleyball scholarship, Chemical Engineering. She was a striver all through school and a true hustler in the past 8 years or so of club volleyball. Yeah, I'm bragging. Sue me.)
It never even felt like striving to me. It's always felt like fun. I've been very lucky.
The quiet quitters make it easier for the rest of us. We don't have to hustle as much to stay ahead of the rest of the pack. If the quitters ever decide to pick yup the pace, we'll have to as well.
John "Proud to be a family of strivers" Henry
Ah, once again I see the theology behind the Church of the SubGenius and the quest for Slack.
Twas ever thus, just in various forms from generation to generation. Bob Dobbs and his pipe has a certain panache that this iteration lacks. Plus all those books that look like old Rosicrucian tomes on acid. A true reflection of my age cohort in all ways.
There has always been a certain kind of employee who gets a job or works their way into a job that they are satisfied with. They do a good job, never a complaint about their performance.
But they don't go above and beyond. They don't volunteer for overtime. They are not looking for promotion or a raise. They just do their job competently and want to be left to it.
Some companies have up or out policies and I've thought they were shortsighted. Why penalize someone for having no ambition but who is otherwise a good employee?
In places where promotion is by seniority, this can also be a problem. They, supposedly, clog the promotion chain since it is hard to promote someone around them.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
"'A stupid remark.'
"Hit too close, eh."
Not at all. I've never been a teacher. It's a stupid remark.
Giving up on company culture and aspirations to rise in the organization is a middle class problem. For a lot of people in the world, a job is just a job and a way of surviving. It's strange if the idea of not striving upwards is actually new to British socialists.
"Work to rule" is a familiar way of slowing any desired process waaaay down, b/c the rules are many and their enforcement is one of the first things administrators skimp on in ordinary times. Works best in the public sector and in other well-unionized fields. The Scots equivalent is "Ca' canny."
Re: "The World is Too Much With Us," I remember the poem vividly from singing it in the Juilliard Pre-College Chorus ages ago. (Can't remember the composer, who was probably on the Juilliard faculty; I ought to look that up.) The setting was terrific. The music for "The sea that bares her bosom to the moon / The winds that will be howling at all hours / But are furled up now like sleeping flowers" is reprised for "Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea / Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." There was also the in-joke wrinkle that "We are out of tune" was difficult for an a cappella chorus actually to get in tune.
This is *totally* the best way to get that pay raise you think you deserve!
John henry said...
Some companies have up or out policies and I've thought they were shortsighted. Why penalize someone for having no ambition but who is otherwise a good employee?
The military has fully embraced up or our. Which IMHO isn't a good thing. Back when I first enlisted i recall seeing a seaman cook with gold service stripes and gold rank insignia- specially made gold rank insignia- signifying three consective good conduct medals. Can't happen any more.
People used to park at the E5 level. Senior enough to avoid most working parties, junior enough to not be really responsible for anything. And- they were nornally good at their job, since they were doing the same thing over and over.
The term "creative incompetence" was created to describe thos that were happy where they were, and had to show reason why they shouldn't be promoted. Screw up badly enought to ruin your chances for promotion, but not enough to be fired or do anyy real harm to anything. Most common is sales. Some people are born to be salemen, not sales managers. And they know it.
Now that medical schools have gone "Woke" expect to see more of this in Medicine. When I was new as an intern or resident, long hours were the rule. Even in private practice, we worked long hours. I finally quit the trauma center after working two 40 hour stretches in one month. Now, when I was teaching 10 years ago, students were choosing "life style" specialties. No night call and shift work became popular in Emergency Medicine. More recently, I worked with some young GPs who were working "gig jobs" in "Urgent Care" centers. Most were unhappy with their careers. Now, I expect that merit will be replaced by "work to rule" and worse. The only advice I can give is to only sign up with Asian or white male doctors. They had to be good to get into medical school and residency. This DIE trend in medical schools will be disastrous for black MDs. All will assume they are incompetent. I knew black surgeons who were good and graduated before affirmative action. Now, they will all be lumped with the losers.
All that is owed is to do the job you are paid for. People put in more work for promotion or good feelings, but companies show no loyalty to employees. Many were tossed out without so much as "sorry" when the pandemic shutdown happened. True, employers were in a bad place, but their attitudes get out till we call you back. That sets an employee to thinking.
Many people seem to have done what I did when Clinton's government reform was threatening my job. I took effort to separate my identity from my job. Good for me, but certainly cut down on my willingness to sacrifice for the work. I did keep to a good job, but because doing a good job regardless is part of who I want to be. My employer got benefit until I decided to move on, regardless of their issues.
On the other hand, some employers like Louis Rossman of NYC took pains to keep his employees, nearly going bankrupt. But those employees on the whole remain loyal and they remain with their skills now things are settling down. Some are moving with him as he's finding Manhattan untenable for a small business. See his youtube videos.
Robert Cook said...
"'A stupid remark.'
"Hit too close, eh."
"Not at all. I've never been a teacher. It's a stupid remark."
It's like the last two years never happened for you. What publically funded job did you go to every day?
"It's like the last two years never happened for you. What publically funded job did you go to every day?"
I have never worked at a publicly funded job.
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