The hottest new trend of the summer is quiet quitting, the act of working to live instead of living to work.
Quiet quitting is “not outright quitting your job but you’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond,” said Zaid Khan in a TikTok post, which has more than 3 million views as of Wednesday.
Before all you hustlers and girlbosses jump into the comments decrying quiet quitting, you need to realize: the name is not accurate.
In reality, it is just setting boundaries and not taking extra work outside of your job description. That doesn’t mean you’re slacking off at your job.
Still, why have people including Arianna Huffington, the co-founder of Huffington Post, come out against this practice?
“Quiet quitting isn’t just quitting on a job, it's a step toward quitting on life,” stated Huffington about a week ago in a LinkedIn post.
Quiet quitting is also being considered as a part of a bigger cultural shift.
“The very concept of people setting boundaries and not putting up with wage theft anymore is SO terrifying to the American employer that they had to put a marketing team behind it,” Jon Kung, a chef and media personality, stated in a Twitter post Monday.
In 2015, California workers lost nearly $2 billion to wage theft. according to a 2017 report by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Economic Policy Institute is a nonprofit think tank dedicated to having low and middle income workers included in economic policy, according to its website.
Wage theft is when a company does not pay its workers, including making them skip breaks or not paying overtime, according to the California Department of Industrial Relations website.
I’ve personally worked places that have had a culture where it is encouraged to work through your breaks, acting as if they were more of luxuries than rights.
Quiet quitting is a way of rejecting the sort of work culture that excuses actions including wage theft.
At 80% of my jobs, managers have parated lines about how the company was “like a family.”
Alison Green, a New York Times blogger, described certain jobs that can manipulate workers into feeling like a “family.”
“Boundaries get violated and people are expected to show inappropriate amounts of commitment and loyalty, even when it’s not in their self-interest,” Green said in an Aug.13, 2018 New York Times article.
Basically, your boss isn’t your daddy and you shouldn’t slave away for them.
Quiet quitting is also an expression of exhaustion with the current structure of the work week.
The trend of quiet quitting follows the growing calls for a four-day work week, according to the Four Day Week Global website.
Four Day Week Global is a nonprofit organization that provides a platform advocating for a four day work week, according to its website.
A trial run of a four-day work week in Iceland showed an increase in productivity and a decrease in burnout, according to a July 2021 BBC article.
Perhaps quiet quitting isn’t just setting boundaries, but also finally admitting that we’re tired of how work pushes us too far.
