Quiet quitting: A woke sense of work-life balance or simply slacking off?

Starting sometime in the 1970s, one of my uncles had held on to a government job in India — one from which he retired more than a decade ago. For almost 40 years, his life revolved around a routine, a 9-to-5 one. He was required to input his ‘in’ time and ‘out’ time on a register book. Once he had signed in, a large part of the day would be spent drinking tea, smoking cigarettes, discussing cricket/football with colleagues and, at times, stepping out to meet friends/relatives who worked in the vicinity. At 5pm, he would log out for the day. “You see, the work I am required to do takes, at most, two to three hours,” he would tell the rest of the family, “but since I have to remain in office for nine hours [minus a one-hour lunch break], I take it very easy, and there’s usually no pressure — unless it’s the quarter endings.”

My uncle could, perhaps, have helped out with more work, but he was clear he would do only what he was being paid for. “We are given nominal raises every year, and a promotion — not really merit-based but more process-driven — once every 10 years… That’s how most government offices function in India for most employees,” he would shrug whenever he would be asked about his career trajectory.

I don’t know why I thought of him when I heard about ‘quiet quitting’ raging on social media, with the recent TikTok video claiming: “You’re not outright quitting your job but you’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond. You’re still performing your duties but you’re no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentality that work has to be your life.” And I realised my Baby Boomer uncle was probably a quiet quitter back in the day when Zillennial/Gen Z hashtags and social media did not exist.

I called him up to ask if he ever considered joining the private sector, and taken on a more challenging — and better-paying — role.

“Why would I?” he responded. “My job was secure, my colleagues were my friends, I would be back home by 6pm, I got an off on every single public holiday, and I earned a decent gratuity when I retired.”

Right.

Demystifying quietly quitting

In a column for thecut.com, Danielle Cohen probably summed it up the best, writing that “Quiet quitting has been used in the US since at least March, when YouTuber Timothy Ward described it as doing ‘just enough to get by and not get fired’ — also known as ‘coasting’, an approach to work which existed long before the current hashtag cycle… it appears more people are questioning who is actually served by the stress of overtime and hours of uncompensated labor. Not everyone has the privilege to actually quit, and not everyone thinks of work as something they have to be passionate about or fulfilled by. Whatever quiet quitting is, its resonance suggests more of us are finally recognising our jobs for what they are: the stuff you have to do to earn a living.”

I spoke to a friend who has been part of the broader HR domain for a long time, and he explained the evolution of quiet quitting — quite beautifully I thought — in terms of the three revolutions: the industrial revolution, which resulted in jobs for survival; the information revolution, which resulted in people wanting a better standard of life; and the social revolution, which resulted in the search for ‘quality of life’ — the equivalent of self-actualisation in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Today, one set of workers — comprising older millennials and Generation X-ers — are ‘coasting’: doing enough to complete the job at hand, no more. It’s probably because they are disillusioned at their workplace and have become apathetic to growth prospects. But, equally, they don’t want to lose that job because their livelihoods (survival and standard of living) depend on it, so they work to crack that code of “my job is secure but I will remain under the radar”.

And then there are the ‘new-gen’ workers — younger millennials and zillennials — whose survival and standard of life are more or less taken care of (because their parents worked towards that end), so now they want that extra fillip in life (the self-actualisation). For them, a job could potentially not be an ‘emotional’ contract, because if it doesn’t fulfill their aspirations and their notion of work:life balance, they move on in no time. “It’s the gig mentality that’s come into play: it’s all about the short term,” my friend pointed out.

‘I’ve known quiet quitters in my places of work; we just called them slackers’

Celeste Strydom is a Dubai-based copywriter and PR content specialist with the Prestidge Group who heard “so much” about quiet quitting that she decided to read up everything on it to figure out what all the hype was about. “I immediately felt conflicted. I think it’s fair to say that if an individual is working in a role with zero trajectories to go anywhere and it doesn’t reward them sufficiently, then doing precisely what they’re paid for is a fair rate of exchange. But I also believe that, like most things in life, we need to be wary of taking anything too literally.”

An employee remains in their job but limits the tasks they do strictly to within their job description. “They give no more and no less. Reading that, I thought: well, this is a new term for an old concept. I’ve known quiet quitters in my places of work; we just called them slackers,” Celeste says, before telling us her story.

“I might be giving my age away, but I began my career in the early 2000s, and times were different. I started in finance. I worked hard; I knew that I was smart. But I also knew that if I hoped to stand out in the crowd or make it to a leadership position one day, I’d need to show a willingness to sacrifice. And in the business world, the biggest display of sacrifice is time. Two things happen when you spend time. You learn more, and you show off a can-do attitude.

‘Yes, I can collate the notes ahead of the meeting.’

‘Sure, I can stay to shut the office after hours.’

‘Yup, I’ll take today’s meeting minutes.’

Working my way up the ranks, I worked 12- hour days in an 8-hours-a-day job. And all of us who were vying for promotions or envisioning a long-term career were doing the same thing.”

Fast forward 16 years, Celeste works for herself, and dry heaves just thinking of the pace she used to run at. Never again would she work that hard for anyone… not even herself. “Now I want to spend time with my family. I’m not checking emails at 8 pm; I’m reading bedtime stories. I’m running; I’m drinking my water; I’m meeting friends for coffee...”

But here’s the thing. “I no longer have the capacity to pour from a never-ending cup. And I don’t have to. You see, I’ve paid my dues. Putting in the extra hours, volunteering to do the grunt work, and picking up additional duties to score brownie points did more than just teach me the hard skills I learned on the job. It taught me invaluable soft skills.”

While today Celeste still believes in the value in going above and beyond, she’s also learned to set healthy boundaries. But “I don’t believe I would have known how to do that if I hadn’t practised it in an actual working situation.”

Does she think there’s merit to quiet quitting? “Sure. But when I see fresh graduates hashtagging that they’re low-key quitting, I wonder if they’ve missed an opportunity.” She’s also interested to see how long this trend lasts. “It’s been reported that up to 800 million jobs for humans will be displaced by automation by 2030. The apathy will wear thin very quickly if the job market narrows down.”

Bottom line? Businesses need to take accountability and start reading the room. As Celeste says, “If your staff are unmotivated, ill-considered or unfairly remunerated, this topic should concern you. Happy employees are a lot less inclined to clock-watch.”