Quiet Quitting? Leave Loudly

I wasn’t going to rant this month. Since my Dad died a few weeks ago, nothing really seems important enough to irritate me.

And then I started to hear more and more about Quiet Quitting. And I started to think about all the people I know who wake up before dawn to start working and are still at it well into the evening, often with no meaningful breaks in between. And who may pause for some dinner, maybe an hour with the kids before bedtime, before opening up the laptop and starting again on the email inbox or the slides for tomorrow’s meeting that they haven’t finished yet. Every evening. Even in bed. As well as checking messages and taking calls at the weekend and when they are on holiday.

How did we get here? How did it become normal and expected that an employer, who pays a salary to someone for a working day, gets in return the unpaid for bonus of their evening, weekend and holiday time? Why do we accept it, why do we do it?

Personally, I would like to shake the hand of everyone out there who understands that they have a work contract and are paid to do their job in working hours, no more, no less. And I would like to have a serious chat with whoever it was who created this offensive Quiet Quitting concept, no doubt in an attempt to intimidate these wise souls into working longer hours that they are not paid for.

I deeply hope this attempt has failed. In fact, I hope those people who are giving way more than they are paid for and covering the work of more than one person to the financial benefit of their company and at the expense of their own life, are asking themselves some serious questions about why they are doing this. I can tell you that if I was working for an organization that was even whispering ‘Quiet Quitting’ I would be Leaving - and Loudly.

We only get one life. Let’s not give it all to our employers.