Quiet Quitting is a dumb narrative that furthers the demographic chasm

Business journalism, which usually exists to accomplish virtually nothing except maybe put some words next to digital advertisements, loves to get on these “hot topics” and ride the horse to death. A few years ago, the big thing was “ghosting.” That was ultimately a “whatever” discourse — companies ghost candidates, candidates ghost companies, and life continues to go on. Most of the time, if someone ghosts you on Day 1 of a job, it’s pretty lame, absolutely. But the company usually goes and slices $10,000 off the compensation, re-posts it, and gets someone else. Away we go.

The new big topic is “quiet quitting.” It’s being discussed everywhere, apparently powered by TikTok. I won’t link out to all the thought pieces, although there are a myriad number. Basically, it means you don’t actually quit, but you either (a) half-ass your job or (b) do exactly what the job entails as opposed to going above and beyond.

I’m not really sure why this is even a thing we need to discuss. Some reasons why:

(1) Work is inherently a series of tasks and transactions for compensation. That’s all work is. There are some people who take work very seriously and make it almost a religion, yes. Most people are just chasing a check, and honestly, most people I’ve worked with do the bare minimum as is…