If Your Co-Workers Are ‘Quiet Quitting,’ Here’s What That Means

Personally, I think that's just called "working" but I guess its nice to pretend to make it a new social fad.

 

I recommend the NY Times Best Seller, "Quiet Quitting" by Dan Mullen.

 

Exactly. In my previous life of private sector management we called these people who have quit but haven’t announced it yet. Sometimes that situation was in double digit years.

 

Since I’ve been a government worker for over 37 years, I guess I was a trend setter

 

Wins Internet

 

I havle a similar background. I graduated UF in 1980 at the ripe old age of 30 after working 8 years in my chosen field between Jr College and returning to school. Being an older married student with kids I spent my time at UF studying rather than partying like a lot of other students and graduated with one of the 4 or 5 highest GPAs in the School of Building Construction.

I landed probably the prime job out of college working for Tishman Construction. Tishman had just finished building the World Trade Center and were the Project Managers for Disneys EPOCT project. The high pressure and long hours at Tishman were just too much for me so I quit after a few months. I worked for a year as a superintendent for a local Orlando contractor then quit and started a small homebuilding business which I ran for 8 years. After working myself into 2 heart attacks while still in my 30s my cardiologist suggested I lose the stress. The recession of 1990 didn't help any either. I shut down my business and went to work as an inspector making probably 1/3 the money I was used to. It turned out I loved the 40 hr week with no stress good benefits and time to spend with my family. I retired 25 years later. Wouldn't do things differently if I could.

 

A big part of the problem is that a lot of companies have sociopaths for managers. Companies have eliminated training budgets across the board, and many supervisors lack even basic supervisory skills (or even people skills). They may have an MBA, and be great at managing the numbers in their business, but just can't relate to their employees as human beings. So the easiest thing to do is step on the employees and demand that the work get done. Their bosses don't know how they treat people, because they get all of their information from the sociopath manager. This is especially bad when the work location is remote from the upper manager's office. When the upper manager visits the workplace once or twice a decade, it is a big dog and pony show, and nothing changes. Some companies address this through "anonymous" surveys, but that only works if there are enough employees to make the survey truly anonymous. And even then, the boss will often ask around to try to find out who said what.

I think that upper managers should visit every site multiple times a year, and make a point of taking employees out to lunch for one-on-one discussions. That would allow employees to establish trust with the upper manager and be able to talk (or at least hint at) what their boss needs to be working on improving.

Interesting story about surveys: in my previous job, I worked with over 20 other people for an abusive sociopath. His boss sent out a detailed 15-page survey thinking it would show how well the department was managed and how great everything was. It turns out he had two good managers and two really bad ones. The survey encouraged people to write a couple of sentences after giving a 1-5 rating on each category. A few older engineers were selected to compile all the responses, and black out any words that indicated who was being talked about, and then they mailed the results (hard copy, back in the 1990's) to everyone in the department. By the end of the week, most people on the entire site (thousands of people) had a copy. One employee made a bunch of historical comparisons to the sociopath, saying things like "the difference between the manager and Genghis Khan was that Khan only ate his enemies." Another employee mentioned that the safety conditions were so bad that it's a wonder that no one has died yet. So what does the sociopath do? He sits in the control room with the engineers, reads out each response, and asks who could have written that. Five minutes into this exercise, the instrument tech (who is a contractor and did not fill out a survey) walks in to get his permit, and someone asks him how he's doing, and he says what he always says when you ask him that question: "nobody has died yet". The manager was deported to another site for a decade.

At his going away party (which was actually a surprise roast), he was forced to sit on a toilet (his previous project was improving ceramics for things like toilets) while everyone (40 people) paraded in with a fork (first people had plastic forks, then metal forks, then forks for the grill, and the last people had pitchforks) to poke him ("stick a fork in him to see if he's done") before they sat down to watch "the show". The funniest thing that happened was I.T. (who were known pranksters) had secretly recorded an interview with him a couple weeks before, where they asked him football questions about his alma mater. Things like, "what do you think of the head coach?", to which the boss said, "he doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground". Then they edited out the questions (this was shortly after "Good Morning Vietnam" came out) and replaced them with things like, "what do you think of your boss?" Before the roast, his secretary sent around a large mailer envelope with a request for donations for a going-away gift. One engineer taped over the opening in the envelope and added a slot to deposit coins that would only fit dimes, nickels and pennies with a label "deposit here". (In retrospect, when I put the label on, I should have added another label below it: "11. Thou shalt give no quarter.") For a week, when people came back from lunch, they tracked down the envelope and made another donation. It weighed five pounds when it came back to the secretary. She wound up giving it to him during the roast because it wasn't enough to buy anything of value (and it was funny). Now that is how to get rid of a bad manager.

 

Probably goes a long way toward explaining why you have to hit up 5 convenience stores before you find a bottle of 5 Hour Energy left on the shelves.

 

That was just perfect

 

All of my employees run off Red Bull.

 

There is a lot of truth here, but as far as training budgets go, I find many are overtraining in some areas while missing the mark in others. I know we do.

Sensitivity, diversity, harassment training etc (common sense to most of us) have forced the budgets to shift their focus to non job specific training.

Actual skills training has been the victim.

And once you are hired at many places you just get recycled training. Diversity/harassment training twice a year with the same topic but a different script in the videos etc.

If I have to keep "training" you not to make sexual remarks to your coworkers, no video will change you.

I have fired 3 people in the past 2 years for the way they treat woman in our office.

The training is expensive window dressing.

Its a very weird time to be in management because the metrics and bottom line are often an afterthought to all the other stuff you have to oversee.

 

I have a pretty large organization. I haven’t had any “great resignation” issues but business is good. I’ve seen much longer times needed to fill roles when they do come up though. Plus they are expensive to hire now. College is still not bad to recruit from. Kids are a bit more expensive than the past. They are smart and work hard but they get married and move, decide to switch careers, etc..

The remote thing is the real challenge. We are hybrid in our workplace. Some love remote. Some hate remote. Some love the office. Some hate it. Just one more dynamic to battle.

 

No. I mean february will be harassment training videos with Bob harassing Jan, and the Mike outing Stu. Then a Q/A quiz.

Then in August we have almost identical training with different characters. Maybe Jeff harassing Linda while Lisa outs Jan.
Then a very similar Q/A quiz.

Pretty standard LMS stuff.

I just think most of it is CYA and not REALLY designed to reprogram a stupid person to stop being stupid.

If anything it just trains them to hide their stupidity.

 

I meant that the stores are out of stuff because the lazy shits--quiet quitters, if you will--aren't ordering more. No telling how much of our "supply line issues" are at the end of the line.

 

A few observations from the article

Jim Harter, chief scientist for Gallup’s workplace and well-being research, said workers’ descriptions of “quiet quitting” align with a large group of survey respondents that he classifies as “not engaged”—those who will show up to work and do the minimum required but not much else. More than half of workers surveyed by Gallup who were born after 1989—54%—fall into this category.
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If corporate or management or potential boss is expecting more than what was advertised then why wasn't that addressed in an interview?

As for the boss it depends on the size of the company. An employee may well have a 1st, 2nd, 3rd and a 4th line manager (IBM is a prime example) before they get to the CEO. All managers are given a directive and goals to meet in line with the company vision. In short your manager may be an tyrant in hopes of saving their own skin. If the results in upper management are acceptable your boss wins. If not your boss has two choices fire you and find someone who will comply or look for another job. The former typically happens first.

 

Leadership skills have always been a problem. The Trump administration is a prime example of how those chosen to be leaders are yes men/women rather than real leaders. This was made apparent early when Trump advisor, Steven Miller said “the whole world will soon see” that the president’s executive powers “will not be questioned”. This is especially true in public schools where the school administration is chosen by political party affiliation rather than ability.

Real leadership involves inspiration, not threats of punishment. People want to be inspired. Well most people anyway.