The "quiet working" terms and what we don't say out loud
Euphemisms and reframing workplace issues.
Quiet quitting: when an employee disengages from work and does the minimum amount to keep their job, not going above and beyond, often as a form of silent protest due to feeling undervalued or overworked.
Quiet firing: when employers subtly encourage employees to resign rather than outright firing them by reducing responsibilities, providing little support, or creating unfavorable working conditions.
Quiet hiring: when employers assign new responsibilities to existing employees to address staffing needs rather than hire new employees.
Quiet vacationing: when an employee takes time out without formally requesting it or notifying their employer, often while maintaining the appearance of working remotely or being available.
The definitions above are slight variations of Google's AI Overview when I searched for each term. What strikes me is that the employee-focused quiet working terms ("quiet quitting" and "quiet vacationing") had a very negative spin: both implying that employees aren't doing their jobs.
Quiet quitting says employees don't go above and beyond — as if that's an expectation of the workplace. In reality, quiet quitting means saying "no" to corporate volunteerism and donating time to a company above the requirements of the job. It's saying "no" to hustle culture.
Quiet vacationing fails to take into account that some workplaces make it impossible to take time off. If you have to reply to emails or attend meetings while on PTO, why use your paid working days?
All these quiet working terms are euphemisms because people don't want to say the quiet part out loud: many workplaces suck, employees are taken advantage of, and quiet anything from an employee perspective is reclaiming some power.
Quiet working terms are twisted from their original meanings
The term "quiet quitting" emerged in 2022, and since the,n we haven't ceased coming up with terms to describe work. At first, quiet quitting was seen as a rebellion against feeling undervalued or overworked (as Google's AI Overview correctly points out). But it was quickly reframed by Bosses that workers are lazy and not doing enough.
Articles like "6 Signs That A 'Quiet Quitter Is Among Your Employees" (a real 2022 article from Forbes) began to circulate. It gave rise to work monitoring devices, like mouse trackers, and return-to-office mandates. How dare employees spend any moment of the day not working? How dare they not go the extra mile in their roles?
In an article for Vox, Senior Correspondent Rani Molla points out:
Such flippant terms also have the ability to trivialize what are real concerns about things like workplace safety and fair compensation. Employers can take terms like quiet quitting to justify their worst impulses, like tracking keystrokes or instituting performance reviews as a way to justify axing employees.
In the end, it's always about power. Companies are Big Mad about the power claimed by employees during The Great Resignation. They're working hard to shape the narrative that employees simply aren't doing enough.
Look at Meta's recent firing of 5% of its workforce, claiming that employees were underperforming (impacted employees were quick to fight back against this claim, saying that they'd never received a low performance review). Meta also says it will kick off an "intense year."
Let's say the quiet part out loud for this scenario. If Meta expects to have a more intense year with only 95% of the previous workforce, that's quiet hiring. Existing employees will be given more work to make up for the gap in the workforce and the expanded company expectations. And Meta will profit, since it will squeeze more from the remaining employees while simultaneously enjoying lower payroll costs.
People are quiet to protect themselves
The Great Resignation was "loud" in many ways. Workers were not shy about looking for better working conditions.
The reason things have gotten quiet is because the labor market has shifted dramatically. The Atlantic calls the current economic environment "The Big Freeze" and the result of two simultaneous forces. First, the pace of hiring has slowed to levels last seen shortly after The Great Recession. And the percentage of workers quitting jobs to find new ones has fallen by a third since The Great Resignation, to a level that's the lowest in nearly a decade.
With fewer career choices, employees feel stuck in their current roles. That means they have to put up with a toxic work environment, a bad boss, or simply a low salary/bad benefits.
Call it quiet quitting or quiet vacationing, but people are putting their heads down and doing work as a way to protect themselves. Even stable jobs have started to feel unstable when companies (like Meta) claim "low performance" or implement other cost-cutting measures, like eliminating an entire department.
Do whatever you have to do to maintain whatever job security you can, rather than face such a tumultuous, frozen job market. Fulfill the job duties you were hired to do and nothing more. Quiet quit your way through the day and take that quiet vacation so you can still have some semblance of work-life balance.
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