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

I’m looking to downshift out of corporate life in the next 5 years to something meaninful by becoming a liberal teacher in a conservative area to brainwash and groom kids as future liberals.

 

My time growing up in the Father Knows Best and Ozzie and Harriet days were much different than today. Back then a dad could sell shoes and pay the bills for his stay at home wife and two kids. No more kids playing outside in the yard. Those days are gone. For me they were the better times.

Fast forward. Cell phones connect us 24/7 with texts, calls, and emails. People even seem to walk and talk faster today. Personal face to face contact has decreased wether good or bad. It’s just weird to me and I’m so thankful I grew up in those times.

 

That's what I noticed in my visits to Taiwan. When I first started traveling there in 1999, virtually no one had a cell phone, certainly not with internet and video. The people were very friendly, and would want to start conversations with you and practice their English. In my last trip there, in 2017, everyone had their head buried in their cell phones, like zombies. Even at work. I think that is where we are headed (in fact, I think we are more than halfway there).

 

Wait. Wut?

Who is more than halfway to Taiwan?

 

Agree, and even though he and I don’t always see eye to eye I’m glad I was able to help get him back here.

 

I was referring to America's addiction to cell phones.

 

Ford to attack quiet quitters by eliminating their severance. That'll teach 'em! Or not. (Hint: they are pretty much getting part of their severance every week, without severing anything.)

Ford targets quiet quitters with new policy that could see underachievers lose their severance

It's good to see that Ford is not accepting any responsibility for any poor management practices in all of this.

 

Forget Quiet Quitting. Quiet Quitting is out. Career Cushioning is in. Quiet Quitting had a nice run for a couple of months, but it's history.

"Career Cushioning" Is The Latest Work Trend, And People On LinkedIn Say It Can Help You Recession-Proof Your Paycheck

The good news is that if you've been neglecting to do your job to the utmost of your ability due to Quiet Quitting, you can continue to do that (and continue to get a paycheck). You want to work on your skills. And, if you are lacking in that level of ambition, you don't have to work on actual skills, just work on practicing buzzwords and phrases associated with skills you'd like to have, and breeze through your next interview. You especially need to know acronyms in the profession and be able to mix and match jargon in a nearly unintelligible way.

 

Forget about Career Cushioning. That's so last week. Quiet Quitting is back, with a vengeance.

US productivity is stalling out and employees are less willing to ‘engage in hustle culture,' as 1 in 5 Americans admit to doing the 'bare minimum’ at work (yahoo.com)

Reduced work hours by 50%? Is there a book out there on how to get away with this? Haha. No, seriously--is there a book? A manual? Anything?

Corporate America has frequently tended towards worshipping the MBA culture of acronyms, buzzwords, and corporate drones and sycophants while ignoring the part of the business that actually makes money.

 

A decent amount of meaningless generalizations in your last sentence.

Productivity dropped with a slowing of the economy I’d guess.

There is always a rule of thumb like your top 20% of employees do most of your work and the bottom 20% does almost nothing.

 

One executive has decided that he's had enough (of the quiet quitting), and he's not going to take it anymore. He discovered several dozen remote employees had not opened their laptops for over a month, including a manager. He then expressed his opinions about people being able to take care of children while they work remotely. Finally, he actually praised an employee who sold the family dog so he could improve his work performance.

This company is going places, so buy your stock now! Before it sells out! And if you can't afford to buy stock, sell your family dog! Fido was not providing a very good financial return on investment anyway! (And you'll impress your manager!)

CEO says many of his remote workers didn't open their laptops for a month, and 'only the rarest of full-time caregivers' can be productive employees (yahoo.com)

In other news, Clearlink has decided to rebrand itself as Missinglink. Please send all resumes with dog-sale stories to www.missinglink.com.

 

This Just In: Followup story on Missinglink. The manager in question has decided that he would lower his expectations by calling on the company to increase productivity by 30-50 times the current productivity. (Not percent, TIMES!) He suspects that many of his remote employees are working multiple jobs, so they should easily be able to do this in their spare time.

CEO applauds employee who sold dog following return-to-office mandate: report (yahoo.com)

If he said "sixty times", I would say he was insane. But only increasing productivity 30-50 times? Pure genius.

 

Why doesn’t he just fire the people not opening their laptops? What am I missing?

 

That's clearly not enough. He wants everyone to sell their dog. You can't get to 30X improvement in productivity by just opening your laptop. You HAVE TO sell your dog. You need that level of commitment. Luckily, no employee decided to yank his chain during the meeting by saying that he ate his dog to improve his productivity. That would have caused pandemonium.

 

Seems like I'd be looking at the people who manage the people who haven't opened their laptops.

 

I call them attendance-grade workers.

 

Seems like I'd be looking at the CEO, because that one seems a few cards short of a full deck.

 

For sure. But I guess without knowing how large the company is I don't know how involved he would be with his boots on the ground type workers.

 

Seems like they just want them to come into the office and pretend to work