Sheeple Wage Slaves Can Learn from Quiet Quitters

The Quiet Quitting fad dissected

Sheeple who work for free - out of fear or greed - effectively crap over the Workers' Rights movement.

“Quiet Quitting” became the rage in the latter pandemic, as American Wage Slaves finally had a chance to sit down and evaluate their lives - and where their careers fit into their overall “life matrix”. It became obvious to legions of disenchanted corporate peons how unappreciated and replaceable we were to our Employer Overlords, despite how much dedication and energy we expended for the corporate enterprise. The pause forced upon us all from a worldwide pandemic slowdown would change the way we viewed our careers for the better! What is Quiet Quitting…and What It Isn’t

”Quiet Quitting” is the intentional choice many American workers have made in not going above and beyond what one is required to do. Quiet quitting is NOT slacking off on responsibilities, sabotaging your employer, or stealing time by goofing off on your fantasy football league for hours upon hours while on the clock. There is a BIG difference between “not going above and beyond” my scope of work vs. taking 3-hour lunch breaks for juicy “afternoon delight” hookups on Tinder.

Quietly Quitting is often just asserting proper boundaries with your employer.

Examples of Quiet Quitting

• Not answering emails, texts, or Slack messages after work hours.

• Not doing unpaid - but tacitly expected work on weekends.

• Not bringing your work laptop on approved vacations “just to be available, in case something happens”.

• Not volunteering for extra projects.

• A marked increase in using sick days for “mental health reasons” vs. actual physical illness.

• Withdrawing from extraneous team activities, social events, or meetings.
  

  

  Quiet quitters would never work to 9:35 pm for free.

  REALITY CHECK #1 - Employer Overlords Are Too Comfortable in Expecting Wage Slaves to Work for Free. Employers play on work phenomena such as “Hustle Culture”, traditionally ingrained values like the “Pursuit of the American Dream”, and the obvious desire for Wage Slaves to incrementally improve their collective financial lot in life by pitting workers against each other. Selfish, mealy-mouth, and kiss-ass Wage Slaves, who misguidedly toil for free to get ahead, undermine the overall work conditions for everybody at their workplace; eventually castrating themselves unintentionally by empowering unscrupulous bosses to become evermore draconian. How can a good employee who observes labor laws - who clocks out precisely at 5 pm to resume his or her regularly scheduled life, doesn’t answer digital correspondences after hours, and is completely unavailable during their PTO days (Paid Time Off) - compete with those brownnosing colleagues who sabotage all the gains from earlier Workers’ Rights movements for their self-seeking agendas? Why should you be expected to answer digital correspondences after hours for free?  My free time is for whatever my heart desires or even to do nothing at all. Unless I am being compensated for working overtime, my bosses’ email, text, or Slack message will just have to wait until the next business day. Full stop.
  

  REALITY CHECK #2 - Employer Overlords have manipulated the omnipresence of technology to let work follow you around 24/7 - when you are only being paid from 9-to-5! It’s alarming to me how many people VOLUNTARILY take their work laptop on vacation to “check in or be available for questions”. Per a December 2021 Expedia study on “workcations”, a whopping 50% of survey respondents take their work laptops on vacation with them! Funny, I never seen anyone’s vision of “family fun time” on tropical beaches include PowerPoint presentations! A seemingly simple small request like looking for a spreadsheet in your email and sending it to your boss - can become a quagmire - if it goes left! First, you decide to respond to this “small” after-hours request from your boss before you go to cook dinner for your family. Next thing you know, it took you 15 frustrating minutes to complete this urgent - yet uncompensated task - with your hungry kids barking in the background. Of course, your insatiable, habitually line-crossing boss just has a “quick question” (NO SUCH THING) that inevitably eats into another half hour of your watered-down family time. Too late, Goober! You already opened Pandora’s Box and your boss KNOWS you are available and willing, so now you have to research, compose, and proofread a thoughtful email on your own time & dime - while your kids are starving - and that healthy, nutritional, homemade dinner won’t make itself when you are done bowing to your boss.
  

  REALITY CHECK #3 - You are training your employer that you have no boundaries and your personal life is meaningless. Work-life balance has meteorically risen to be a top need for today’s workforce. According to a 2023 study by Randstad, “94% of employees believe work-life balance is important, 61% of people would not accept a job if it disrupted their work-life balance, and 48% of survey respondents would quit their jobs if it prevented them from "enjoying their life." F’n Bravo! Now 50% of those same respondents need to “nut up” and stop working for free during family vacations!!
  

  Many younger workers have seen their parents and elders work tirelessly and sacrifice special family milestones for their employers’ benefit, only to get tossed aside right before retirement like yesterday’s newspaper or to be restructured to the Unemployment Line after a corporate merger. To their credit, younger Millenials and Gen-Z, are preferring quality of life to quantity of a bank account - that you often don’t even have the time to enjoy.

  Silent, But Deadly Solutions

  Stop operating out of fear. Savvy and ruthless bosses will exploit your “Eager Beaver” desire to please - or covert reprisals - to the point of burnout. These exploitative bosses KNOW they are flouting labor laws to maximize their output out of you as you unknowingly yield your workers’ rights and sanity for THEIR bottom line. They are daring you to assert yourself or get exploited. What a Faustian bargain before you!

  
  

  To combat this, you don’t need to be dramatic. Simply IGNORE your bosses’ after-hours requests by putting family first through your “non-action action”. Punt the football to them to gauge how dictatorial your boss is with their free work demands. Many bosses will figure out that you are enforcing your legally allowable boundaries and won’t risk a lawsuit with such a cognizant worker who has the balls to tacitly enforce his or her protected rights.

  
  

  For those extra-pushy bosses, gently and politely assert with a smile that your after-work hours are “strictly allocated to your family time and you will be happy to re-prioritize your next business day to accommodate that “urgent” after-hours request”. Conclusion

  Much has been bandied about concerning quiet quitting. Upon further inspection, those who participate in “Quiet Quitting” are not shirking their duties or being nefarious. “Quiet Quitters” are merely not letting themselves get taken advantage of by their unappreciative employers to the point of burnout, establishing a clear demarcation of work-life balance, and are simply basking in their legal rights to get compensated for work done in the contractually agreed upon days and time.

  

  Bosses would prefer to pay you in pizza...than paychecks!