When Hunter Ka’imi appeared on the US talk show Dr. Phil in autumn 2022, producers didn’t even use his surname. Instead, they just identified him as a “quiet quitter”.
“I believe quiet quitting is a protest for workers’ rights,” Ka’imi told the audience. “I don’t find that work is the most important thing in my life, nor do I think it should be the most important thing in anyone’s life.”
The show devoted half an episode to the phenomenon, which began in summer 2022, when a TikTok user named Zaid Khan posted a video of himself explaining, “this term called quiet quitting, where you’re not outright quitting your job but you’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond”.
The term went viral almost instantly, dominating headlines and hashtags.
On TikTok, #quietquitting has nearly 900 million views as of this writing. Ka’imi’s video, in which he explains, “I’m not going to put in a sixty-hour work week and pull myself up by my bootstraps for a job that does not care about me as a person”, racked up more than 7 million views and 38,000 comments, and has been shared more than 43,000 times.
Ka’imi, then a restaurant manager in the US state of Washington, became a figurehead of the movement, which quickly saw quiet quitting become something of a badge of honour. Calling yourself a quiet quitter was suddenly cool, at least trendy. The 23-year-old says that happened because so many people immediately identified with the feeling of being taken advantage of by their employers.
Quiet quitters, like Ka’imi, just put a name to the feeling.
“I think for a while people were feeling frustrated, but didn't have the words to articulate why, other than, ‘I'm mad at my boss’,” he says. “Then when the conversation shifted to quiet quitting, it was like, this is about work culture and capitalism and exploitation. Then a lot of people were like, ‘Oh, this is actually what I'm mad about.’”
Although the trend has faded from daily parlance, both Ka’imi and experts alike say the spirit of quiet quitting is still holding strong.
As companies struggled to fill roles, employees like Hunter Ka’imi felt emboldened to go public on social media as proud quiet quitters (Credit: Hunter Ka’imi)
Skyrocketing popularity
The popularity of quiet quitting began, says Katie Bailey, professor of work and employment at Kings College London, “as people re-evaluated their experience of work, their relationship with their employer, and their life in general” during the pandemic.
“Like a lot of social media trends, it took off because of the commentators: academics, economists, other experts on the labour force and so on were all talking about it, so it became even more of a thing,” she says. “The term was taken up and used in different ways by different people.”
It entered the zeitgeist in such a big way, continues Bailey, because of workers' extreme reactions to the concept, framed in a short phrase.
While many – like the followers who lionised Ka’imi – could relate, some other people vilified quiet quitters. On the Dr. Phil show, a San Diego-based financial planner named Brent Wilsey said it was just laziness. “I think it really boiled down to ‘us versus them,’” says Ka’imi. But he clarifies that while it seemed cool and taboo, being a quiet quitter was never actually about rebellion.
“It just means doing your job. It's not an exaggerated protest or rhetoric of, like, you should sabotage your employers or come in late every day or steal from your company,” says Ka’imi. “Quiet quitting is if I’m hired to do A, B and C, that’s all I’m doing. It’s a resistance to doing the X, Y and Z that aren’t in your job description, and you’re not getting paid for.”
Bailey posits that a historically tight labour market, which saw companies struggling to fill roles and hang onto employees, helped embolden quiet quitters to go public on social media without fear of being fired.
Ka’imi says he wasn’t just unafraid of his bosses seeing his videos; he hoped they would, even if that made his quiet quitting less quiet.
“I did not care,” he says. He adds he was proud to approach his boss for time off to appear on the talk show – to explicitly talk about how much he disliked his job. While his bosses might not have been thrilled, they didn’t argue. By being open, Ka’imi hoped, he might be able to bring about some meaningful change, both at his job and writ large.
'At this point, quiet quitting is the status quo'
Quiet quitting was a fad, says Bailey, in the sense that the term faded from relevancy within a few weeks: Google searches for the phrase, which peaked in August 2022, have since dwindled.
But while discussion of quiet quitting has petered out, that doesn’t mean workers aren’t still putting it into practice. “The underlying things about the hours we work and how engaged we are with our work – I think that continues to be there,” says Bailey.
Although we may have stopped labelling the attitude as quiet quitting, people are setting more boundaries around their time and energy. “Workers are being more deliberate about reasserting autonomy and control and saying, ‘I'm a human being, and there are other things in my life other than work’,” says Bailey.
Bailey does note some workers may be drawing less attention to the behaviour now, unwilling to endanger their employment and eager to protect their income “because of the financial situation many people find themselves in with rising inflation and a worsening economy”.
But, obviously or not, Gallup data suggests that a majority of workers are still quiet quitting. According to the State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report, nearly six in 10 global employees are psychologically disengaged from their organisation, even if they’re putting in the agreed-upon hours.
“After the movement died down a little bit, I think people realized this is a much healthier way to work,” says Ka’imi. “It’s normal to say, ‘I'm just going to do the bare minimum; I'm going to show up for my shift and leave at the end of it.’ At this point, quiet quitting is the status quo.”
"still" - Google News
August 11, 2023 at 02:00PM
https://ift.tt/dlN5xW8
'Quiet quitting is the status quo': Workers are still proud to do the bare minimum - BBC
"still" - Google News
https://ift.tt/hBtZerY
https://ift.tt/7M4sfJQ
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "'Quiet quitting is the status quo': Workers are still proud to do the bare minimum - BBC"
Post a Comment