On watching out for the quiet ones

The term “quiet quitting” (see Judy Roberts’ excellent feature story, p. 10) gained popularity as the recent pandemic altered perceptions about work and its value — for better or worse. Quiet quitters go through the motions doing as little as required of them at a pace of their choosing. Peter Gibbons in Office Space and, frequently, George Costanza of Seinfeld come to mind. It’s like an unannounced labor union “slowdown” undertaken on an individual basis.

Gibbons and Costanza were out to get themselves fired. Quiet quitters, not so much. They usually see themselves as pushing back on unreasonable expectations or unfair conditions, albeit in a passive-aggressive way. And it’s not just a North American thing. 

“Almost two years after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, the jihadists who transitioned from the battlefields to paper-pushing government jobs in the city are ready to quiet quit,” reported Time in March, in an article that could have come from The Onion or Babylon Bee. 

“The Taliban used to be free of restrictions, but now we sit in one place, behind a desk and a computer 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said one former sniper. “Life’s become so wearisome; you do the same things every day.” 

So even the Taliban find the daily grind uninspiring and start phoning it in. But are they true quiet quitters or merely slackers?

The American ethos has long been one of initiative and reward in which the ambitious can improve their station in life through self-discipline and hard work. To excel and go “above and beyond” one’s duty earns promotion to a position of greater responsibility and commensurate compensation. 

That doesn’t mean everyone must buy into it. Some are satisfied where they are. Others may quiet quit as an unspoken protest against some perceived and unhappy aspect of their job — pay, environment, lack of appreciation, or insufficient work-life balance. Then there are slackers, who underperform out of apathy or laziness.

Is quiet quitting wrong? Catholic social teaching supports principles of just wage and the right to strike “when it cannot be avoided, or at least when it is necessary to obtain a proportionate benefit” (2434-35). If injustice in the workplace exists, then a strategic pushback, quiet or vocal, may be defensible. 

What’s management to do? There’s an expression: “Beware the quiet ones.” It’s not easy to know what quiet people are thinking. But it’s incumbent for good employers and managers to know what their workers, quiet or otherwise, are thinking, and to be attentive to each worker’s human dignity and well-being. That kind of corporate communication can go a long way toward heading off worker discontent and distinguishing potential quiet quitters from slackers.