'Quiet Quitting', 'Rage Applying', 'Quiet Cracking'; there's a new buzzword every week to describe a thing employees do that higher ups don't like. But the attention they get is very revealing.
What a brilliant takedown of workplace buzzword culture—sharp, funny, and refreshingly honest. You perfectly captured the absurdity of dressing up age-old human behavior in shiny new terms and acting like it’s a crisis. The “quiet cracking” bit especially made me laugh—because yes, who hasn't been unfulfilled at work at some point?
I agree that the labelling is unhelpful, and also think there are two other points here.
1. Work has changed (I've been round a while and have experienced lots of styles of work). I'm now fully remote, not through choice, and have a love/hate relationship with this format. It's far harder to feel connection with work this way. The sense of being treated as fodder is higher. Hence the plan to do what is required, and not be exploited (as you acknowledge, if I'm being paid for x hours, why would I work more?).
2. Media has changed. 'Everyone is talking about this' is an illusion. While a metropolitan echo chamber may be talking about it, rest assured most are just getting on with their lives. Column inches (blogs, whatever) must be filled with 'content', but that doesn’t make anything in them true.
What a brilliant takedown of workplace buzzword culture—sharp, funny, and refreshingly honest. You perfectly captured the absurdity of dressing up age-old human behavior in shiny new terms and acting like it’s a crisis. The “quiet cracking” bit especially made me laugh—because yes, who hasn't been unfulfilled at work at some point?
I agree that the labelling is unhelpful, and also think there are two other points here.
1. Work has changed (I've been round a while and have experienced lots of styles of work). I'm now fully remote, not through choice, and have a love/hate relationship with this format. It's far harder to feel connection with work this way. The sense of being treated as fodder is higher. Hence the plan to do what is required, and not be exploited (as you acknowledge, if I'm being paid for x hours, why would I work more?).
2. Media has changed. 'Everyone is talking about this' is an illusion. While a metropolitan echo chamber may be talking about it, rest assured most are just getting on with their lives. Column inches (blogs, whatever) must be filled with 'content', but that doesn’t make anything in them true.