2022-09-24 10:14:27
Barcelona will respect its schedule. If you receive an email after your closing time, you will not reply. Nor will he take calls from his bosses after he has already left work. Nor will he say yes to any job request with a solicitous “sure, no problem” without first thinking if he can really take it on. In meetings, he will keep quiet more than once even if he has a brilliant proposal on the tip of his tongue, to avoid doing more unpaid work. In short, he will comply strictly with what the employment contract says, for which he earns around 750 euros a month working at a Catalan university.
Clara (fictitious name) has set out to consciously apply these commandments. He is 31 years old and is pursuing an academic career to get a permanent position in the department. “I realized that I’m always living in the future, because there’s a lot of precariousness in my present. You always do a lot more work because you think it’s going to be good for you in the long run and you can add it to your resume. The reality is that I juggle three jobs and I can’t rent a flat by myself,” she explains. As a student and an employee, she had always had a certain tendency to be a perfectionist and demanding of herself and to put in extra hours when she played. After a “stagnant” decade, however, he believes this way of working has taken its toll on his health, without bringing any real improvement in his income. “I sit down because I don’t want my life to be like that. I’ve slowed down at work because I’m more tired, but I don’t get paid more.”
Reject work overload, banish overtime and set limits to achieve reconciliation with personal life. What Clara claims is not new, but until now it had never been summed up in a concept as viral as it quiet quitting (“the silent resignation”, in Catalan). This anglicism – heir to the phenomenon of the Great Resignation in the United States – has turned into a trend a labor unrest that many young Generation Z people also express in the form of a meme.
The TikTok network has become a showcase for young people who put emotional distance from work
In a TikTok video, a blonde girl with a pierced nose tells the manager of the store where she works that she won’t be able to stay late at night to take inventory. He reminds her that her day ends in five minutes and that she won’t be able to come on Saturday to “help out” either, because she would exceed the hours of her contract. Her boss is outraged by this attitude and assures her that this will hurt her when her contract renewal comes around, but she warns him that retaliation can also be reported. This is just one of the thousands of examples that we can find with some time doing scroll on the Chinese social network and claiming the right not to work on the account anymore.
“It’s an interesting point of view, that of this generation. Before the complaints were between us, within the spaces of the company like the corner of the coffee machine. Now it’s a global criticism, which can unite and create a movement”, points out Aline Masuda, professor at the EADA business school and expert in business psychology. She herself left a consulting job in the United States because she was working too much overtime and it was affecting her quality of life, “but then I couldn’t even announce it on Facebook.” At 45, he observes that younger workers have not bought into the so-called “culture of effort” as much as their parents, and reject work as a central part of their identity.
For some companies, this “silent resignation” is read as a lack of commitment on the part of workers, but Masuda reminds us that this word should only be used when that commitment is reciprocal. “If you commit, I commit. To begin with, the employment contract is already an agreement that is not always fulfilled and not all the remunerations to which the employee would be entitled are paid,” he indicates. For the academic, the definition of a committed person would be someone who “does a good job, keeps his health intact and is flexible, if he is needed at a specific moment”. “It has to be a give and take,” he says.
Psychology had not given a name to this attitude towards work, but to Dolors Liria, vice-dean of the Official College of Psychology of Catalonia and expert in occupational health, the phenomenon is not new to her. Patients who have lived with mothers and fathers who work too long, have felt neglected at times and now do not want to repeat these patterns, have also come to their consultation. In this sense, he considers that setting limits is healthy “because it protects you from overflows” and from extreme situations such as burnout, but also invites you to avoid positions that are too rigid. “This will never be good for work or mental health. Sometimes it makes sense and it is necessary to stay a little longer,” says the psychologist.
“Sometimes it makes sense and it’s necessary to stay a little longer,” says psychologist Dolors Liria
He also believes that the worker can have a more active position when it comes to being satisfied at work and giving meaning to what he does. When the latter is lost, Liria explains, states such as laziness, individualism, depersonalization and the anticipatory anxiety of Sunday evening arrive. “On the part of the company there must be a sensitivity so that the conditions are appropriate”, he insists.
For Joan Boada, professor of organizational psychology at Rovira i Virgili University, “there is nothing to say” when a worker complies 100%, but a problem does appear when the company demands “120%” in exchange for nothing In a historically present-day country like Spain, he points out, staying at the desk until seven in the evening has been rewarded, even if this does not mean that the day is more productive. For this reason, the academic also advocates that the employee can “design the workplace to their liking”. For example, applying conciliation and telework policies. “It is necessary to understand that the worker is the best thing we have in the company and to be aware that he must be taken care of. Adequate human resources policies must be deployed for this objective,” he insists.
To the Catalan comedian Joel Díaz, the concept quiet quitting it sounds like the “don’t let yourself be blown” of a lifetime. This attitude was already reflected in a series of five columns in the cultural magazine cloud titled Diary of an anti-system clerk. The texts came from a monologue in which he explained the commands to become a kind of “undercover agent” in the form of a lazy office worker, whose poor performance ends up hurting his company. Díaz passed through the filter of comedy situations that he had also experienced himself working in a multinational company.
The comedian Joel Díaz believes that the phenomenon is equivalent to “not letting yourself be exploited for the rest of your life”
“It comes from what I consider the great trap of companies. You give away your effort and work more than you should if you compare it with the remuneration you receive. All for that illusion that one day you will be promoted. And you end up competing with the your colleagues to see who is the hottest,” laments the communicator. His parodic office worker would never attend an event of networking o team building, nor would he talk about the company in the first person, but he would extend his time in the toilet during the working day. As for Díaz, he dedicated himself to work “without any illusion or emotional attachment to the company.” “In the world of equipment management, concepts are used that clearly come from intensive livestock farming. On a cow farm, milk is extracted automatically, and offices are becoming more and more like that. Produce in maximum until you leave or take a leave of absence for depression,” he says.
Marta (fictitious name) is another Clara unafraid of being the subject of the sweaty expression “You dropped the pen”. He is a journalist and started working in a medium five years ago with an “absolute dedication” that has faded. Two things have come together in this period of time: salary conditions have practically not changed and she has been a mother. “I have devoted myself to reconciliation and I work fewer hours. I really like my job, but I no longer give more than I did at the beginning,” he says. Her commitment to herself is to do only what is necessary at work and go home to enjoy time with her son. It is difficult for him to consider taking on more workload, especially when his contract still includes a professional category below the one he belongs to. “I have a pending conversation with my boss,” he assumes.
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