The Idea of Quiet Quitting
by John Brantingham
Last night, I heard a newscaster talk about the trend of quiet quitting, and it has stayed in my mind all through the evening and this morning on my walk. The newscaster did that thing they do where they raise their voices to suggest that this new trend is odd, something that we who are older will not understand.
The idea is that young people are completing their assigned tasks at the end of a work day, and not working past their work hours without pay, not spending their free time reconnecting on email and texts with their bosses or clients, and taking evenings and weekends for themselves.
What stuck with me about this wasn’t that people were doing this, but the way that it was reported. The reporter was suggesting that this was an anomaly and another example of the willful laziness of the new generation.
What was wrong about this hit me instantly, of course, as I hope it has for you, but I was still working out the implications of this as I walked in the blue of dawn. My neighborhood herd of deer was out and clustered together, watching me come down the street. They didn’t move until I clapped at them, and then they all trotted out as a group.
I stopped to watch them moving individually and moving as a group because I like whitetails, and I never have been able…
