Quiet Quitting? Nah. Try “Acting Your Wage”
Adhere to your job description, set boundaries, and separate your life from your work.
It seems like “quiet quitting” is the new “great resignation.” Well, just like with the latter, I have opinions about the former. For those who have managed to avoid reading about quiet quitting until now, you have my admiration for making it this far, and you are welcome to turn back now. My feelings won’t be hurt, I promise.
Still with me? Good.
Quiet quitting is a term coined by grumpy managers to describe employees who have the audacity to do things like “setting boundaries” and “only working their assigned hours” and other egregious sins. If you dare to leave exactly at 5:00, you’re a quiet quitter, apparently.
Basically, if it’s something that falls outside of your job responsibilities, you don’t do it. You do only the work assigned to you, no more, no less, and when work is over, you leave for the day. You set boundaries with your bosses, don’t make yourself available outside of work hours, and don’t pick up or accept unreasonable amounts of work. You follow your job description to the letter, no more no less.
To me, this is the ideal state of work-life balance. You show up, do your job, go home, and live your life. The overworked office worker stereotype, pulling late nights and 80-hour weeks, is the opposite of this. And, while we are often told to aspire to that life — put in all that extra work and you’ll be rewarded! — it is rarely worth the energy and stress.
The thing is, we have spent so much time in “hustle culture” that it is basically expected of you to step up, volunteer to do things that are outside your job description, and put in extra time at work. All of this is in service to your bosses and managers, who have more or less come to expect it by now. If they ask you to volunteer, you are basically being voluntold to do whatever it is, and a “no” is tantamount to insubordination.
That said, millennials and Gen Z are not accepting this nonsense anymore and have started taking a more reasonable approach to this work-life balance thing we were promised but was never delivered. Heck, I’m pretty sure Gen X is there with us too in a lot of ways.
By doing only the things that are in our job descriptions, we are setting boundaries with our bosses and managers that show that we value ourselves and our time more than the work that we do. We have finally figured out that our personal time has more value than we have been giving it and that we don’t need to be dedicating every waking hour to work.
Our work pays us to do a particular job, but apparently doing that particular job for the wage we were promised is a terrible sin dubbed “quiet quitting.” Do you know what I think it should be called? “Acting your wage.” I wish I’d been the one to coin that term, but it has come from the amorphous internet, so I couldn’t tell you who originated it.
(Apparently, it’s also a board game by Dave Ramsey, whom I dislike, but I suspect it’s been around for a lot longer than that.)
Way, way back in the early 20-teens, I got my very first full-time job. It was fantastic — the pay was more than I had ever made, they treated me well, they encouraged me to take my vacation time and not work long hours, all the good stuff that you hope for in a job. Generally speaking, it fit the criteria for a job that actually cared about my well-being, which was really nice having come from a retail store.
However, there was one thing that I wish, in retrospect, I could have done differently. Because I was a young guy in an office full of women, I was often asked to carry in donations and other heavy things. I also got roped into doing things that weren’t really in my job description — watching the front desk, setting up AV equipment, doing basic IT troubleshooting, and other standard young millennial stuff.
I was very eager to please at the time, so I did it all without a second thought. It became a joke for a while that it all fell under the amorphous “other duties as assigned” line in my job description. Every time I got roped into doing something that wasn’t my primary job, someone would say “other duties as assigned!” with an implied wink and a nod. It was kind of a running joke in the office for a while.
Of course, it stressed me out immensely, and when I had a pile of work to do but was asked to watch the front desk for the third time that week, I started getting a bit grumpy about it. Eventually, I talked with my boss who, thankfully, understood my perspective and politely asked my coworkers to not pile so much stuff onto me. I went back to doing only my job (mostly), and life was pretty good.
What frustrates me is that we live in a world where putting up with that nonsense is just sort of…expected. I work for nonprofits, so enthusiasm about our mission is part and parcel of most of the reason my coworkers and I do our jobs. We also often have to wear many hats because we are constantly underfunded and sometimes need to do things outside our job description.
However, many managers are keen to take advantage of that spirit and will milk you for all you’re worth. You wind up with random assignments that aren’t what you were hired to do and are constantly asked to stay late or put up with subpar work conditions. Eventually, you lose all your motivation and just show up, do your work, and leave like an unenthusiastic robot. Then, because you’re no longer a good little wage slave, you are branded a “quiet quitter” and demonized by the business media.
Look, I’m not saying to slack off at work or waste your manager’s time by doing nothing all day. Acting your wage has some level of expectation. However, you should absolutely not burn yourself out for a job that probably doesn’t value you and almost definitely doesn’t pay you enough.
Look, hustle culture is a hustle, and the trickle-down economics that was supposed to enrich us all was a lie. These are things that I think we are mostly starting to figure out at this point. Most of us are underpaid for the work we do by design, so I think it’s about time we started acting like it.
Do your job, be an average worker, leave exactly at 5:00 (or whenever quitting time is), and don’t let yourself get roped into extra work or late hours — especially if it’s unpaid. These are the basic premises behind “quiet quitting,” basically doing the bare minimum, but more than that, acting your wage is the act of setting boundaries with your employer. You are saying, in no uncertain terms, that your life and your time are more valuable to you than a company that doesn’t care about you and can often easily replace you.
You don’t owe your employers your life and every last bit of your energy, nor do you owe them anything besides the work that they are paying you to do. They are paying you to do a particular job, and you should do that particular job, but when it’s time to leave for the day, you leave. Period, end of story. Employers are not paying you to literally break your back for them, they are paying you to do your job and nothing more.
Do your job to the best of your ability, but never feel obligated to take on extra work, never feel obligated to stay late, and never feel obligated to do anything outside your job description. As long as you are completing your tasks satisfactorily, you are well within your rights to exert those boundaries.
And, most importantly, a good boss will understand this. I have worked for many unreasonable bosses in my retail life, but I have been blessed in my professional life with, to my recollection, no unreasonable bosses. The managers and supervisors I’ve had in my career as a grant writer have universally been flexible and understanding in how I do my job.
They have encouraged me to use my vacation time, take flex time if I need to stay late one day, and generally not burn myself out. And, because I appreciate and respect my bosses for that, I am willing to go a little bit further sometimes. Never unreasonably so — both my bosses and I understand that constantly pushing too hard is a recipe for depression and burnout. However, because my bosses respect me and my boundaries, I respect them.
Again, all this boils down to respecting boundaries and just a general sense of respecting your employees. Good bosses and managers understand that respecting their subordinates is a fantastic way to have good, loyal employees who will work hard, even if they do act their wage and enforce their boundaries. The thing is, a good boss will respect those boundaries and work around them.
I know that I’ve drawn some minor distinctions between “quiet quitting” and “acting your wage,” but they are really the same thing. As far as the media is concerned, the differing factor is really whether your manager respects you or not. If they respect your boundaries, it’s a healthy work environment and your boss is lauded for establishing such a great place to work. If the boss doesn’t respect you, however, it is obviously the employee’s fault and they are a quiet quitter.
Honestly, I think that pretty much anyone and everyone working a standard job should act their wage. If you are working for an office that pays you a salary, act your wage. If you work for a retail store stocking boxes, act your wage. If you are a freelancer who sets their own prices, act your wage. All of these positions have clearly outlined job descriptions, and you do not owe your employers (or clients, in the case of freelancers) anything outside of those descriptions.
You are not required to and should never destroy your mind, body, and general well-being for a job that, ultimately, doesn’t really care very much about you as a person. We live in a world where we can all be fired and replaced in the grand capitalistic scheme of things, and while some of us are not easily replaced, we are all replaceable.
So, in a world where we are replaceable cogs in a huge capitalistic machine that doesn’t respect us, our autonomy, or our humanity, we should at least respect ourselves and set boundaries with our work. Nobody ever lay on their deathbed and said “I should’ve spent more time at the office,” as they say. Do your job within the boundaries set forth for you, live a great, fulfilling life outside of work, and don’t feel guilty about it in the slightest.
In other words, act your wage.
Be well out there.
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