So, my dad was a 20-year US Navy vet, who went into contract work with the DoD upon retiring from the military in the late '80s. (Not necessarily a great career choice, for…. reasons. But, he installed weather systems on military bases around the world, and I fully believe that he believed he was doing a good thing.)
We lived outside Boston, and he took the early morning flights from Boston Logan Airport to the west coast more times than he could count. His job was forever sending him west.
Cue 9/11. He was not on any of the flights that morning, but two other contractors from his work were. It was horrifying and tragic and could just have easily been him on those flights.
So, upon his office reopening the following week, he announced that he would not fly for work anymore. This dude survived two brutal tours in Vietnam, and he felt like a ghost walked over his grave on 9/11. I can hardly blame him for being done with traveling.
Surprisingly, his work was basically fine with that, too. So, that was his quiet-quitting, part 1.
Quiet-quitting part 2 came when he also decided not to attend office meetings. And I mean all office meetings, literally ever. Just completely stopped showing up to them.
He never did get fired from that job, and kept working there until his social security kicked in several years later. He basically stopped performing the core duties of his work, and got away with it for years.
I feel like that was some OG anti-work. To this day, I'm shocked that he got away with it for so long.