I recently got a gas station job, and I work as little as I possibly can. I've spent a lot of my life working various jobs for minimum and just over it, and over time it got to the point where I realized that the amount I was being paid wasn't nearly worth the stress and exhaustion that came with exerting myself. I used to really buy into your worth being wrapped up in how hard you work, but people from other countries tell me I've been sold a story. After 6 years of pushing my limits, I finally decided I was going to find an “easy” job and do the bare minimum.
Enter this gas station job. It's 5min from where I live, I get free (awful) coffee, and it was easy to get my foot in the door because I know the manager. I work closing shifts, and so when the mid shift leaves after my lunch break I have four hours wherein I am by myself. During that time I listen to music, watch YouTube, browse reddit (or make posts like I am right now) and work on my own creative projects. There's a shitty office chair that I relax in, and basically, it's the easiest 17$/h I've ever made. It ain't much in my state, but it's enough, and I'm stressing absolutely 0% about this job. They've tried to ask me to be assistant manager for $2 more (full manager makes 4$ more) but I like where I'm at. Taking on the stress and responsibility of management? I'd need at least 25 to even consider, as that is the minimum I charge for physical labor on my days off.
It ain't much. I do my closing tasks to the letter, and preform all duties outlined in my job description. But I don't come in on my days off, and I don't fix problems in the store that are above my paygrade. I don't take calls or texts from work when I'm not there. I don't go above and beyond, and I don't ever work off the clock.
My manager spends her personal money to pacify customers, works off the clock, and is constantly staying way later than she needs to because it's a corporate hellhole wherein each person you call can't do anything and refers you to someone else who can't do anything. They still aren't paying the wages they promised her, and they did the same thing to the previous manager. The internet is broken but everything runs off of it, and we're constantly losing sales due to this. Every once one a while they call in the tech guy who calls another tech guy but can't fix anything. It's laughable how poorly the store is run. Higher ups just want us performing perfectly and don't want to think about us at all. We're the furthest out of their network, so that might have something to do with it.
Call it quiet quitting, or paying flat, or being a slacker, but I'm done giving too much of my energy for not enough money. I stress as much as they pay me to stress. I hope y'all give yourself permission to do easy jobs if it makes sense for you. In my mind this is how I “win” against huge corporations.