Antiwork

So in a nutshell, I was working for a steel processing facility in OH (privately owned) and the owner had us pull our money out of a real 401K so that “his guy” could make us more money. He didn't give us a choice and actually made us come in on a Saturday (unpaid) to handle it. Over a year later we found out the company was bankrupt, our paychecks bounced and our 401k's were never invested. He had had “his guy” put the contributions in a private account and send us fake quarterly statements. The secretary was doing some light accounting when she found the account and called the feds who sent people to take our payroll records, etc. The County prosecutor told him he didn't want to waste time and money prosecuting him and let him return the money plus a 6% interest for the time he had…

It’s not my passion to make burritos at a place your coworkers have been assaulted after leaving work. All at that pay while living in a homeless shelter because I can’t afford rent.

We have devolved into a society of hero worship. Oh, just vote for him he'll save us! Or, someone will stand up to that bully so I don't have to! Sorry but that was just propaganda by the television to make you complacent. No one will come to save you. It's not their responsibility. Even if good people get elected they have navigated an entire environment filled with predators. The same predators no one stood up to. The same predators have refined their ability to abuse and get what they want. If you want to change, you have to group up. The predators are running in packs. They've taken over congress. They've taken over the industries. They've taken over the military. It's time to stand up as a group because by the time they've taken everything from you, it will be too late to stand up to them. The world…

I saw a segment discussing it on the news so it occurred to me that this term had entered the general lexicon. My understand of the definition is this: it's the refusal to do more than the minimum that is required of you at your job. The nuance has always been that this behaviour is necessary for regular people to cope with our late stage capitalistic society, where our labour is undervalued and the worker-employer relationship is inherently fraught. I equate this to setting boundaries, others have called it separating your ego from your work. I think it's healthy to do this. Realizing how unrealistic it is to find true fulfilment at your job, while also accepting that you will always need money, is just part of adult life – unless you're incredibly privileged. It's useful to have a term that encapsulates this. But what I dislike about “quiet quitting”…

I graduated from college in 2009, which as most of you know was not the best time to be entering the workforce. At that time, I was “lucky” to get a job at a local non-profit paying $30k/year + benefits. The employer made us very aware that we should kiss their feet daily about how “lucky” we were to work there, which involved daily abuse and the expectation that we would be available 24/7 “for the children.” Since that first job, I have clawed (I use that term deliberately) my way to different jobs both in the public and private sectors, so I have a somewhat broad view of what's currently going on – and it's very, very different for Gen Z today than it was for us just 10 years ago. At my current company, the entry-level positions pay salaries that took me years to crawl to. And generally,…