Every few months, corporate media stumbles across an old labor practice, slaps a new label on it, and acts like it just discovered fire. “Quiet quitting” was 2022’s viral phrase for something workers have been doing for centuries: giving only as much labor as they’re paid for. Michael Hiltzik’s Los Angeles Times column argued the obvious—there’s nothing novel here except the buzzword. Still, the fact that the term stuck says a lot about where work culture is in 2025.
What “Quiet Quitting” Supposedly Means
The phrase implies employees are silently plotting their escape, refusing to “go above and beyond.” Translation: they’re fulfilling their job descriptions instead of offering free overtime. The backlash revealed how much modern capitalism relies on invisible labor—hours, emails, emotional effort—that isn’t written into contracts. As Harvard Business Review notes, disengagement rises not from laziness but from burnout, poor management, and lack of recognition.
A Tale as Old as Labor
From the Pullman strikes of the 1890s to the “blue flu” of public employees in the ’70s, workers have always scaled back when conditions were unfair. The rebrand into “quiet quitting” simply framed that tactic for the TikTok generation. The viral appeal wasn’t in the practice, but in the act of naming—suddenly everyone had language for what they were already doing.
Why the Label Matters
Language shifts power. Employers fretted over “quiet quitters” as if disengagement were sabotage, while workers reclaimed the phrase as resistance. The Pew Research Center found that younger employees value balance and autonomy over hustle-culture loyalty. Giving those priorities a catchy label made them harder to dismiss.
Beyond the Buzzword
The real problem isn’t employees working to rule—it’s workplaces that treat overextension as the baseline. As SHRM reports, retention improves when boundaries are respected, flexibility is offered, and extra effort is recognized with actual compensation. In other words: if companies don’t want quiet quitters, they should try loud appreciation.
The Takeaway
“Quiet quitting” isn’t the end of work ethic; it’s the end of unquestioned exploitation. Workers are still working—they’re just declining to donate their free time to corporate profit margins. And if managers are panicked by that, maybe the label did its job: it exposed just how normalized overwork has become.
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