How very Costanza-esque of them

Yeah, I know. It's easy to sit back, look at it from only one side and say "no one wants to work anymore". The work ethic has changed but so has the management ethic. A worker owes a fair day's work for a fair day's but the management should not expect to own the person or control their off-work time.

One company called it 'human capital management'. Employees are simply commodities to be used, disposed of, or replaced. If a cheaper, younger employee is found to replace a senior employee, it happens quickly. Can you replace people with some new software automation or perhaps an outsourcing company? Same thing. 'At Will' employment means your job may disappear at any moment for no reason at all.

Employees are learning this is how it works. The covid lockdowns and other chaos allowed some people to see their place in the rat race and what they get for their efforts.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
You've got to admit that consistently going above and beyond and getting zero recognition and zero bonus gets really, really old. I've always told the boss to "show, don't tell" concerning appreciation.

Yep.

I worked with few guys who did the barest minimum to get by. They were called as being "retired on duty". While they skated, everyone else had to take up the work they avoided.

Slackers are nothing new.

When I was a lad, my mom told me to put in 8 hours work for 8 hours pay.
I always tried to live up to that. It was good advice.

I had a fairly long reply typed out to this and accidentally closed it. But the jist is, killing yourself for a job is pointless. They will drop you in a heartbeat if they can benefit.

I once heard treat a job like dating, if it's all one sided why would you stay in that relationship. I learned this lesson the hard way when I was working as a gunsmith. Got a call one weekend and second I answered the phone it was immediate yelling. Just ended the call and laughed to myself at what an asshole the owner was and what was he going off about. Found out later that day what it was about and was nothing involving me. After that, bare minimum done, figured out the math that I was owed over 800 hours of OT, and pretty much had a foot out the door and was only waiting on a job from a dept to be completely out.

Flash forward to today. Shitty admin, shitty internal politics, public hates policing more and more it seems. So I do the minimum. Nothing proactive out of me. Will always help out the other officers, do my share of work, and try not to leave a shit show for the next platoon. But I'm not getting promoted with the idiots at the top currently (it's a mutual hatred between us really), and I'm not getting days on the street or loosing my job cause I went looking for more work (it's happened to too many I work with). So will keep on cruise control and give me the easy OT (beyond short staffed so that isn't going anywhere).

Besides, I work to live. If I won the lottery tomorrow why would I ever work again? Wouldn't you want to enjoy it. It's just that people are figuring this out sooner rather than later in life after missing out on a lot. What is shitty is people who do nothing and create more work for coworkers.

Employers do need to be reminded you do get what you pay for. My team is made of a bunch of senior DoD/DoJ types. When our contract was up from renewal, someone made the bright idea to lower some of the minimum requirements to get someone cheaper, and lowering the cost to government for the contract. Big. Fucking. Mistake. 80% of our job is rather easy. Like stuff anyone with a high school diploma could handle. But three years in he was still struggling with the simple stuff. And a lot of it was on him for being a lazy piece of shit. We all celebrated when he announced was quitting the team. And by the time he quit, we went back to only hiring people that met the higher requirements.

And a few years ago Target raised their minimum wage, and the quality of applicants also raised.

It's nothing more than a cop-out, and now it's being validated by giving it a cutesy little name and enumerating reasons why it's valid to be a lazy slug who steals money from their employer.

Goldbricks are as old as the workplace itself. These pissing little bastards are nothing special, but now with this cutesy-labeled bullshit, they think that not only are they special, they have DAMN GOOD REASONS for being the kind of employee no one wants to encounter. Oh, I see- it's a "movement". Give me a fucking break. Stop enabling these lazy little assholes.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
It's nothing more than a cop-out, and now it's being validated by giving it a cutesy little name and enumerating reasons why it's valid to be a lazy slug who steals money from their employer.

Goldbricks are as old as the workplace itself. These pissing little bastards are nothing special, but now with this cutesy-labeled bullshit, they think that not only are they special, but they have DAMN GOOD REASONS for being the kind of employee no one wants to encounter. Oh, I see- it's "movement". Give me a fucking break. Stop enabling these lazy little assholes.

I cannot agree more. I am fortunate enough to employ people in a right to work state, and I am great at documenting mediocrity. I’ll document, coach, warn, terminate. If you don’t want to work, go make tacos at the bell. I offer a good wage, healthcare, and lots of other perks.

in days past there was and still is the 80/20 rule...

80% of all work is acted upon and completed by 20% of your work force.

sometimes its 90/10... however, ther have always been what were termed 98.6’ers, just a warm bodiy.

those that were below that stature were called useless wastes of flesh.

Ive always giver %120 and am at the end of my career, i worked using the paradigm of always make your boss look good... ive been lucky in this regards and have always had good leadership, leadership that new how to exploit my skills for mutual benefit.

I have always been promoted, i've always been on call.

The price was paid by my loyalty to staff and the mission... if you didn't produced you were sidelined to a supporting role.

Always will be these folks who are termed useless... however, they can be used... just have to be creative.

quote:

Originally posted by IrishWind:

Employers do need to be reminded you do get what you pay for

This

My employer got the bright idea to replace the proprietary security guard force with a subcontract guard force and it’s been a complete disaster as we all predicted.

These subs have ZERO skin in the game, they don’t have our benefits and pay as they did when proprietary and it’s a complete revolving door. I know as I work with all their access control around our campus, if they last a year or two they’re senior. Most last a week, a month, a few months but as soon as something else comes along paying a dollar or two more an hour, they’re gone.

We were supposed to save all kinds of money going subcontract but I think it’s ended up costing us money because of how much of a disaster this subcontract company is.

quote:

Originally posted by IrishWind:
Employers do need to be reminded you do get what you pay for.

Bingo! You’ve hit the nail on the head.

When worker compensation has been stagnant for 30 years, and loyalty to workers from ownership corporate doesn’t exist anymore this should not come as a surprise. Even when inflation was largely very low for most of the past few decades, worker compensation has not kept up with inflation. Meanwhile corporate executive compensation has taken off and even some of the worst CEO’s etc. have received massive golden parachutes for far far far more than the value of their contributions. Companies will drop employees like a hot rock in order to save a little money for one tight quarter and then pay to rehire people 2 quarters later. Nobody looks to the long term anymore and turnover costs are still very under considered even with the tight labor market. So is it really a surprise that employees feel their efforts don’t matter?

Couple all of this with the PC crap that started entering the work world en masse 30 years or so ago, along with the idea of management by Human Resources so called “professionals.” We’ve created a task based workforce, where people show up and complete the tasks required by corporate and HR, and their performance is only measured by what boxes they check off. Rather than being a more deliverables based workforce where people are paid for what they produce, good workers may often hold back for fear that they aren’t checking off the right boxes. Indeed an employee that produces superior results may not be rewarded for those results or may even be disciplined for failing to take some ridiculous corporate culture or sustainability online training in a timely fashion because they were providing real value to their employer. People have seen that the way they survive in this environment is to complete the required tasks, and with no incentives to go above and beyond they don’t.

I don’t know that any of this can be fixed with our current economic setup either. Real decision makers are so disconnected from the people that do work as to be ineffective. When Bob in Salt Lake City has a poor performer but can’t take any action without talking to Rita at Denver in corporate, how is that efficient? Modern companies have gotten so large that the inner bureaucracies have grown to rival that of government. At the end of the day, slackers have always been around the workplace but I don’t think that a lot of people mentioned in association with this article are slacking. Sure some are, no doubt about it, but others are merely doing the task that they are paid to do and that’s it. That’s not slacking when 40+ years of programming can only reasonably seen as driving one towards that result.

How did companies ever exist without an HR department or multi-million dollar HR systems?

it used to be called 'Personnel'

when they changed to HR, you became nothing more than a resource

companies don't give a fuck about you as an individual

they will pay you as little as possible and give you the least amount of benefits they can get away with

Maybe I should’ve put in a sarcasm alert? ^^^

I see the article being interpreted in different ways in this thread.

One does the job asked but no more.
One does the job asked but less.
One does the job asked and always exceed.

In case one where most of the criticism is called gold brick, quietly quitting or worse is disingenuous.
The employer is getting what they paid for and the employee is getting what they signed up for.

In case two - that needs to be fixed by the employer whatever way they desire > fired, educated, better managed, replaced or whatever.

The last case is where you find the gems of society and should be treasured but may or may not depending on the job.
If that employee has any intuition they will seek and end up in where they are appreciated and fairly compensated.
If they choose not to that is on them.

If you want to talk about the constant degradation of the work ethic over time > that is certainly true with multiple factors for this - right or wrong.
How to fix it?
That is a whole 'nother convesation.

quote:

Originally posted by mrvmax:
I do not agree with not doing what you are paid for. But after working the last 37 years, I no longer see value in putting in 70 hours a week when I am paid for 40. I consistently see expectations grow higher and higher, more work is expected and it is way past 40 hours.

I was at my last employer for 24 years and quit last year. I got a great appraisal, completed more work than I had ever done and was given the worst pay raise of my life (1.5%) while the company was making record profits. They also told me that I needed to double my work load. I asked my boss why, so I could get a 1% raise for working 70 hours a week? They would bring in new hires off the street and pay them more than me with 24 years. I quit that job for more pay and 40 hours of work. BTW, the department I was in has had 1/3 of the employees quit since I left due to similar reasons.

I do not live to work, I work so I can live. I have seen guys give 40 years to a company, make one mistake and get fired. Work is not my life, the days of companies being loyal to good workers is over (at least from where I have worked).

I do my job well in 40 hours, I exceed every expectation given to me. I see these engineers out of college working 60-70 hours a week and I know it is for naught. There is no place to "move up" where pay is more and stress/hours are less. I have seen a few smart enough to quit and move into another field. I am not quiet quitting but I can see some merit in not selling your soul to your employer.

I agree with you for the most part and think you did the right thing by finding what motivates you.
However, you cannot say that your newbie engineers working 60-70hrs are for "naught".
It is up to them to determine that.
Perhaps there is no direct compensation by this current employer but their hard work may benefit them in the future in a plethora of ways.
What is good for them may not be good for you.
It is up to the individual to determine their own fate.
Kudos for you moving on but let those newbies experience it for themselves.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
I just hope these quiet quitters stay out of healthcare where their behavior could directly impact the lives of others.

I had dinner with a buddy in the medical field last night. He says a good part of his day is explaining to the nurses that the patient is the most important thing, not their phone. He is constantly telling the charge nurses to put away their phones.

quote:

Originally posted by IntrepidTraveler:

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
I just hope these quiet quitters stay out of healthcare where their behavior could directly impact the lives of others.

I had dinner with a buddy in the medical field last night. He says a good part of his day is explaining to the nurses that the patient is the most important thing, not their phone. He is constantly telling the charge nurses to put away their phones.

That could be easily solved in five minutes.

Here is the policy: no phones while on duty
Here is a phone locker for your phone
You may check your phone on a break or while not performing job duties

Simple