You’ve Heard Of Quiet Quitting, But What About Quiet Firing?

Yes, I typically write about cars and motorcycles and such. But this is my blog, and I can write about anything I want. I’m not required to stay on topic like I am at the websites I work for. So from time to time, I’ll write something here that has nothing to do with my usual subject matter. This is one of those times. It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.

A few years ago, the term “quiet quitting” entered our lexicon. (It has now entered the Merriam-Webster dictionary, so it must be real.) If you’re not familiar, it’s the practice of doing your job, but only your job, as detailed in your job description. It doesn’t include extra hours, extra projects, extra responsibilities, or anything extra at all, only what you’re actually required to do. It’s a form of protest against having all this extra stuff expected of you with no additional compensation or recognition. After all, how can a company fire you for doing your job, exactly to the letter of your job description?

In the past, being proactive in your job, going above and beyond and such, has earned recognition, raises, and promotions. It was how you got ahead in your career. But this almost never happens anymore. It’s happened to me precisely once in my career, when FIXD recognized that my role had evolved from a writer to an editor, and officially promoted me with a new job title and a generous raise. (They laid me off six months later.)

Generally, though, companies are all too happy to take advantage of your good work ethic and give you nothing in return. The most egregious example of this was a warehouse I worked in. There was me, another warehouse worker, and the warehouse manager. The manager was the owner’s son. He was allowed to do whatever he wanted. He didn’t want to run a warehouse, and frequently didn’t. So the work just didn’t get done, because we simply didn’t know what work needed to be done. That’s what a manager is supposed to do.

Of course, we were the ones who got in trouble for it, not the owner’s son, whose fault it actually was, but he was untouchable. The other warehouse worker was a great guy and a hard worker who could follow specific instructions. He wasn’t much good at critical thinking or problem solving. So basically, I ended up running the warehouse myself, even though my job was only to be a warehouse worker bee. I wasn’t a manager, but I fell into managing the place anyway, because no one else would. I was at that company for 2.5 years, and spent 1.5 of them desperately looking for another job just to get out of my situation. The day I finally gave my two-week notice, I was thanked for my hard work by getting told not to come back tomorrow, and then getting screwed out of the payment in lieu of notice I was entitled to.

When quiet quitting first became a thing, employers were outraged. How dare workers do only what they are obligated to do? The nerve of some people, depriving corporations of extra unpaid labor! But situations like mine are why people started doing this. If quiet quitting had been a thing back then, I would’ve jumped on the bandwagon, if nothing else than to see what happened. (Go ahead, try to fire me for doing my job. I’ve won unemployment appeals before.) Over time, the original outrage over this practice seems to have subsided and become almost accepted and normal. Now, I’m actually seeing companies start to use a similar technique themselves, but against workers. I call it “quiet firing.”

Several people in my family lost their jobs earlier this year when the company they all worked for suddenly shut down. We’ve all been scrambling to find whatever work we can ever since. One of them landed a part-time job at McDonald’s. It’s not glamorous, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do. They made his scheduling needlessly confusing. For example, they’d have him on the schedule for “7-10 (PM).” Except that didn’t mean a night shift. No, it was 7:00 am to 10:00 am for extra cleaning, with some made-up corporate-speak that resulted in the acronym “PM.” So he missed his shift.

It was all downhill from there. They kept giving him less work than the three days a week he was supposed to. It was also on different days than he’d agreed to work. Finally, his name wasn’t on the schedule at all for the next two weeks. He was told to talk to the general manager about it. He went in on two separate days he wasn’t scheduled, but the general manager was always “busy” and “couldn’t” talk to him. He ended up turning in his uniforms and giving up on the place.

I’m sure that’s exactly what they wanted him to do. That way, he would officially leave “voluntarily” instead of getting fired, or worse, laid off. That’s worse for the company, because they have to report layoffs to the state, and he could also qualify to collect unemployment. You can’t exactly call reading “PM” on a schedule and interpreting it as an evening shift a legitimate reason to fire someone. So they simply didn’t schedule him at all, and let him make the “decision” to leave himself.

This is even worse than firing or laying off someone, because they don’t even know they’ve been let go. It’s like Milton from Office Space, who was fired long ago, but nobody actually told because nobody wanted to actually face him. This phenomenon isn’t new. At least if you know your job is gone, you can immediately start looking for other work. But since you think you still have a job, and nobody’s telling you otherwise, you waste valuable time trying to get a straight answer from management, which hides in the back office instead of facing you like they should.

Things are bad out there. Officially, unemployment is up, and we’ve lost jobs for the first time since 2021. Anecdotally, multiple unemployed people I know are having the worst time finding work they’ve had in years. One of them says it’s the worst he’s seen in 17 years. Do the math, and that takes us back to 2008, the Great Recession itself. At the same time, corporate profits are higher than ever, and the average CEO makes 285 times more than the average worker. Hang on–it’s going to be a wild ride.