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When I was a teenager, I thought Office Space was representative of real life. Yeah, you'd have to show up to a job you hate, but at least you could openly hate it and call out its bullshit brainwashing culture to your friends and coworkers. You could all be united in a "this is fucking stupid, no one actually enjoys this, and all the weird office mannerisms, politics, and minutia are only bought into by the tools who no one likes."
20 years later, that wasn't really true. People seem to buy into the BS, or at least keep plausible deniability about it, such that you never really know. You can't openly call this out to your acquaintances, because you need rely on them for job referrals.
I don't know if this is a real difference between the 90s and 2010s/2020s, or maybe it's just the way it's always been. But it would seem the honesty and rebellious "fuck the man" attitude of the 90s has given way to the "live the hustle" attitude of the 2010s.
Maybe our economic situation being such shit has enforced this, since people don't have the ability to stick it to the man by even pretending they can opt out anymore. Unemployment in the late 90s was around 4%. It's possible that major economic shocks like the 2008 crisis or recent inflation changed how people think about job security.
Maybe also social media caused this, the same way it (in my opinion) caused the major ramp up in politics in the past 15 years. LinkedIn has turned everyone into their own personal brand. In the 90s - or at least in the Office Space/Fight Club version of the 90s - you clocked in and clocked out. Now you're expected to be passionate about quarterly earnings, and if you want to be secure in getting that next job after you're laid off from your current one, you better make sure you have a passionate public image, too. Note also, globalization may have something to do with this as well, since you're competing in a global market now, so you need to be better than more than just the local competition.
I posit that maybe being in a world where everyone seems to believe and live the BS has similar negative effects as social media does for causing people depression due to the highlight reel effect. The plausible deniability of "everyone seems to buy into this crap" makes others pretend to buy in too. This has obvious political parallels as well.
This is nothing new at least for me, it is Havel's greengrocer problem all the way down. Majority of the CW stuff also comes down to this, especially related to corporate environment where people are softly pushed into wearing rainbow keychains or attend Women at X lectures etc.
But there is also something to be said for maintaining positive attitude toward your work in general. I dislike 24x7 grumpy whiners, who are just doom and gloom about everything, poisoning the well for everybody else. A company gives you a gift card as a present - oh my god, those stupid fuckers should have given cash instead. These people are sometimes pain in the ass to be around, in the end there is a time to stop whining, grit your teeth and just move forward.
Poisoning the well is now present quite explicitly with a new "trend" of so called quiet quitting - because of course everything is now a TikTok trend - which is basically just the idea of punching the card, doing what is necessary and come home to family or church or you garden or other hobbies where you self-actualize. You know, the thing most factory workers were doing for centuries. Except now, it is a life philosophy and some people see it as a mission in their life, it is their hobby they do when they come home from work. They expect to be hailed as a new Socrates or maybe even Karl Marx, awakening white collar class to their oppression and pointlessness of their work and achievements and everything. They think that Wally from Dilbert is a role model to be followed, where the goal is to become corporate ninja and sabotage the company as much as possible without getting caught, instead of a comical relief.
As with all things, everything in moderation.
I've only seen the phrase "quiet quitting" being used by employers complaining about the employees doing this when they, as said, just punch the card and do what is necessary. If there's some trend of employees using this phrase, it seems like it's a recuperation of an earlier employer jargon term.
Oh, of course the usual battle of who used it first, like with the woke, and if it is endonym or exonym. Whatever the case, the term was a global trend with Chinese lying flat or Great Resignation during pandemic when people left their work for pandemic relief and other issues. It was also a time of huge popularity if /r/antiwork subreddit.
But in the end I do agree with you, there is nothing new here. Since the time memorial, there were regular punch the card people, there were always passively aggressive and dissatisfied employees with some sort of vengeance against their employer and of course there were "go above and beyond" workaholic employees. There were always conflicts between these groups where quiet quitters despised workaholic udarniks for raising quotas of production for the rest of them and all of that. Which is kind of the point I wanted to convey to the OP - his Dilbert fantasy of how everybody hates their job is not something that is to be expected.
Just my experience, but I've found if you go "above and beyond", you're not going to be recognised or even thanked. Hey, you want to do extra free labour for me? Great, go right ahead, dummy!
So there's a point between "punch the clock, leave on the dot" and "be first in and last out doing unpaid work". Do what needs to be done, if more needs to be done then do it, but don't make a habit of working for nothing for extra, because nobody will thank you for the hours you turned up and put in unasked.
EDIT: As I said, I started working during 80s recession Ireland so that was perhaps a peculiarly bad time, but one piece of advice we used to get about jobseeking was "offer to work for nothing!" The idea was "employer gives you a chance, you demonstrate how good you are, employer is impressed and hires you on full time".
Need I say it didn't work out like that? One job in particular I remember, I was young and dumb enough to try this out. They were quite happy for me to work there two months dong the job for free, but the minute I asked about "so, any chance of paid employment?" it was "uh, no, sorry, you don't have the qualifications for this work, bye!" That, despite the fact that I had been doing that exact job with no complaints about "you're untrained, you're unqualified" up till then.
I suppose nowadays this goes under internships: be happy to work for the exposure and to get experience in the industry. Paid? For doing the work we'd have to hire someone to do? Don't be silly! (and again, as in the 80s, 'if you don't want this, there's plenty more waiting to take the offer').
I have seen this argument from people in real life and also on the internet and to be frank, there seems to be some misunderstanding regarding the employee-employer relation, especially lack of knowledge of being put in shoes of your direct manager. The main counterargument is this: what is the alterntive? Just doing your job?
I lead people and if there is a time for promotion discussion, what is supposed to be an argument for promotion?
Hell no. You can be promoted only if you show that you have skills worthy of that position, otherwise it creates a load of issues inside the team. I have had people with this kind of mercenary attitude inside my team and in my experience it is always one-sided. They ask for extra money for extra work, but they are often not prepared for salary cut if they are subpar for whatever reason - health, personal issues or maybe even because it was just calm month or anything like that. Of course there are mercenary positions like that such as sales, various contractors or workers in legal field who literally bill manhours or who have large variable part of their salary and who have to work for every single cent they can provably earn.
But this is not the case for regular positions such as IT admin or accountant etc. There are some unspoken rules: if you are accountant, it is implicitly understood, that there will be more work around quarterly earning reports or when taxes are due. If you are in IT, it is understood that you need to put more when a new system is being implemented or when some security crisis happens. This is compensated by less work on regular workday in summer let's say.
It is also common sense. A manager has other things to do than babysit everybody who bitches that he had to stay at work because customer call took 10 minutes longer after their shift ended and who asks for extra overtime and who bitches over that injustice for next week to everybody around him or some such - while of course not mentioning when the manager let him leave earlier to pick up his kid last week because his wife was stuck with something. It is just stupid busywork, I don't have time for such powergames. There should be some basic relationship that smooths over these kind of fluctuations without having constant excel sheet tally of who owes what to whom. It is also likely that such a person will show the same behavior toward his colleagues, not providing necessary support unless specially motivated. It is just not worth it.
In my experience, there is no such thing as promotions. The boomers in management remain there forever, and even the one time there was an opening they just gave one of the managers two hats to wears at once instead of promoting one of the grunts who had been with the company for years.
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