Quiet Quitting.

If you're a Gen X-er like me, you started working around the time of 9/11 when you graduated college, then got married and had a couple kids sometime later, only to experience a global pandemic mid-career. And, if this doesn't ring true for you, you're simply here for the ride and the story.

Either way, you may proceed.

​Because why wouldn't world terrorism and a planet-wide sickness be interesting?! It's borderline dystopian and, quite frankly, it's worthy of popcorn. 

At any rate, I digress.

​Honestly, even after the uphill battles since the world's changes in 2001, I've been trying not to quietly quit altogether.

What is Quiet Quitting you ask?

Although quiet quitting is known as a job reference, I can't help but think of how it's spilling into everyone's everyday being.

I mean, recently I experienced someone else's quiet quitting when I went to Panera Bread and was greeted by an employee with a, "What's up."

​I turned around, thinking the millennial saw a friend standing behind me, but no.​

---

He was greeting me.

"Do you mean, How can I help you?"

He looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. (Little did he know, I was about to.)

This was my first experience with quiet quitting. 

But now I get it!

So many Gen Xers were taught a stolid hardcore work mentality. But now I wonder, for what? And, the more pressing, why?

As much as I don't want to quiet quit my existence, this frame of mind has me questioning my unrelenting work ethic. The wages suck, they've always sucked,  and do not warrant the back-breakingness of our being.

I think the quiet quitters are teaching us not to kill ourselves for the almighty dollar. And they're right. Although I don't agree on mincing integrity on the job when I'm there (there will NOT be a "hey, what's up" greeting from my lips), but I will recognize my on-the-clock-hours from the time that is not clocked in.

xo
​Dawn
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