Let's get excited

about quiet quitters! part 1

According to Gallup, half of workers in the US workforce are quiet quitters.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, quiet quitting is a new “trend” in work. It is a phenomenon where a person doesn’t quit their job, but they do the bare minimum to keep their job and no more. It’s really not a brand new idea, but it’s a new term.

Why is it exciting for this movement to happen? Because quiet quitters make the rest of us look really good. And once they do inevitably quit or get fired, we get to reap the rewards.

dispensable or indispensable

In my opinion, most people who have the luxury of quiet quitting are completely replaceable at work. Their boss sees them as replaceable and they see themselves as replaceable. When you’re dispensable, you get paid like you’re dispensable. That may not be a kind way to talk about people in your opinion, but this is an unchanging principle. Quiet quitters will always become dispensable to their workplace, and they will always be paid accordingly.

Those of us who are indispensable to those around us are also paid accordingly. I fully believe - right or wrong - that the things I’m a part of could not work without me. So I put in the work to make those things the best they can possibly be. The more I do that, the more people see me as indispensable, and the more I am valued at work.

The truth is, most people don’t want to do what it takes to become indispensable. The mentality of a replaceable person is: “I want to get paid as much as possible to do as little as possible.” What they often discover is that they are paid commensurate to the value they add to the organization. Sadly for them, they don’t add that much value.

What do indispensable people do? They solve problems no one else can solve. When you are indispensable, you don’t have to worry about your level of remuneration.

If you want to be indispensable to anyone, ask the question:

“What are the problems I see that I can solve?”

The odds are that other people see those problems too. But problem solving requires work. In fact, it will require you to go above and beyond what you are paid to do. Those of us who are willing to do that will wave goodbye to the quiet quitters as they make whatever lateral move is next in their mediocre career.