I don’t think it’s bosses actually. I think this is the runaway click bait machine of “business outlets” trying to recapture the unexpected success of the whole “quiet quitting” thing they celebrated themselves for reinventing. “Stille Kündigung” is the literal translation for quiet quitting in German and it has been around for years, referring to an employee who has already decided that they wanna quit and mentally cut all ties to their jobs but haven’t acted on this yet. But even in Germany, the business media kept yapping about 'quiet quitting ’ as if it was something new and something to be afraid of…
the previous time this went through the media, they were calling it “resenteeism” (OMG, employees hate their jobs!)
“bosses” referring to the “owning class”, the same group of people who control our lives controls the media narrative (like Jeff Bezos owning both Amazon and The Washington Post)
in the US, “quiet quitting” was never about actually quitting, it was just a way to denigrate workers who only worked their listed hours, workers who wouldn’t do unpaid overtime
That’s what media tried to sell as “quiet quitting” here as well. They used the English term instead of the German one to make it appear as something new, cursing “gen Z” for not wanting to do overtime and such (which in reality is not a gen Z, but a Baby boomer thing here in Germany) which came out of fucking nowhere.
On the other side, someone who’s gotten into a “Stille Kündigung” mindset might not even quit. They’ll just withdraw to a point where the barely meet the minimum requirements for their job, become passive and inflexible. It’s usually seen as the ultimate consequence when employers disappoint someone too often and seen as something unrecoverable and to be avoided.
the idea that employers could disappoint anybody other than the shareholders is a completely alien concept in the US
DW recently did a documentary on Burnout which does a good job of explaining that “becoming passive and inflexible” – but EU companies are at least trying to maintain a façade of loyalty to their employees
I don’t think it’s bosses actually. I think this is the runaway click bait machine of “business outlets” trying to recapture the unexpected success of the whole “quiet quitting” thing they celebrated themselves for reinventing. “Stille Kündigung” is the literal translation for quiet quitting in German and it has been around for years, referring to an employee who has already decided that they wanna quit and mentally cut all ties to their jobs but haven’t acted on this yet. But even in Germany, the business media kept yapping about 'quiet quitting ’ as if it was something new and something to be afraid of…
That’s what media tried to sell as “quiet quitting” here as well. They used the English term instead of the German one to make it appear as something new, cursing “gen Z” for not wanting to do overtime and such (which in reality is not a gen Z, but a Baby boomer thing here in Germany) which came out of fucking nowhere.
On the other side, someone who’s gotten into a “Stille Kündigung” mindset might not even quit. They’ll just withdraw to a point where the barely meet the minimum requirements for their job, become passive and inflexible. It’s usually seen as the ultimate consequence when employers disappoint someone too often and seen as something unrecoverable and to be avoided.