You Only Had Not to do One Thing

(WSJ illustration)

Quiet quitting is a new buzzword for an old workplace pheonomenon: doing just enough to keep one's job.

It's reasonable to suppose that "doing just enough" originated sometime during the 20th century, when bureaucracy made it easy to hide one's lack of productivity, but one would be wrong.

WSJ columnist Callum Borchers believes slacking goes back a bit further than that. He channels the first guy to quiet-quit:

I got the help I requested—her name is Eve—but I didn’t expect The Boss to make her from one of my bones. I don’t want to hear about the “blood, sweat and tears” that you poured into your job. Mine claimed a critical piece of my skeleton. After that, I stopped trying so hard.

Eve had a lot to do with it. She’s Gen A but not type A. Sure, she’d help gather apples or weed the orchids from 9 to 5. But stay a little late to check on the new ocelot litter? Forget it. She was, like, “Sorry, I have plans after work.”

All you quiet quitters out there aren’t as original or provocative as you think.

Really? We were the only two people on the planet. She just wasn’t going to go beyond the position’s minimum requirements.

Yet The Boss loved her just as much as He loved me. I know, I know. That’s His whole brand. Still, it was a harsh realization after all my hard work. I started coasting like Eve.

Even when Adam "started coasting," the Boss wasn't going to fire him. All he had to do was not do one thing, and he couldn't even not do that.

Of course, he blamed it on his teammate, and both were escorted out of the office with no severance and no medical. Some might call it karma, but that's the compensation system from a different company.