My favorite job ever was as a buyer in a department store. I got to travel to NYC’s garment district 5 -6 times a year to “shop the market.” Invariably when I saw clothing I was dying to own, I made sure the store bought one in my size so I could buy it for myself at 1/3 off the retail price. It was every clothes’ horse dream job. The only job I came to hate was teaching American history to college students who often didn’t buy the required text, who failed to read it if they DID buy it, who showed their feelings about getting a college education by wearing their pajamas to class, and were sometimes triggered by events that happened hundreds of years before they were born. I report, you decide.
I didn’t do college until my 50’s. I noticed many never bought the books (I did) and didn’t even take notes (I did) but sloughed from class to class glassy eyed from the night before.
The hardest fight you’ll ever have is the fight against the will to remain ignorant. I’ll go one step further: it’s a fight you cannot win. Ignorance wins because all it has to do is, well, nothing.
It’s still under construction! But maybe someday. And much of it is kinda stupid, like Universal Truth number 3: The women in the Garden Club don’t really garden.(they go to meetings about gardening)
Many of them had “work-study” jobs on campus, jobs at which neither of those were performed. But they almost all had taken out college loans and all those loans allocated something called a “refund “ which was supposed to be used for buying textbooks. The money was being used for other things.
Sorry that I can’t give this a like because I truly dislike the student attitude you describe, but I will give you a ❤️ for saying it. I wrote a short response to Janet above regarding my experience of paying my own way through college. I wasn’t going to waste my own money!
I completely understand. Colleges themselves were complicit in creating student attitudes. For example, admissions offices began calling students “customers,” instead of “students” as the push for ever higher “asses in seats” (and yes, I heard that phrase used numbers of times) became the goal. I no longer encourage anyone to go to college.
That’s great, Janet. I was only a little late to college, graduated when I was 25, and I felt OLD! Still, I paid my way through, and if I was paying with my own money, then I was going to make sure I did it right. It was worth it for me and I’m sure it was worth it for you. There’s probably something there, about paying your own way, that might solve a lot of problems . . .
I think that’s right. But tuition has risen to insane levels beginning with government sponsored loan programs. That was followed by increases in high salaried administrators which also had the effect of pushing up the price of tuition. Something tells me that students “bought into “ the business model that colleges adopted.
Tuition is a problem, but compared to a lot of our ills, it’s solvable. Reduce the amount a student can borrow. If a student can’t get a scholarship to a prestigious (i.e. expensive), then they will need to go to a school that matches tuition with the lower limit on student loans. Prestige schools will need to cut administrative staff or loosen up some of their create more scholarships from their endowment if they want more “asses in seats.” If only the other fiscal problems we have were this easy to fix! (I’m only slightly exaggerating.)
Wearing PAJAMAS to class?! Wow, I'm truly gobsmacked. I graduated from college in 1977. If anyone had done that then, they would have been pulled aside and given a stern talking to if not expelled maybe. I can certainly understand why you came to hate that job. Why teach people who don't want to learn?
When I entered college in 1969, we were the first class that the women didn’t have to wear dresses on campus (or a long coat) and the men didn’t have to wear ties. Everything ran quickly downhill in the next 4 years with the hippies and “revolution”. I realized how you dress can often determine how you act. I followed through by requiring my daughter to wear dresses for k-4 grade. Everything time I relented and let her wear shorts she got a conduct mark.
That's really interesting, I never thought about how dressing might affect our behavior - thank you for telling your story, I fully believe you. I would also add that the hippie movement was not good for anyone - except maybe the C I A who created it. I grew up in Hollywood Hills, then moved to San Francisco for my job when I first left home. I remember hippies going to the local park, Griffith Park, every Sunday for a love-in. They would entirely strip the roses off my mom's beloved rose bushes which made her very angry. I don't blame her, she worked hard on those roses but didn't ever get to clip them to use as a bouquet in our house. That's the kind of behavior the hippies had - everything belongs to them they think. Communist behavior at its finest - which is probably the main reason C I A created hippie movement. Just my 2 cents.
How you dress also influences how retail businesses respond to you, so I dress according to the attention I want—lots, I wear a dress. Want to be left alone to just look, jeans or capris with flip flops. I would definitely be with your mom on the roses, except I would aggressively “deter” the hippies’ picking! Totally agree with the commie thing.
I have an image of you standing by my mom's roses with several grenades in hand ready to fire. Somehow, I don't think they would have come out winning. Old age, life experience and guile will always overcome youth and inexperience.
For some bizarre reason I pictured you wearing a very "naughty nightie" a la Marilyn Monroe. Would have been interesting to see the reaction from the class, especially the young men. And yes, probably your point would have been lost on them. That is just sad.
"it’s yet another predictable result of a generation raised on “everyone gets a trophy,” where showing up to soccer practice and picking dandelions on the sidelines earned you the same medal as the kid who scored eight goals. Now that those kids are grown, they’re realizing the workplace doesn’t hand out ribbons for doing the job you were hired to do, and it’s a full-blown existential crisis."
This is absolutely brilliant. The inane latte, cappuccino buffoons suck this one up. Strive to be excellent .
In high school, I worked at the San Francisco Steakhouse in San Antonio. Busboy, or ‘the guy who delivers food and the ‘big a$$ block of cheese’ after people are seated. Probably NOT making minimum wage which was $1.65 at the time.
The best part of the job? There was a swing above the VERY LONG oak, saloon style bar, attached to the 25 foot ceiling (?). Now and again, one of the waitresses would step up on the bar, seat herself in the swing, prepared to swing high enough to kick the cow bell attached to the ceiling. I love Texas!
Now, my job for the theatrics was to give the waitress an initial push and then, several nudges as she gathered speed and height enough to kick the can to wild applause. Compared to carrying big blocks of cheese and large trays filled with big steaks and baked potatoes, this was a high point to my nights.
As for my best advice for the silently suffering workforce (Sniff, sniff), “Suck it up, buttercup.” Life doesn’t give out participation trophies!
☝️☝️. Girl. All that! My first job at 16 was McDonalds. Scratchy green polyester uniform and a stupid looking visor that left a permanent indentation in my 1986 winged hair. I needed the money for gas so I could drive my friends around in my hand-me-down 1978 Ford Granada that had an exhaust leak. You know, cruise the mall and look for parties. The job sucked and I learned quickly how generally stupid and rude people were. But I occasionally got a free cheeseburger ( haven’t eaten that food in decades 🤢) I lasted 9 months then went to work for my friend’s mom when she opened a sub and pizza parlor. Significantly better than Micky D’s. But I worked all the time and didn’t complain. Today’s wimpy kids couldn’t handle what we did. And we didn’t have “safe spaces” to cry about it. I generalize, I know. There are some motivated hard working young people out there. But it’s soo different now
Did you work at the Naperville Illinois McDonald's? Because you just described my job at 16 including the uniform color. It was 10 years earlier and my car was a rusted out 1969 Mustang repaired with Bondo. I quit after 8 grease filled months to go work at B Dalton bookseller (good move except I tended to spend most of my paycheck on books).
Lynchburg, VA. And I would’ve spent all my money on books, too! Yeah, that ugly green uniform was nasty. Right before I quit they updated to gray khaki-type pants and a red polo
Dried out like beef jerky! I heard that the meat is good... just throw away the bun and refuse the 'sauce' and you get a reasonable keto meal. In fact I was told that some restaurants will do a keto burger by wrapping in a lettuce leaf instead of a bun for you 🤷♂️?
Wow! Twinkies would be totally unchanged in even longer time spans. And I used to LOVE those! Luckily, my parents were health conscious back in the 60’s, so we ate well and junk food (except soda for some reason) never hit our cupboards or dining table.
I had so many teenage jobs, from mowing lawns, to dishwasher, to cashier, to lifeguard, etc.. No quiet quitting, just left for a better opportunity before the “quite quitting” stage set in. Soon “quiet quitting” will be replaced by “I was replaced by A. I.” So, enjoy “quiet quitting” while you can.
Having grandparents who survived the Great Depression and won WWII, and a mom who had to work 2 jobs after my father abandoned us, it was drilled into my siblings and I that you DO NOT quit a job until you have a better one lined up. And you work as hard as you can for your boss, because we were raised on the verse that says, "do everything as unto the Lord" long before "What Would Jesus Do" became a thing.
The one time my brother "rage?" quit a job, both grandfathers read him the riot act about quitting before he had a better job lined up. Message received!
It's always been a thing. Back then many of us recognized that it was a motivation to look for a new job, or the training/education that would allow us to move to something better.
As my brother-in-law told me in the 1970s, "The boss isn't always right, but he's always the boss."
I decided there are two kinds of people: ambitious, and the rest. I am of the rest, too scared (for whatever reason(s)) of the uncertainty of the new to risk ditching the familiar.
I root, root, root for The Ambitious, because it is THEY who "break out," constantly searching for "something better"--and carry us along, improving our lots, and EARNING deserved wealth.
As I groused about my "first-work" experiences, I forgot the important part of the tale: SOMEONE had stepped out and taken a RISK that resulted in me having a $2.50/hr JOB to complain about.
I'm sure I mentioned this before: my favorite sign at Deb's Truck Stop, in Birdseye, Indiana which reads: "Hey, I know! Why don't you BUY this place from me, and I'LL sit at the counter and B*TCH?!"
Quiet quitting was a name for doing enough work to not get fired and/or exerting yourself enough to look like you cared so you wouldn't get fired. I did this through the scamdemic when it became apparent that no matter how well I performed my job, I still would be on the sh*t list because I refused the vaxx. So my attitude changed to "Right back at you." Yeah. It was silent payback. Quiet Cracking sounds like maybe people are blaming their job for their own breakdowns. Like Trump is president and I am cracking up. Maybe I am wrong.
I had a professor once, who'd had prior work experience, who sarcastically informed us that, in industry, "It's not your work that counts; it's your 'apparent' work." suggesting a bitterness towards shallow management that rewarded high-flying "participants" who gamed the system to amass resumes loaded with "apparent" achievements while failing to dig, even a little, for real contributions made by the quieter sorts.
My worst experience was at a job I actually liked, in a beach town where I could surf during the day and work at night. Our first child had just been born and the world was rosy. And then I found out a black coworker who had become a friend was getting screwed over in a racist manner (this was back in the late 80s). So I raised the issue at an all-hands meeting. Silly me. I thought they would either ignore me outright or "form a committee" to quietly ignore me. I didn't realize the third option would be to actively make life miserable until my friend and I were forced to quit. Job reviews went from five stars to one. Notes about my poor performance began to appear in my inbox. My friend quit and lucky for me a friend in another town offered me a job which meant we had to move with a small child, but it turned out for the best. Do I regret this? Nope. I learned that the people who are in charge of large organizations got there by being the worst sort of human beings.
Oh, and I once got fired from a job waiting tables by showing up at the kitchen door for my shift and having the security guard tell me "Employees only."
In my early 20’s I worked for an orthodontist. Kid had a big blueberry pancake breakfast before coming to his appointment when we took impressions. You know - the kind that make you gag.
It looked like a giant fan was behind him blowing his blueberry barf over the entire room. I had to step outside as to avoid adding to that nightmare.
I stayed in that job until a short while later when the orthodontist fired me for taking a couple of postage stamps.
That event was what led me to a 19 year career with AT&T despite having no college degree.
Romans 8:28-30 (NKJV) 28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. 29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.
Lettuce hope that these types of unsanitary restaurant practices made our immune systems stronger. Thanks Jenna!
I don't know about you all, but every corporate job I've had that required me sitting in the middle of a cubicle suburbia always had a few bad apples that were "quietly quitting" for years but never got fired. These lamp posts literally did the bare minimum while never moving up or down, but being perfectly content with getting paid to be lazy.
It's absurd that these labels were created out of thin air to explain something that has been going on for decades. Millions of people have been miserable and unmotivated in their corporate hamster wheels because these systems were designed to foster maximum corporate wealth, not happy motivated human beings. I surmise that these types of headlines and ideas are trickling into our consciousness to predict the masses for what's to come: massive layoffs replaced by AI and automation only to be replaced by universal basic income. Of course we all know that, UBI will come with many strings attached, but at least we can quietly sit at home and be miserable instead of suffering from quiet cracking or quiet quitting. 🤪
I watched the exact same thing at AT&T. We called it “passing the trash”. It was astonishing to watch how these people never got canned. Some even got promoted.
Maybe it is generationally driven, Jenna, but I’d place more faith in the idea that it’s largely driven by “journalism” majors looking for fresh topics to write about. And if it is something that shows some downtrodden, discriminated, impossibly small minority of the population, so much the better.
Have a scroll through a news feed. It’s article after article about how some individual is facing incredibly barbaric discrimination from a society hell-bent on “erasing” them.
I worked at a Chinese restaurant for one and a half nights when I was 13 years old as a dishwasher. The oven that makes the spare ribs.(you know, the little red ones.) circulates the fluid over all the hanging ribs down to a pit at the bottom and gets pumped back up. The half a dozen or so cooks would all smoke in the kitchen and throw their finished cigarettes in the pit at the bottom of the spare oven. I went outside for my lunch break on the second night and just walked home. Never came back to get a paycheck and couldn’t eat Chinese food for over a decade.
Oh Marc—that reminds me of my sister’s stories from her college days as a waitress for a ‘high end’ Chinese restaurant. Not only was it a roach palace but the owners would stand watching her bust her butt, all while speaking in Chinese and laughing in her direction.
And here I thought it was bad when I worked at Sizzler and the Mexican cooks in the back would throw knives across the kitchen into the potato bags for fun, and follow you into the walk-in freezer and try to take advantage. Still wasn't my worst job. That was working in a windowless smoke filled room soldering broken printed circuit boards. It was awful, but I worked for my step dad and he paid me a lot more than minimum wage. And it was only for a summer. Advice to the unhappy: every job has hated parts, and a good boss is very rare. Suck it up and find another job!
I was 16. Worked at the hospital in the kitchen for 75 cents an hour. I delivered meals in a big heated push thingy and took the meals to the patients. Then I was on the wash dishes team who emptied the trays, pushed the garbage through a hole and stacked and sent the dirties through the washer then stacked the clean. We got to eat the food which wasn’t so bad then in 1965. All of it was made by scratch. It was money my dad wouldn’t give me as his idea of teen necessities was way different than my ideas. Lol. My grandson is 19. He got his first job this July before he goes back to college. He’s going into plant sciences and got a job at a natural gardens design and construction company. This kid does no manual labor and has health challenges but he’s sticking. His job is mainly pulling weeds and being a gofer. (Of course!!). He came home this week with poison ivy covering both arms. He gets $20.00 an hour but it’s Long Island, so. Hopefully he can go back next summer. I find this HR problem ridiculous. I’ve had jobs where I was nauseous driving to the job every single day and would wake up in a panic. So many buttercup wusses out there now. I have avoided salad bars for a long time.
Antihistamine (I keep kid's liquid benadryl-alike onhand) for allergic reactions like poison ivy and insect stings. Tells the immune system: "Message received! Dial it down some."
Incidentally, menu prices DRIVE me to the salad bar while everyone else just borrows more money and orders entrees. If they set out poison ivy in a plastic canoe because it was cheaper, I'd have to eat it, but I would cover it with a bowl of the most expensive-looking dressing out there and start keeping antihistamine in the glove box.
I suggested that but they went right to prednisone. My daughter is a believer in all doctors and all pharmaceuticals. The health of this kid proves it. They don’t live close to us.
It may have been he was having a severe, over-the-top reaction--such as I suffered every-single-summer when we went from humidity-free West Texas to the soupy Midwest, and what passed for my "immune system" went berserk, taking the color "green" in a plant as a sign of imminent danger, "brown" being what it was used to. I was in my 20s, newly married, when a trip back east resulted in the same (over)reaction and my new in-laws insisted I see a doctor whom I informed could do nothing, as nothing had ever worked. He gave me a steroid shot, and 95% of the reaction was gone by morning, and 5% was a walk in the park with puppies.
Sometimes, a steroid is the thing. It's just not every thing.
You can't throw that band name thing in the poll, Jenna! 😀 Because it is also that, no matter what other option you choose. So how are we supposed to choose? This survey is unfair. I'm calling HR! 🤣
Actually, I don’t think I made the decision on the poll. I’m retired, right? Well, actually no. Working when a customer wants to spend money with me and I paint and make a few bucks here and there on the paintings.
My favorite job ever was as a buyer in a department store. I got to travel to NYC’s garment district 5 -6 times a year to “shop the market.” Invariably when I saw clothing I was dying to own, I made sure the store bought one in my size so I could buy it for myself at 1/3 off the retail price. It was every clothes’ horse dream job. The only job I came to hate was teaching American history to college students who often didn’t buy the required text, who failed to read it if they DID buy it, who showed their feelings about getting a college education by wearing their pajamas to class, and were sometimes triggered by events that happened hundreds of years before they were born. I report, you decide.
I didn’t do college until my 50’s. I noticed many never bought the books (I did) and didn’t even take notes (I did) but sloughed from class to class glassy eyed from the night before.
The hardest fight you’ll ever have is the fight against the will to remain ignorant. I’ll go one step further: it’s a fight you cannot win. Ignorance wins because all it has to do is, well, nothing.
Mary Ann, you've probably heard the definition of frustration as:
"the stress arising from not being able to choke the living daylights out of someone who desperately needs it."
🤣 🤣 🤣 I've never heard that definition of frustration. But I have placed it on my Personal List of Universal Truths. (And yes, it's a real list. 😁)
Thank you, Mary Ann. I know it will not be wasted.
Will you post your list of truths?
It’s still under construction! But maybe someday. And much of it is kinda stupid, like Universal Truth number 3: The women in the Garden Club don’t really garden.(they go to meetings about gardening)
Those clearly weren't the ones working to pay their tuition.
Many of them had “work-study” jobs on campus, jobs at which neither of those were performed. But they almost all had taken out college loans and all those loans allocated something called a “refund “ which was supposed to be used for buying textbooks. The money was being used for other things.
Sorry that I can’t give this a like because I truly dislike the student attitude you describe, but I will give you a ❤️ for saying it. I wrote a short response to Janet above regarding my experience of paying my own way through college. I wasn’t going to waste my own money!
I completely understand. Colleges themselves were complicit in creating student attitudes. For example, admissions offices began calling students “customers,” instead of “students” as the push for ever higher “asses in seats” (and yes, I heard that phrase used numbers of times) became the goal. I no longer encourage anyone to go to college.
That’s great, Janet. I was only a little late to college, graduated when I was 25, and I felt OLD! Still, I paid my way through, and if I was paying with my own money, then I was going to make sure I did it right. It was worth it for me and I’m sure it was worth it for you. There’s probably something there, about paying your own way, that might solve a lot of problems . . .
Same!
I think that’s right. But tuition has risen to insane levels beginning with government sponsored loan programs. That was followed by increases in high salaried administrators which also had the effect of pushing up the price of tuition. Something tells me that students “bought into “ the business model that colleges adopted.
Tuition is a problem, but compared to a lot of our ills, it’s solvable. Reduce the amount a student can borrow. If a student can’t get a scholarship to a prestigious (i.e. expensive), then they will need to go to a school that matches tuition with the lower limit on student loans. Prestige schools will need to cut administrative staff or loosen up some of their create more scholarships from their endowment if they want more “asses in seats.” If only the other fiscal problems we have were this easy to fix! (I’m only slightly exaggerating.)
Wearing PAJAMAS to class?! Wow, I'm truly gobsmacked. I graduated from college in 1977. If anyone had done that then, they would have been pulled aside and given a stern talking to if not expelled maybe. I can certainly understand why you came to hate that job. Why teach people who don't want to learn?
When I entered college in 1969, we were the first class that the women didn’t have to wear dresses on campus (or a long coat) and the men didn’t have to wear ties. Everything ran quickly downhill in the next 4 years with the hippies and “revolution”. I realized how you dress can often determine how you act. I followed through by requiring my daughter to wear dresses for k-4 grade. Everything time I relented and let her wear shorts she got a conduct mark.
That's really interesting, I never thought about how dressing might affect our behavior - thank you for telling your story, I fully believe you. I would also add that the hippie movement was not good for anyone - except maybe the C I A who created it. I grew up in Hollywood Hills, then moved to San Francisco for my job when I first left home. I remember hippies going to the local park, Griffith Park, every Sunday for a love-in. They would entirely strip the roses off my mom's beloved rose bushes which made her very angry. I don't blame her, she worked hard on those roses but didn't ever get to clip them to use as a bouquet in our house. That's the kind of behavior the hippies had - everything belongs to them they think. Communist behavior at its finest - which is probably the main reason C I A created hippie movement. Just my 2 cents.
How you dress also influences how retail businesses respond to you, so I dress according to the attention I want—lots, I wear a dress. Want to be left alone to just look, jeans or capris with flip flops. I would definitely be with your mom on the roses, except I would aggressively “deter” the hippies’ picking! Totally agree with the commie thing.
I have an image of you standing by my mom's roses with several grenades in hand ready to fire. Somehow, I don't think they would have come out winning. Old age, life experience and guile will always overcome youth and inexperience.
How you do one thing is how you do everything. I forgot who said that… 🤔
Yes. Pajamas. I was tempted to wear mine also just to make a point, but I feared my point would be lost on them.
For some bizarre reason I pictured you wearing a very "naughty nightie" a la Marilyn Monroe. Would have been interesting to see the reaction from the class, especially the young men. And yes, probably your point would have been lost on them. That is just sad.
Flannels, nothing terribly fancy. 😃
"it’s yet another predictable result of a generation raised on “everyone gets a trophy,” where showing up to soccer practice and picking dandelions on the sidelines earned you the same medal as the kid who scored eight goals. Now that those kids are grown, they’re realizing the workplace doesn’t hand out ribbons for doing the job you were hired to do, and it’s a full-blown existential crisis."
This is absolutely brilliant. The inane latte, cappuccino buffoons suck this one up. Strive to be excellent .
Respectfully.
Well, that explains the prolific use of tip jars when people are just doing their jobs.
In high school, I worked at the San Francisco Steakhouse in San Antonio. Busboy, or ‘the guy who delivers food and the ‘big a$$ block of cheese’ after people are seated. Probably NOT making minimum wage which was $1.65 at the time.
The best part of the job? There was a swing above the VERY LONG oak, saloon style bar, attached to the 25 foot ceiling (?). Now and again, one of the waitresses would step up on the bar, seat herself in the swing, prepared to swing high enough to kick the cow bell attached to the ceiling. I love Texas!
Now, my job for the theatrics was to give the waitress an initial push and then, several nudges as she gathered speed and height enough to kick the can to wild applause. Compared to carrying big blocks of cheese and large trays filled with big steaks and baked potatoes, this was a high point to my nights.
As for my best advice for the silently suffering workforce (Sniff, sniff), “Suck it up, buttercup.” Life doesn’t give out participation trophies!
David Z, putting your submission up for consideration for Bumper Sticker of the Year:
"Everyone gets a trophy."
No, no, that's not it...
"Strive to be excellent."
THAT!
I don't think people really knows what "excellent" means anymore.
☝️☝️. Girl. All that! My first job at 16 was McDonalds. Scratchy green polyester uniform and a stupid looking visor that left a permanent indentation in my 1986 winged hair. I needed the money for gas so I could drive my friends around in my hand-me-down 1978 Ford Granada that had an exhaust leak. You know, cruise the mall and look for parties. The job sucked and I learned quickly how generally stupid and rude people were. But I occasionally got a free cheeseburger ( haven’t eaten that food in decades 🤢) I lasted 9 months then went to work for my friend’s mom when she opened a sub and pizza parlor. Significantly better than Micky D’s. But I worked all the time and didn’t complain. Today’s wimpy kids couldn’t handle what we did. And we didn’t have “safe spaces” to cry about it. I generalize, I know. There are some motivated hard working young people out there. But it’s soo different now
Did you work at the Naperville Illinois McDonald's? Because you just described my job at 16 including the uniform color. It was 10 years earlier and my car was a rusted out 1969 Mustang repaired with Bondo. I quit after 8 grease filled months to go work at B Dalton bookseller (good move except I tended to spend most of my paycheck on books).
Lynchburg, VA. And I would’ve spent all my money on books, too! Yeah, that ugly green uniform was nasty. Right before I quit they updated to gray khaki-type pants and a red polo
Donna - speaking of McDonald’s
https://substack.com/@drwojakmd/note/c-146130230
Dried out like beef jerky! I heard that the meat is good... just throw away the bun and refuse the 'sauce' and you get a reasonable keto meal. In fact I was told that some restaurants will do a keto burger by wrapping in a lettuce leaf instead of a bun for you 🤷♂️?
I’ve seen these experiments. So gross! And people still eat that garbage. Yuck
I don't eat at McDonald's, but that video is an eye-opener!
Wow! Twinkies would be totally unchanged in even longer time spans. And I used to LOVE those! Luckily, my parents were health conscious back in the 60’s, so we ate well and junk food (except soda for some reason) never hit our cupboards or dining table.
I had so many teenage jobs, from mowing lawns, to dishwasher, to cashier, to lifeguard, etc.. No quiet quitting, just left for a better opportunity before the “quite quitting” stage set in. Soon “quiet quitting” will be replaced by “I was replaced by A. I.” So, enjoy “quiet quitting” while you can.
You are so, so right. I can imagine looking back at quitting in any fashion as a luxury....
Something you could do because you had a job. "Kids,, when i was an adult, there was this thing called 'work. '"
Having grandparents who survived the Great Depression and won WWII, and a mom who had to work 2 jobs after my father abandoned us, it was drilled into my siblings and I that you DO NOT quit a job until you have a better one lined up. And you work as hard as you can for your boss, because we were raised on the verse that says, "do everything as unto the Lord" long before "What Would Jesus Do" became a thing.
The one time my brother "rage?" quit a job, both grandfathers read him the riot act about quitting before he had a better job lined up. Message received!
Mrs. "the Knife"
It's always been a thing. Back then many of us recognized that it was a motivation to look for a new job, or the training/education that would allow us to move to something better.
As my brother-in-law told me in the 1970s, "The boss isn't always right, but he's always the boss."
I decided there are two kinds of people: ambitious, and the rest. I am of the rest, too scared (for whatever reason(s)) of the uncertainty of the new to risk ditching the familiar.
I root, root, root for The Ambitious, because it is THEY who "break out," constantly searching for "something better"--and carry us along, improving our lots, and EARNING deserved wealth.
As I groused about my "first-work" experiences, I forgot the important part of the tale: SOMEONE had stepped out and taken a RISK that resulted in me having a $2.50/hr JOB to complain about.
I'm sure I mentioned this before: my favorite sign at Deb's Truck Stop, in Birdseye, Indiana which reads: "Hey, I know! Why don't you BUY this place from me, and I'LL sit at the counter and B*TCH?!"
Now that you mention it, I’m in with “the rest” too. A couple of Dad’s depression era stories might have influenced me that way.
Quiet quitting was a name for doing enough work to not get fired and/or exerting yourself enough to look like you cared so you wouldn't get fired. I did this through the scamdemic when it became apparent that no matter how well I performed my job, I still would be on the sh*t list because I refused the vaxx. So my attitude changed to "Right back at you." Yeah. It was silent payback. Quiet Cracking sounds like maybe people are blaming their job for their own breakdowns. Like Trump is president and I am cracking up. Maybe I am wrong.
I had a professor once, who'd had prior work experience, who sarcastically informed us that, in industry, "It's not your work that counts; it's your 'apparent' work." suggesting a bitterness towards shallow management that rewarded high-flying "participants" who gamed the system to amass resumes loaded with "apparent" achievements while failing to dig, even a little, for real contributions made by the quieter sorts.
I sure do love a first thing in the morning laugh! Thanks, Jenna.
My worst experience was at a job I actually liked, in a beach town where I could surf during the day and work at night. Our first child had just been born and the world was rosy. And then I found out a black coworker who had become a friend was getting screwed over in a racist manner (this was back in the late 80s). So I raised the issue at an all-hands meeting. Silly me. I thought they would either ignore me outright or "form a committee" to quietly ignore me. I didn't realize the third option would be to actively make life miserable until my friend and I were forced to quit. Job reviews went from five stars to one. Notes about my poor performance began to appear in my inbox. My friend quit and lucky for me a friend in another town offered me a job which meant we had to move with a small child, but it turned out for the best. Do I regret this? Nope. I learned that the people who are in charge of large organizations got there by being the worst sort of human beings.
Oh, and I once got fired from a job waiting tables by showing up at the kitchen door for my shift and having the security guard tell me "Employees only."
In my early 20’s I worked for an orthodontist. Kid had a big blueberry pancake breakfast before coming to his appointment when we took impressions. You know - the kind that make you gag.
It looked like a giant fan was behind him blowing his blueberry barf over the entire room. I had to step outside as to avoid adding to that nightmare.
I stayed in that job until a short while later when the orthodontist fired me for taking a couple of postage stamps.
That event was what led me to a 19 year career with AT&T despite having no college degree.
Yeah. Romans 8:28 right there 🥰
Romans 8:28-30 (NKJV) 28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. 29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.
Hahaha that salad bar... oh my God. 🤮🤮
Lettuce hope that these types of unsanitary restaurant practices made our immune systems stronger. Thanks Jenna!
I don't know about you all, but every corporate job I've had that required me sitting in the middle of a cubicle suburbia always had a few bad apples that were "quietly quitting" for years but never got fired. These lamp posts literally did the bare minimum while never moving up or down, but being perfectly content with getting paid to be lazy.
It's absurd that these labels were created out of thin air to explain something that has been going on for decades. Millions of people have been miserable and unmotivated in their corporate hamster wheels because these systems were designed to foster maximum corporate wealth, not happy motivated human beings. I surmise that these types of headlines and ideas are trickling into our consciousness to predict the masses for what's to come: massive layoffs replaced by AI and automation only to be replaced by universal basic income. Of course we all know that, UBI will come with many strings attached, but at least we can quietly sit at home and be miserable instead of suffering from quiet cracking or quiet quitting. 🤪
I watched the exact same thing at AT&T. We called it “passing the trash”. It was astonishing to watch how these people never got canned. Some even got promoted.
lol passing the trash.... and then reinforcing that behavior by promoting them. Got to love the soul sucking corporate life!
6 hours each day of public school education prepares kids for the soul sucking corporate life.
Anyone who has ever had to cover for their boss who is inching toward retirement knows quiet quitting, up close and personal.
So true …About the corporate money making motive !!! And the sad workers in the hamster wheel !!
Maybe it is generationally driven, Jenna, but I’d place more faith in the idea that it’s largely driven by “journalism” majors looking for fresh topics to write about. And if it is something that shows some downtrodden, discriminated, impossibly small minority of the population, so much the better.
Have a scroll through a news feed. It’s article after article about how some individual is facing incredibly barbaric discrimination from a society hell-bent on “erasing” them.
And bonus points if it can be blamed on Trump.
I worked at a Chinese restaurant for one and a half nights when I was 13 years old as a dishwasher. The oven that makes the spare ribs.(you know, the little red ones.) circulates the fluid over all the hanging ribs down to a pit at the bottom and gets pumped back up. The half a dozen or so cooks would all smoke in the kitchen and throw their finished cigarettes in the pit at the bottom of the spare oven. I went outside for my lunch break on the second night and just walked home. Never came back to get a paycheck and couldn’t eat Chinese food for over a decade.
Oh Marc—that reminds me of my sister’s stories from her college days as a waitress for a ‘high end’ Chinese restaurant. Not only was it a roach palace but the owners would stand watching her bust her butt, all while speaking in Chinese and laughing in her direction.
My first thought after reading about your lettuce ritual was “but did anybody DIE?”
Imagine caring what kind of BS crisis Millennials imagine they’re going through.
We’re going to have to hope our society is able to overcome that entire generation’s drag on society if the country is going to survive.
MartyB, Very Important and typically overlooked point. "Did people get a meal WORTHY of what they WERE WILLING TO SHELL OUT FOR IT?"
If I'm eating Michelin #2 (you can tell I'm talking through my hat), then I can reasonably expect, the place is run at Michelin standards.
But there is a "McDonalds standard" too...
And here I thought it was bad when I worked at Sizzler and the Mexican cooks in the back would throw knives across the kitchen into the potato bags for fun, and follow you into the walk-in freezer and try to take advantage. Still wasn't my worst job. That was working in a windowless smoke filled room soldering broken printed circuit boards. It was awful, but I worked for my step dad and he paid me a lot more than minimum wage. And it was only for a summer. Advice to the unhappy: every job has hated parts, and a good boss is very rare. Suck it up and find another job!
My dad said, "You're not looking for a good job; you're looking for a great boss."
I love this.
I was 16. Worked at the hospital in the kitchen for 75 cents an hour. I delivered meals in a big heated push thingy and took the meals to the patients. Then I was on the wash dishes team who emptied the trays, pushed the garbage through a hole and stacked and sent the dirties through the washer then stacked the clean. We got to eat the food which wasn’t so bad then in 1965. All of it was made by scratch. It was money my dad wouldn’t give me as his idea of teen necessities was way different than my ideas. Lol. My grandson is 19. He got his first job this July before he goes back to college. He’s going into plant sciences and got a job at a natural gardens design and construction company. This kid does no manual labor and has health challenges but he’s sticking. His job is mainly pulling weeds and being a gofer. (Of course!!). He came home this week with poison ivy covering both arms. He gets $20.00 an hour but it’s Long Island, so. Hopefully he can go back next summer. I find this HR problem ridiculous. I’ve had jobs where I was nauseous driving to the job every single day and would wake up in a panic. So many buttercup wusses out there now. I have avoided salad bars for a long time.
Antihistamine (I keep kid's liquid benadryl-alike onhand) for allergic reactions like poison ivy and insect stings. Tells the immune system: "Message received! Dial it down some."
Incidentally, menu prices DRIVE me to the salad bar while everyone else just borrows more money and orders entrees. If they set out poison ivy in a plastic canoe because it was cheaper, I'd have to eat it, but I would cover it with a bowl of the most expensive-looking dressing out there and start keeping antihistamine in the glove box.
I suggested that but they went right to prednisone. My daughter is a believer in all doctors and all pharmaceuticals. The health of this kid proves it. They don’t live close to us.
It may have been he was having a severe, over-the-top reaction--such as I suffered every-single-summer when we went from humidity-free West Texas to the soupy Midwest, and what passed for my "immune system" went berserk, taking the color "green" in a plant as a sign of imminent danger, "brown" being what it was used to. I was in my 20s, newly married, when a trip back east resulted in the same (over)reaction and my new in-laws insisted I see a doctor whom I informed could do nothing, as nothing had ever worked. He gave me a steroid shot, and 95% of the reaction was gone by morning, and 5% was a walk in the park with puppies.
Sometimes, a steroid is the thing. It's just not every thing.
Maybe send her this article, cause while prednisone does work, it also causes damage.
https://sharylattkisson.com/2025/08/50-bizarre-side-effects-of-common-medicines/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Newspresso+%E2%98%95%EF%B8%8F+With+Sharyl+Attkisson&utm_campaign=Daily+Newsletter+v2+0+Test&fbclid=IwY2xjawMQaItleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHuIwDeUGWu8ubfg8fdy0fJ3brxDTEw4BNXQjB43tyf7HqCFlVtC_Ssv8mXsB_aem_MIgg8tf4ehSwa6ejvJxRkw
You can't throw that band name thing in the poll, Jenna! 😀 Because it is also that, no matter what other option you choose. So how are we supposed to choose? This survey is unfair. I'm calling HR! 🤣
Bahahahahaha!
haha yay. You laughing at my comment has made my day :D
My thoughts exactly!! I hovered over that option several times before I finally made the “BS” decision……😂
Same 😅
Actually, I don’t think I made the decision on the poll. I’m retired, right? Well, actually no. Working when a customer wants to spend money with me and I paint and make a few bucks here and there on the paintings.
Then you can vote on whether it's a good band name, lol!
🤣
I was looking for "dumbest name ever - who makes this sh$% up?? lol
That was my pick,for sure!