Episode 072: Quiet Quitting

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All right. Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley, joined by my co-host, Jeff Jenkins.

Happy Tuesday.

Here we are, right? So today we're gonna talk about a topic that's been in the news recently. It's this element of quiet quitting.

It's such a weird phrase, quiet quitting.

Quiet quitting, it's like we're gonna quit, but we're gonna not talk about it quietly. Quitting, quitting. Yeah, I guess in some terms, right, it's the passive-aggressive form of today's society. We don't really wanna quit, but we're just not gonna work anymore.

I wonder how much of this is reflective of— you hear of the people that get fired through text message or a video or Loom, right?

Yeah, no, it probably is all related, right? There's people not having courage.

Yeah.

You know, leaders not having courage to terminate somebody in person or to have a face-to-face conversation. And I get it, 2,500 people at one time, like there's not an easy way to do that logistically. But, you know, like that crying CEO who had to fire 3 or 4 people, right? And then made it all about him. Yeah. I think it's just an indication of where we're at as a society right now.

No one wants to do the hard thing. No.

And quiet quitting is just the other side of that coin, right? Nobody really wants to quit because then they'd have to go find another job. And it's a pain in the butt to go find another job. So instead, we do this whole doing just enough not to get fired. But emotionally you're just totally checked out.

Have you ever quiet quit?

No.

It doesn't have to be work, I guess it could be on anything, right?

Yeah, I'm trying to think like if I've ever quiet quit like volunteer work or like a church assignment. I don't— I just don't think I have that bone. Like if I'm not happy, I'm just gonna quit. I quit my, you know, my first job.

Yeah.

But then no, ever since then it's It's all been RTA, so I feel like I'm still here.

You actually stepped it up a notch, right? Like, okay, I'm gonna buy the company.

Yeah, let's just kick this into another gear.

I don't think I've ever done it either. I, I think that maybe after I've given a notice somewhere—

oh, for sure, right? Maybe then you're already checked out.

Yeah, you're checked out. And I think that may do it. And it's not necessarily getting— doing just enough to get by. It's probably you're just not there anymore.

Yeah.

But I'm like you, you know, I can't, I couldn't live that way. I'd be miserable.

Yeah. Like if I was just doing it for a paycheck, like there's way better things to do to get a paycheck.

Yeah.

And so like this idea of doing just enough to get by, we have a saying here that we say all the time, right? If your soul's left the building, your body should follow.

Right.

And maybe it's just perspective, but like you and I both know like life's just too short. And if you're going to sit there and just waste it and basically trade your minutes away for a paycheck and no real job satisfaction, you are selling yourself so short on life.

Oh, absolutely.

I think that's the saddest thing about this.

Well, this isn't anything new. No. First of all, this has been happening forever. We're just now coining it as a, as the phrase quiet quitting. I think it's probably more prevalent now, but as I look back There's a lot of times I've noticed people that have done just enough to get by and to not get fired.

Yeah, because for them it's more about the job security, right? For them it's more about— I mean, you asked me in one of the more recent episodes about loyalty, and for them that's really what it's more about, right? Like, I need my health benefits, I want my 401k, you know, it's— there's a little bit of an entitlement there, like, well, I deserve just to, you know, make this and not have to do anything else. But it definitely is a mentality.

Yeah.

It's a mentality of, I'm totally fine being mediocre and not being more than I totally could be or living up to my potential.

Right. It's those people that you walk around and you come up behind them and they're playing Candy Crush on their phone while they're at work. Or what's that phrase? The boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I crap on the company time.

That's why I've heard that one. Yeah.

There's those sort of things that people have that mentality because they're just— you're right, they just want— and a lot of it is benefits as opposed to pay.

Yes.

Because if it was all pay-based, you'd be busting your ass to try and make more and more money, right?

And I think that's the— it's interesting, the things I've been reading on quiet quitting and, you know, the hot takes that people are having on it is if you don't want your employees to hot or to, uh, quiet quit, then you should pay them what they're worth. And I'm like, that's, that's what we're getting from this?

That's the antithesis of what should happen.

Yeah. So we're gonna just pay you more money to do the job we're already paying you for. Hold on a second, I'm just trying to make sure I understand your argument here. And if you feel like we're underpaying you, then why don't you go get another job, a better job that pays better somewhere else?

That's personal responsibility.

That's weird, right? It's a weird concept.

I know, it's very weird. That was— that's always my argument when people talk about things like this, right? Is like, well, they deserve to make more, or minimum wage, we need to raise minimum wage to X or to whatever. And I'm like, well, if you're not happy, why don't you just go get a new job, right?

Go get that thing that you need or that you want, right? It doesn't seem like— but instead it's everybody else has to change.

Yes.

You know, and there's no other personal responsibility. It's, you know, like they blame the evil corporations and things like that, but like 98% of America is employed by small employers. And so that's totally a random stat that I just made up out of nowhere, but I know it's big.

Um, it was really good though. I was impressed.

I was confident, right?

You were. I believed you.

I knew somebody was going to be like, 98%, that's not right. They're going to fact-check me on the podcast. Last. I'm gonna get like a Snopes email. This is a Pinocchio. You get 5 Pinocchios on that one.

There you go.

I do know it's a big number though. And you know, like, you, when you quiet quit, you're not hurting the big corporate giants. You're usually hurting the local economy, you know, and you're hurting yourself and you're hurting, you know, if you've got a family, you're hurting them because you're coming home miserable because all you're doing is the paycheck.

Well, yeah, and like, what an unfulfilling life. Right. I don't think I've ever really said, hey, I love what I do as far as a job, but I've been good at it. But I've had a goal that I've worked towards. Right? There's been ambition and those sort of things. So there's been purpose behind it.

And I think that's the key, right? Patrick Lencioni had the book, The Three Signs of Job Misery, and basically broke it down to three things that lead to employees checking out, right? A lack of employee engagement. The first one was irrelevance. Like, they just, their job didn't matter. They didn't know what it was there for. They didn't know why they were there. They didn't have purpose. And so, you know, as you're trying to help employees stay engaged, like, you gotta make sure they have a purpose, they have a motivation. We talk about dream management and understanding what they're working for, what their goal is, what they're trying to achieve, and how do those align with the company goals.

Right.

But they have to believe, like, what the work that they're doing matters, that it has an impact on other people besides themselves, and that it's something that they get something out of. Right. And that's that irrelevance. Like, eliminating irrelevance is one of the signs of job misery, right? Getting rid of that. The other one was anonymity. Like, you have to be seen. You have to, like, feel like people care about you at the place you work. If you're invisible, then you're like, well, I could totally quiet quit and nobody would even notice.

There's a story, gosh, it's probably like 5, 6 years ago, where there was a guy in New York who hadn't shown up to work in 6 years. He was making over, I think, over $200,000 a year.

No way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hadn't shown up in years to work for that reason. Because he had complete and total anonymity. No one knew when he was there, when he wasn't there. And so he just kept— he just stopped showing up to work and getting paid.

Wow. Wow. Yeah.

And they found out how many years he'd been doing it.

Like, wow, impressive, right? And at some point, like, as a company, you're like, you know, you feel a little bit defrauded.

Oh yeah.

At the same time, you don't have anybody else to blame but yourself. And that's the third sign of job misery, is in measurement. You just don't know the score. You know, you have no idea to know, like, am I doing well? Am I doing good? And, you know, like, how do I know if I'm winning? But if you've got somebody that's just not showing up to work and yet they're still getting paid, I'd say you probably have a measurement problem first and foremost, right? And then you definitely have an anonymity problem where how does that even happen? Well, yeah, because that guy had a manager. Somebody was signing the checks. He was in somebody's budget. Just disappeared.

Maybe they just checked in via text.

Man, clearly I'm smelling good. And you asked that question like, have you ever done that? I don't know that I could even do that. As much fun as that sounds, like, hey, I can collect $200,000 a year and live anywhere I want and not have any responsibility. That sounds amazing. But I think after a while it's, you know, like— and I see this too with people who retire too early, they lose that sense of purpose and they're like, well, I don't know what my life means anymore. And I gotta go find something else to do.

When a lot of them end up passing away sooner than they would. Yeah, because they don't have that purpose. You hear about people retiring and then 6 months later, a year later, they're gone. It's like, wow, right?

Like, were they really that unhealthy? Like, you know, they, they worked until they died? No, it was the other way around. They died because they didn't work. It's kind of interesting how that, that paradigm shifts a little bit.

Yeah, you know, one of the things I think that is making this more prevalent right now is the remote aspect.

Yeah.

It's much easier remotely to quiet quit, to do just enough, I think, than it is if you're actually with other people. Yeah, because they're not, they're not observing what's going on and what you're doing. You don't have that interaction.

Yep.

And they— there's a bunch of sociologists that figured that out pretty quick too, right, as your behavior changes if you're being observed, right? I don't remember what they called it. It's not Stockholm syndrome, it's, um, Stockholm paradox, maybe, but it's this paradox of like the behavior of people when they're being observed changes.

Yes.

If they think it is right. And there's like a bias that we have inside of ourselves. And so if you're around other people, like those other people influence how you're acting, behaving, and if you need to look busy and do stuff like that. Whereas if you're working remote, you don't have that same level of peer pressure, right? Like this whole sociological element just goes away and now, and there's nothing to backfill that. Other than self-discipline, which, you know, as a human species, I'd say that we struggle with. Um, so it's really interesting to see how, like, as a society, how that shift is going to impact us long term.

Oh yeah, it's funny. When I took over as CEO in Texas, the guy I took over for, he was like spot on every day. 4:30, he'd leave regardless. Yeah, people would wait 'til he left, and then right after his car drove out, they'd take off. So when I took over for him, right, it was the same thing. They would wait for me to leave.

And then you just never left.

And yeah, you know me, I don't leave, right? And then I wouldn't leave. And so people would just stick around and it'd be like 5, 5:15, and finally they start to trickle out. But you would have those people that the moment you left, they would start packing up and leaving too. They're like, oh, they know it's for that observation, right? It's— they, they want to be observed and they're like, oh, I'm dedicated. Once the boss leaves, I can go.

Right. Yeah, so it's interesting as you look at that. Well, and then you've got the whole mouse jiggler app thing.

Oh, geez. Yeah.

Right? Which is another issue. And I think in measurement as a whole thing here too, where you're paying attention to, is somebody on Teams or whatever, do they show that they're available or are they away and idle?

Right.

Right? And so because people, they step away from their desk, they go get their coffee, they go crap on the company time, whatever. But the idea is that you've got this little jiggler app that moves your mouse and it keeps you at your keyboard. Shoot, I've even seen them where they were like, oh, you've got to have your webcam on so we can see you at your desk.

Oh yeah, no.

I'm like, okay, like, we have jumped the shark on this whole thing. If you're looking at somebody's team status or at their webcam or whatever, like, you've missed the point.

Well, and if I have to look at that to determine whether you're a good employee, you're— I'm one, I'm a terrible manager.

Right.

I'm a terrible boss.

Either that or you really are a terrible employee and like that shouldn't be, you know.

And you shouldn't be working there anyway.

Right. It's one of those two things. So for people who are dealing with, or you're seeing people quiet quit or like how do you overcome it? You know, we talk a little bit about employee engagement and those three things. And I honestly think eliminating those three is a great way to overcome it. You know, 'cause employees who are engaged are not gonna quiet quit.

No.

They're going to outright quit.

Yes.

And they're going to have courage. And because that's another whole thing here is that it's a coward move. But the way that I know that I would come at it is, you know, I'm hearing, well, you just need to pay them more. And I'm like, well, why not just hold them to a higher performance standard? You know, like, have you been really clear about what's expected from the job? Do they have like a top 3, like these are the 3 things I need to make sure I do at all times? Or is it just kind of unclear and like, well, if we get to it, we get to it. The reason they're able to quiet quit is because the standard's so low.

Yeah, there's— and if they do have performance metrics, they're either not hitting them or they're just steady across the board, right?

And they're not growing.

No, they're not growing at all. And that's a big deal too because most people want growth, right?

Well, that's something as a manager, if you're seeing that and not addressing it— because I actually think this, this quiet quitting is not a symptom I'll give you— it's some of the employee, but I will say it's mostly on the managers, right? It's because they haven't been very clear about that. They're not seeing the growth and they're not having the hard conversations they need to, to either inspire that growth or inspire the individual to find something elsewhere, right? Because that's really what it is, is you wouldn't be able to quiet quit if you had a really proactive manager. There just wouldn't be a way to do it.

No, because they'd be all over you to make sure that we're maximizing our time.

Yeah. And not micromanaging, like in a full-on accountability. Like, let's talk about, you know, like they know you and they know your job. They know it's, you know, what's stressing you out. Like you wouldn't be able to hide behind just enough.

Yeah.

And they would care about you to the point that like you would feel guilty letting them down. Right. Or you would feel guilty that you're milking it and you'd leave, you know, because you're like, I'm totally taking advantage of this person. I need to just go. Right.

You know, I can already hear there's gonna be people that are gonna try and be very counter to this opinion.

It's possible.

They'll just sit there and say, "Well, if they're getting their job done, why does it matter?" And that's true, right?

Then they haven't really quite quit, have they? No. Right? If just enough is good enough, then what difference does it make, right?

Maybe your organization's standards aren't high enough.

And that's just it, right? If you have good performance and you're growing and you're pushing that and people are quiet quitting, it's very different than, oh no, we're totally happy with status quo and nothing ever changes. Because then your people have been quiet quitting for years. Oh yeah. And this is why it's not a new problem. So it really kind of does come down to your company culture and how you want to handle those things. But fun times. So setting performance standards, if you feel like people are quiet quitting, go through those signs of employee misery and make sure that everybody does have a way to measure their job. They've got a way to measure their relevance. They know that they're relevant and that they're not anonymous. You need to have those regular one-on-one cadences and find out what's important to them and what's going on in their life outside of the office walls.

Yeah, well, engage with them.

Yeah.

And it's not just a one-on-one once a week or once every other week and I'm done talking to this person. Like, you need to engage with your employees regularly to make sure that, you know, they are fulfilled and they are satisfied.

Yeah. And how's it going today? Right? Because on Monday it might be one thing and then Thursday it's something totally different. So I think it's interesting too, and maybe this is why we're seeing a little bit more of the quiet quitting, like why this has got a noun now associated with it, was the impact of the Great Resignation. Either you saw this whole shift of employee power shift away from the employer back to the employee. Mm-hmm. Right? And that is a pendulum. It's going to come back around. You're seeing all these layoffs happen in the tech space, so it's shifting already. But I wonder if people aren't willing to hold performance standards or hold higher standards or have those hard conversations because they're too worried about people quitting. And it's taking too long to get new people on board. Um, so I'm curious, like, I think there is probably a subtle impact there of the Great Resignation, but I also know, like, as a manager, I'm like, yeah, well, you just gotta own it, and like, you can't use it as an excuse, like, get better.

Yeah, I, I look at it a different way too when you relate it to the Great Resignation, because they said that 26% of the people that left a company, yeah, regret leaving.

So I—

so the quiet quitting is a way of them Right.

Like, I regret what I did, and so now I'm going to quiet quit because I don't want to look like a job hopper.

Right.

You know, and that's a real prevalent thing for these people too, is, well, I— how does— what's my appearance look like, and is it going to affect my ability to get another job in the future? Um, and that's interesting because I think I probably early last year, like, when I saw the Great Resignation coming around and I saw all the people making the jump I think I haven't coined it. I'm like, just wait, there's going to be a second wave of this and we're going to call it the great regret. Yeah, right. And here we are. Right. And so it's kind of fun. It's like, yep, there we go. I coined that term. Not that I'll ever get credit for that, but it's cool.

Well, you had all these companies that were getting this infusion of cash.

Oh, yeah. And now we can just hire all this talent. Yeah.

And so people are jumping from place to place and now it's starting to reset itself. That cash is drying up. It's not as available as it was. So you're getting the layoffs and now people are even scared because they see the layoffs. Okay, why? Maybe I can't jump somewhere else, right? So I'm—

so now I'm just gonna quiet quit and ride it out until, until I can— until I feel more stable.

Yeah, right.

You go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? And it's, it's all about the, you know, food, water, safety, you know, and they, they don't feel safe in that environment, right?

So it's interesting.

It is. We're gonna keep an eye on this one, but Thanks for joining us today. As always, go send any questions, comments over to podcast@rtafleet.com. Look forward to seeing you guys out at the Fleet Success Summit in Las Vegas. That's March 21st, 22nd. And we've got some good speakers already that we're getting really close to lining up. I know Mike Pitcher's coming, Sam Bradford's coming back.

We've got two more that we're not ready to announce yet, but we've confirmed one of the two. Which I'm really excited about because I know him personally.

Yeah, and well, and I've heard great things about this guy as well, so I'm excited to announce him. And we're, you know, we're recruiting speakers right now for that event. That lineup is just going to get even stronger. And Sam and Mike were two of our best speakers at our last event. Oh, and so like, that's the—

great.

Yes, that's the bar we're trying to clear is, all right, we need Sam and Mike to be our worst speakers at this now.

And it was the first time I had heard Mike speak, and he was fantastic. You know, you have that— he's from Louisiana, so you got like all these great— you never know— crazy things that come Well, but Sam, now I've heard speak 2 or 3 times and I just tell you every time, it's just the guy's emotion.

Genuine.

And how— yes, and how genuine he is. He just delivers.

It's good. All right, well, uh, until next time, we'll see you later.

See ya.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Fleet Success Show. If you like the show, we'd appreciate your 5-star review. Be sure to subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and come hang out with us on social media. At Fleet Success. See you next time.