Recently, there has been a lot of conversations about "quiet quitting," so we asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to share the moments that made them quiet quit their jobs. Here are the responses that prove no job is worth sacrificing your own mental health:
1. "My (not yet able to be vaccinated) four-year-old had COVID during the Omicron wave last January. After staying home with him and his younger sister during their mandatory quarantine from daycare, I returned to work and my boss asked me, 'What are you going to do to make sure this never happens again? Your work-family balance makes my job harder, and I don’t want to get involved in your marriage, but does your husband help with childcare?' I quiet quit that day, and reported the incident to HR during our annual survey this year."
2. "I was showing my boss a few different reports and spreadsheets. He told me that for next month, he wanted to see a spreadsheet with a number of different things, and the request didn't make much sense. So, I asked him multiple times, in different ways, what he was asking for to be sure that I was going to give him exactly what he wanted. He confirmed that was exactly what he wanted. At the next monthly meeting, I showed him the spreadsheet that he wanted. He got angry, and ranted about *how much work* this spreadsheet must have taken, and said, 'Why did you do it this way?'"
"I spent the next eight months or so watching Netflix and playing Final Fantasy online while doing the utter bare minimum. I got a big raise for 'putting in so much hard work' that year."
3. "I loved my job for the first two years. It was a healthy environment, they respected us, the money was not that great, but fine, and we had creative freedom that worked and made the company better. Then, incompetent people took over and everything changed. I'm a graphic designer and we noticed our amazing and innovative ideas were suddenly mocked and rejected and someone who never opened PSD in their life started deciding on packaging design for important products (ego stuff). It looked awful. Sales dropped and they started blaming us for their own design choices."
"They can't fire us (it would cost them too much), so I'm just doing as I'm told, saving my creative ideas for freelance. I'm just waiting for a proper job that would replace it and I'm gone."
4. "I was on a conference call with a vice president, my boss, and a bunch of other colleagues discussing an important issue we needed to solve. The VP wasn’t an expert on the matter, but he shared an idea he had to solve it. He then called on me, an actual expert on the matter, and asked what we should do. I shared how I thought was the best way to address it. He sighed, then practically shouted at me, 'You were supposed to say what I just said! Now, try again! How should we address the issue?!' I had to repeat back to him what he had previously said, like a child being scolded by their parent. From then on, I did nothing more than I had to. No more going 'above and beyond.'"
5. "When I had my baby. I came back to work and suddenly the 8 p.m. work calls on a Thursday night, or 7 a.m. emails on a Saturday, just weren't important to me anymore. I am salaried, but it's not great. I got no bonus last year, and I'm not paid overtime, ever. There's nowhere for me to advance unless my boss retires. I came to a point where I had to put my children and mental health over a job that doesn't appreciate me."
6. "I was given a huge project to manage with a (completely useless) coworker. I lost sleep over it, came in early, stayed late, and even worked my days off. She didn’t break a sweat. In the end, it was a success, but it dawned on me: We both got paid the same that month; I didn’t get extra credit or any benefit of any kind because my employer just expected me to pick up the slack. Never again. No extra effort from me now!"
7. "I was working in a call center for a major cell carrier and the constant walking on eggshells got to me. We were micromanaged for everything. I got pulled aside and told I that needed to provide a doctor's note because one day I'd used a total of nine minutes outside of my scheduled breaks to use the bathroom over the course of my 10-hour shift. I could've helped every customer I got, but if I didn't sell accessories, or insurance, or a new phone line, we'd get a management meeting. So, I stopped even trying. Eventually, the stress was so bad that I started daydreaming about dying in my sleep so I wouldn't have to go to work the next day, and that's when I actually quit."
8. "I'd worked with the same manager for eight years. She was extremely organized, capable, and always on top of things. But, things got rough during COVID with short staffing, product shortages, safety protocols, corporate micromanaging, etc. It was very stressful and life-consuming while I was at work. The thing that broke me was when she called me in tears on my day off when I was having a lovely day out with my family, and asked me to come in because there was no one else."
"I realized that if the situation had finally gotten to the strongest member of our staff, it was no longer reasonable to do it all. She quit shortly after. I stayed on, but I only do what I think I reasonably can, and try to not worry about the extras. I need to keep sane and healthy by taking care of myself too."
9. "I was cornered and reamed out in the elevator first thing on a Monday morning by the CEO of my company because he’d emailed me at 4:48 in the morning, on a Sunday, and I hadn’t responded. I had been KILLING myself on a project for him, coming in early, staying late, and skipping lunch. I was so stressed that I couldn’t eat and lost 13 pounds. After the incident in the elevator, it all stopped. I actually quit three weeks later."
10. "My brother had been killed overseas, and my boss docked my pay for attending my brother's funeral in another state. When I returned to work after the funeral, I was informed that the entire team and I were being changed to 'hourly employees.' So, I only worked exactly within my scheduled hours. When complaints came that, 'you can't complete your work in just a regular 8-hour day,' I replied that the boss didn't allow any overtime, and he was the one who changed the entire team to hourly to save money."
"I started arriving at exactly 8:00 a.m., departing at exactly 5:00 p.m., and began taking lunch breaks. I also chose to stop traveling for work since it couldn't be completed between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. (Not long afterwards, I chose to move elsewhere.)"
—Anonymous
11. "The hotel I worked at had almost the entire staff 'quiet quit' simultaneously. We didn’t even coordinate anything, we were just all sick of the low pay, awful hours, passive-aggressive bosses, openly aggressive customers, and blatant labor violations. It got to the point where we were openly applying for other jobs on the office computers. If they’d wanted a more dedicated workforce, they should've paid us a living wage and given us lunch breaks."
12. "My first job after college was soul-crushing. I was expected to be on call after hours, emails needed to be answered within two hours, I had to take PTO to go to an appointment or leave early, and I was constantly berated for messing up. I got let go and my time off made me realize just how horribly they'd treated me, and it was a huge wakeup call that my personal life and mental health should not suffer because of work."
"I've had a few jobs since then, and I only work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I answer non-urgent emails within two business days. I say no to extra projects if my workload is full. My work email is not downloaded on my phone. I still put out excellent work and get high praise from my leadership, but I have firm boundaries that prevent me from burning out or getting taken advantage of."
—Anonymous
13. "When I interviewed for my current job, my boss did everything in his power to convince ME to join his company. He went on and on about how I have just the right skills and how I know things he doesn't know (which is true, since he has a degree in a completely unrelated field). So, I was excited to start my new job and came up with a billion ideas before I even signed the contract. But, a month in, my boss flipped and berated me for being condescending (which I never was). I decided right then and there to keep my head down and never suggest any new ideas."
—Anonymous
14. "When my boss screamed at me and called me every name he could think of that wasn't 'bitch' for 45 minutes to an hour. Although inappropriate always, this was in response to an email asking to work from home while the Delta variant was ravaging my area. We were a small law office and my job could be done entirely from home. After going out for a smoke since he tired himself out from yelling in my face, he came back and told me to just go work from home. I was one of their best employees before then, but this disrespect was uncalled for and grossly sexist. So, for the next few months I 'worked from home' by applying to other jobs and drinking at my neighborhood pool."
—Anonymous
15. "The day one of my students came up to me and told me about the website that shows all of our university’s salaries. I have a higher degree than my male colleagues, as well as more professional experience than all of them put together. I make 46% less than they do. I went to the president and the provost three times, three years in a row, to ask for equitable pay and I finally got an insulting $1,200 raise. I was a single mom. I had to have a job. But I started quiet quitting when they said no the first time. Now, I do absolutely nothing extra. I travel as much as I can, and I take advantage of every grant opportunity to even it up a little."
—Anonymous
16. And finally, "They offered me a 2% raise the same year they made record profits, and all the executives got astronomical raises. I just matched their energy."
—Anonymous
Do you have any opinions on quiet quitting? Have you quiet quit your own job? Share it all in the comments!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length/clarity