One employee has shared an essay with Business Insider, detailing how he has taken this unconventional approach to avoiding the office while still meeting work obligations. The employee slipped into “quiet vacationing”-spending a month overseas using just one week of paid time off-through a mix of stealth and strategy in company policies.
Feeling as though they were in a “golden cage,” due to the steady paycheck and flexible schedule-frustrating policies were hard to leave-the employee started “quiet quitting.” They admitted that a normal day of work for them is only one to three hours, depending on meetings scheduled for the day.
“No one at the company has ever raised suspicion that I’m not doing enough work,” the employee said, adding that they typically receive good appraisals.
This worker’s team is working for a tech company in San Francisco, and they manage a database, allowing for ample downtime. It was confessed that doing personal activities during work hours was very common; for instance, doing chores, playing video games, or simply hanging out with buddies. Gradually, this trend expanded into taking vacations without officially logging in to the PTO.
He went from taking workdays off to travel to and from the airport to eventually taking full days off-like spa days-with no record of leave. Their crowning achievement of “quiet quitting” involved taking a month off to go to Italy while burning just one week of PTO. He kept up the appearance of working by reading and responding to emails and messages, faking backgrounds during online meetings, and chiming in on the company’s messaging platform.
To further create the impression that they were busy, they would also make leading questions during calls, log on to messaging platforms, flag the messages, and respond with emojis to show that they were keeping up. “I went to a museum once, and every half an hour or so, I opened my phone to check messages,” said the employee, who claimed to have rarely encountered anything pressing.
The case epitomises struggles and chances that characterise the work environment today-especially about companies that try to navigate the perils of remote work policies. Read the full story at Business Insider, straight from the essay.
