I've thought this was stupid from the start.

Also, for the most part, it does not really apply to highly-paid workers. Is a worker at Google getting paid $350,000 per year, a brain surgeon paid $1,000,000 per year going to "quiet quit?" No. Not only that but these workers get insane benefits - platinum level health insurance, ping ping tables at work, free lunches and dinners, etc.

"Quiet quitting" is what low paid workers are doing. Inflation going up 20% - why aren't businesses paying workers 30% more (have to take out taxes). Business owner/manager - can't afford it? How is that my problem? You are the owner or manager, figure it out. That's YOUR job, that is what YOU are getting paid to do. Raise prices to your customers to give me a 30% raise. You can't, you say? All of your vendors are raising their prices, and you pay them higher rates - why not your employees? If you don't pay, workers should work 30% less. It is capitalism, after all. You pay for what you get. An employee has a 30% pay decrease because of inflation? Guess what, you get a 30% work decrease. It's only cold business logic.

On top of that, these lower paid workers in lower paid industries get shit benefits. The lowest level where they have to pay $12,000 deductibles for health care, for example. And even then, some scumball business owners will only schedule workers 30 hours per week (or whatever it is) for part time work so they don't have to pay benefits at all to those. And the employee is required to get a second job to get 40 hours per week, resulting in more travel time, no health care, etc.

Most workers never "quiet quit", it's always the management's fault. Either for being dicks, or for being incompetent. Management and owners are the "quiet quitters", quitting on their workforce.

And I have always been a proponent of "minimum wage, minimum effort" like for fast food workers, for example. As a counter example, if you go to a high-end fine dining restuarant where the servers are making $110,000 per year with tips, you will get "maximum wage, maximum effort." Again, this is just business logic. Workers are their own business, why should they maximize their income and minimize work to fit what they are paid? They are correct in their actions.

Now, whenever I write something like this, some ignorant person will write, "Yeah, but if you work hard, you will rise in the organization, I'm glad people don't work hard, less competition for me" and sentiments along those lines. There are two wrong assumptions with this, and if you haven't figured them out, then maybe you don't have very business acumen and should not be in management or ownership. They are:

1) you probably have an excellent intelligence, maybe you are going to Stanford or Harvard or MIT - yes, the world is TRULY your oyster, you can effectively do anything with your life. For sure. But you just take this for granted. There are people who didn't graduate from high school, those who were not blessed with the same DNA as you. Twin studies have shown that 50-80% of intelligence is inherited. So don't flaunt your accident of birth that gave you a high IQ. But there's no way someone with lower intelligence, like 90 to your 135, can do what you do. Not possible. Two of my relatives are great teachers, and can't teach some students at all what you can learn in 5 minutes. For example, they told me that some of their students just cannot learn how to add two 2 digit numbers together, no matter how much time they spend with them.

2) It is impossible for every worker that works hard to advance, even if they were all 100% equal. If every single person in a Walmart store, for example worked equally hard in order to become a store manager making $175,000 per year (https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/09/business/walmart-store-manage...), how would all 200 or 300 become the store manager for that store??? You say there are other stores they can be promoted to, well, what if every single store had every single worker working equally hard??? It's just impossible. Walmart has 10,500 stores worldwide, and 2.3 million workers worldwide (https://corporate.walmart.com/askwalmart/how-many-people-wor...) if only 25% of employees worked super hard, that means that there are 575,000 employees worthy of being a store manager. That is a .018 chance of getting to be a store manager, even only taking the most hardest workers. If you look at ALL Walmart workers, that is a .00000043 chance of being a store manager.

Sure, maybe YOU can, because you go to Stanford or Harvard and get a degree in business or operations management or supply chain management. But only because you are privileged to be born with the right genetic code, into the right family.

As an example, here's the executive management team for Walmart (keep in mind Walmart is based in Arkansas). You will see there are not too many high school dropouts:

.

Doug McMillon

President and CEO

BA - business administration - University of Arkansas

MA - business administration - University of Tulsa.

.

Rachel Brand

EVP Global Governance, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary

BA - University of Minnesota

J.D. - Harvard Law School.

.

John Furner

President and CEO, Walmart U.S

BS marketing management - University of Arkansas.

.

Kelvin L. Buncum

Executive Vice President, Neighborhood Markets, Walmart U.S.

North Carolina - B.S. Electrical Engineering

MBA - Harvard Business School.

.

William White

SVP Chief Marketing Officer

BA Business - Duke University

.

Emma Waddell

SVP Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer

BA Rutgers, MBA - University of South Carolina

.

JP Suarez

EVP, Chief Administration Officer

BA Tufts, JD University of Pennsylvania

.

And so on.