It’s the latest buzzword in business: quiet cracking. This is a spin on quiet quitting, which was a main theme several years ago, when people took the lazy hazy attitudes from lockdowns into the office culture. They showed up to do what they were doing before, which was not that much.
Quiet cracking is something else. It is deep frustration and anger that comes from piles of work that never get done, meetings that waste everyone’s time, colleagues who are annoying, bosses who are incompetent but preen around anyway, long hours, frustrating commutes, and paperwork that never ends.
Is it a real thing? Of course it is. It is the next step in the trajectory back to normal life, and a post-traumatic stress disorder that comes from remembering why the business closures were a relief for millions of people. They never liked the office, and now they cannot avoid it. Frustrations are boiling over in many companies today.
Keep in mind that all these buzzwords and all this analysis of business culture pertains mostly to what’s called the “professional” or “white collar” workforce that mostly pokes around on screens all day. It has almost nothing to do with people in service industries in which there is bread to bake and serve, roofs to repair, drains to unclog, and houses to build.
These are what were once called first-world problems, the anxieties that come with an overblown and underworked professional sector that is still far from being wrung out of its excesses. There are simply far too many fancy people in the business sector these days, people whose jobs were obtained not by skill but by resume. They are entitled and know not genuine toil.
Try to make someone who doesn’t have a work ethic work hard, and what happens? They crack. In the coming years, these same people might discover that cracking is better than being unemployed, which is certainly the next step on the trajectory. If anything resembling a recession is on its way, the white collar workforce is going to experience another round of purges.
Still, all these raise genuine questions. If people hate their jobs so much, why won’t they quit?
The main reason is, of course, money. There are bills to pay, student debt to service, mortgages and car debts to manage, and more besides. With all money coming and going being automated, people feel as if they have to keep showing up to run the system. This is correct, but it can infuse workers with a sense of tedium to the point of nihilism.
Why not change jobs? The application process is absurd, often replete with fake offerings and ghosted applications. The vetting and onboarding process for a new job is increasingly difficult, with deep investigations and endless piles of papers to sign.
Sometimes a geographic move is necessary, and that requires coordination with a partner and the selling of a home. Buying a new home in a new town is itself a hugely difficult task, especially if you are trading a low-interest loan for a high-interest loan. That can necessitate a dramatic downsizing in square footage.
Beside that, there are myriad “services” that businesses provide that also require migrations, such as health benefits, health savings accounts, and retirement packages. It is just easier to maintain current employment than go through all that. The new location might not have schools and child care that are suitable and might lack a community of friends.
As a result, people stay but still feel trapped.
Behind all of this is a growing cultural awareness of a point that has evaded generations. Following the upheaval of the COVID years, it is more obvious than ever that your workplace is not your family, not really a genuine community, and not really a source of meaning. The purpose is to make money, and that is just not a very substantive or sustaining purpose. It is just material gain and nothing more.
Employees often treat their workplaces as their home. They make it their friend circle. They think that becoming friends with the right people can provide job protection and satisfaction. They partake in workplace drama and pursue romantic relationships, which these days is almost always a disaster. They demand ever more perks.
Then the day comes when their job is terminated. Then a shock awaits. Their friends never call. They are abandoned entirely by everyone with whom they were once close friends. They are quickly and brutally forgotten by the entire institution, which does not fall apart (as they always fantasize) but rather clicks along rather well. They are entirely alone. Old colleagues stop following them on social media.
The realization sets in. Absolutely everyone in the workplace is there for one reason and one reason only: to get a paycheck. Everything else takes second place to that. All the people you thought were friends and allies are nothing but mercenaries without a care for you at all.
At some point in your career, you discover this and also discover the wisdom of the old ways. Do not mix in workplace drama or politics. Do not make this place your home. Do not depend on work colleagues for your social circle. Never think a job is permanent. And never believe that you are indispensable, because you are not.
I suspect that a factor in quiet quitting and cracking is the gradual realization that the workplace is not and cannot be the cushy path to a satisfying life that people want it to be. The frustration and anger stems from this mismatch of expectations and reality.
All that said, there are ways to make jobs less psychologically tormenting. The human resources offices need to be eliminated entirely and their functions transferred to online platforms. The office meetings need to end entirely: They are 99 percent a waste of time. The bad eggs in the office need to be fired forthwith. And every manager must have some degree of competence in the fields and sectors he is managing.
Above all else, we need dramatic reform in benefits. No longer should the corporation be responsible for health care, retirement savings, and unemployment insurance. This whole thing needs to stop. This will dramatically lower business costs and make it possible for the United States to compete internationally in ways it cannot right now. I don’t believe for an instant that Congress is brave enough to do any of this with legal changes, but there is nothing wrong with dreaming.
In the meantime, the quitters and crackers need to stop blaming their benefactors, shape up and shut up, and start producing or else get another job. Here is my firm rule: So long as you work there, you owe it to your employer to do a good job and otherwise stop complaining.
