The fictitious party girl Annie Batungbakal from the ’70s song was a disengaged employee before Tiktok made quiet quitting popular
If we were back in the 1990s, the quiet quitter would be the one clearing his desk half an hour before it was time to call it a day. The quiet quitter would be the one you could not reach on the weekend or expect to be at work on Christmas Day, even if work on Christmas Day meant the invention of a pill that could address debilitating demotivation or the cure for cancer. The quiet quitter would be the one who would not volunteer any information or an idea if it meant more work for the team, including him or her. The quiet quitter will try to have as little interaction as possible with bosses and co-workers that is beyond the call of duty.
Over dinner recently, I was talking to a new friend—let’s call him X—who seems to have figured it out. “I’ve been there before, so I think I’m done going above and beyond what I’m paid to do. I mean it’s just a job,” he said. It’s true what he said. The only problem is he is only 27 years old—a baby already tired enough to consider semi-retirement!
Quiet quitting, of course, is a privilege. Or it’s for those who can’t quit so they just coast along, just trying to survive eight hours of drudgery and I say drudgery because when you quiet-quit, it means you cannot be bothered with trying to find joy in what you do. It’s just a job, remember? It’s just a job even if it demands more than half of your waking hours five or six days a week.
Back in the late 1970s, there was a song by the band Hotdog. It was called “Annie Batungbakal,” which was also the main theme for a movie of the same title starring now national artist for film Nora Aunor. The story, as far as the song goes, is of Annie Batungbakal, a workaday girl who only comes alive after work in a nightclub. The lyrics goes, “Sa umaga, dispatsadora / sa gabi, siya’y bonggang-bongga / Pagsapit ng dilim, nasa Coco Banana / Annie Batungbakal, sa disco, isnabera / Sa disco, siya ang reyna (Dispatcher by day / fabulous at night / After dark, she’s at Coco Banana / Annie Batungbakal, at the disco she’s beyond reach / At the disco, she’s the queen).”
The fictitious Annie Batungbakal, who only worked so she could have money to spend at the club, was a quiet quitter before the term was coined in 2009, before the term made it to mainstream consciousness during the pandemic when, with enough time on their hands, disgruntled employees, office whiners, and the malcontents found a loudspeaker, a face, and a viral following on TikTok.
In defense of the quiet quitters, the workplace of late has not been exactly engaging. According to Washington DC-based analytics and advisory company Gallup Inc., there has been a significant decline in “feeling cared about and having opportunities to develop—primarily from their manager”—among employees 35 years old and younger in the US.
We often miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Thomas A. Edison
In the Philippines, as elsewhere in the world, companies that do not acknowledge the participation of their employees in the achievement of the organization’s larger purpose suffer the same thing.
Ah life sucks, and life is cruel, and life is hard, what more if you have to work? But I take comfort in the fact that it’s the same for everybody, for you, for me, for the Zobels, or for King Charles III. No one is spared from the hardship and heartache of life. Whether you are the company owner or the company janitor, whether you are an entrepreneur or a new hire, whether you are earning six figures or the minimum wage, work always has these challenges that make you wonder, “Why am I doing this?”
Not saying you should just put up with it. Not saying you should never jump ship, especially a sinking one. Not saying you shouldn’t worry about a boss who doesn’t care if you lived or died. But try not to be such a snowflake. Do not withdraw from a battle until you choose not to fight it anymore and leave the battlefield. It’s not fair to disengage while pretending you are still there to be relied on to make things happen.
Back to my conversation with X, he asked me, “Don’t you think it’s just right? If we’re paid only ₱10,000, why should we give them more than ₱10,000?” So I told him, “If you paid me ₱10,000, but I worked as though you were paying me ₱1 million, then I’m worth ₱1 million.”
But the point is in our life story, we each are the star. What kind of a story is it when its protagonist does not have odds against which to accomplish something good? Each of us, at least in our heads, is born to greatness, to make a difference, to change the world, to at least make it better than when we found it.
The quiet quitter is Thomas Alva Edison who would never invent a lightbulb because it is not worth failing 1,000 times to get one bulb to light up. The quiet quitter is Stephen Hawking who would not have revolutionized astrophysics because his Lou Gehrig’s disease would have been too much of a challenge. The quiet quitter is John Severn, who would not have seen the point of recording John Keats’ dying days to help define the legacy of the latter to the world. The quiet quitter is the soldier who would have lost his nerve at first sight of a bomb falling from the sky.
To live a full life, you must find joy in your work, and there is joy in work if you give it a chance, if it’s in line with the longings of your soul, if it helps you find your higher purpose. You must find joy in your work, especially if it’s something you have to do anyway five times a week, eight hours a day.
Besides, I don’t want my epitaph to read, “Here lies a man who was only alive after work and on the weekends.”