“Quiet Quitting”: GOP’s Pro-Business Scare

Ever notice how the latest big thing is really just another old thing with a different name? Case in point: “quiet quitting.”

As the summer of 2022 was ending and Labor Day was looming ahead, different media began seriously discussing this “new” working trend. TikTok, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times were all abuzz over “quiet quitting.” That is, the zeitgeist at large suddenly became fascinated with this passive-aggressive behavior of showing up for work but not really working. Workers who were said to be quietly quitting weren’t performing in the way The Man and his godless work ethic had initially intended. OMG!

From the way everyone was talking, you’d think they’d invented the robo-assembly line for the new age. All they did, though, was simply call IT by another name. As though renaming something would actually make it a new thing. As though changing shell-shock into post-traumatic stress disorder would make this anxiety disorder more real — and give it more credibility and reliability. Or calling ocean perch by the hipper name of “orange roughy” would actually make more people eat this boring fish.(Oh wait, maybe it did!).

As if dropping out of the rat race would keep you from becoming a bona fide rat? As Lily Tomlin would say, no matter if you win or lose the rat race, you’re still a rat. So if you’re an employee who keeps showing up for work, you’re still employed. With or without that die-hard commitment or enthusiasm, you’ll still have a job.

So if you’ve ever toiled in the workplace before, you already know “quiet quitting” is not a new thing because you’ve seen it before. Maybe you’ve even experienced it before. Oh, yeah. This so-called new phenom sweeping the nation has been around for years. Only it was known by other names. You know, like “slacking off.” Punching in when you’ve already punched out. Lying low and pretending to look busy. “Misplacing” or “misfiling” the work assignment you’re supposed to do so you won’t have to do it or get into trouble for not doing it.

Or maybe you’ve just lowered your working expectations so much that you’ve turned into a mellow zombie on the job.

Of course all this talk of “non-working” in the workplace garnered a lot of reactions that ranged from shocked surprise to incredulous disbelief. No demographic group, however, has reacted with as many angry huffs and indignant puffs as the Republicans. In fact, watching GOP pundits and strategists emote on TV about it was like eavesdropping on theater-in-the-round auditions for “Mourning Becomes Electra.” Oh, the unexpected drama of it all!

Former Republican adviser and CNN pundit Scott Jennings almost had an on-air conniption one night as he bemoaned how this current American workforce had deliberately lost its ability to hustle and how he remembered bygone days when workers in the workplace had to hustle! Oh, the horror!

What no one ever brought up, either on air or in print, was the very real possibility that these workers were only doing what their bosses had told them to do. Forget about “quiet quitting.” Maybe they were merely following orders from on high so they could keep their jobs. Maybe their bosses didn’t want them to sell a lot of goods and services now.

In other words, it’s possible that a lot of big business owners, who are nearly always Republicans, instructed their workers NOT to overextend themselves by helping customers buy goods and services. That way sales would remain low and continue to decline. Why? In a word: Greed… Although at first glance, it doesn’t seem like greed.

Maybe at this stage in the continuing recovery from COVID and other rising costs(thanks in large part to the war in Ukraine) a lot of big businesses don’t want to make a lot of money now. Profits would mean more money earned, and that would interfere with current GOP propaganda about America’s “dying economy.”

You see, healthy profits would contradict the scary folklore Republicans keep promoting to the masses. Yes, I’m saying the GOP machine actually wants our economy to take a serious nosedive. That way, they can keep blaming the Democrats for higher gas and grocery prices. That way, the media can continue to report about crazy high inflation with no end in sight. And Americans getting ready to vote can emotionally associate the bad economic news with their fears of going broke.

That way, Republicans can continue to convince voters to elect Republicans in the upcoming midterm election. Never mind that Republicans continue to offer no solutions whatsoever to stop inflation or head off the possibility of a recession. Even if a GOP majority in Congress could legislate some economic remedies to “save” our economy, it would take time — probably years — for their “solutions” to take hold and remedy anything.

And never mind that, during the previous Republican Administration that Trump mismanaged, Republican legislators actually gave massive tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy. Over 60 percent of U.S. companies already pay no federal income taxes at all. But that didn’t stop The GOP from gifting affluent corporations with even more tax cuts — to the tune of 2 trillion dollars. You don’t need a PhD in economics to know that such biased favoritism is going to seriously damage our economy. And yet, Republican-owned Media keeps ranting about how much student loan forgiveness will cost American taxpayers.

Meanwhile, the current GOP scam continues to scare consumers about money. They want Americans so frightened about the economy that they’ll irrationally blame Biden and the Democrats for inflation. And then, they’ll oust Democrats from office and vote for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.

What’s really terrifying here is that their scam is working. Many voters have forgotten that the Republican political party has traditionally been for Big Money and Big Business, not for the little guys. Name anything that would benefit the American workers and help consumers, and the GOP machine will be against it.

Whatever the lower and middle classes want or need or like, the Upper Crust with the Big Money and Big Business will usually be against it. Government regulations to ensure safe and non-toxic workplaces, environmental protection laws, living wages, fair hiring practices, social security, MEDICARE, —these are things Big Business and Billionaires have continuously fought against and rejected. And Republicans have sided with Big Money, not with the little guys. So it wouldn’t surprise me at all that Big Business and The Republican Party have formed an alliance to deliberately drive the economy into the ground by not selling or supplying the goods and services Americans want and need— while at the same time, astronomically inflating the prices of other available items.

That might sound far-fetched to you, dear readers, but this seasoned consumer writing this op-ed has 2 stories to tell that could only make sense if the 2 big box stores in question didn’t want me to buy anything.

Last week I went to 2 different stores that were low on customer traffic but crowded with employees trying so desperately to look busy that they completely ignored me(and my accompanying BFF).

Gone are the days when I could have flexed my consumer muscle and gone elsewhere. In my case, I wanted a small flat screen TV. But no more Radio Shacks or Circuit City stores were around anymore because the electronics giants have driven them out of business. My only shopping options were Target, Wal-Mart, or the supergiant we’ll call Good Buy. Because Target and Wal-Mart didn’t carry the brand or size I’d wanted, I could only go to Good Buy.

But Good Buy might as well have told me Good Bye at the front door. Every employee I encountered there was either talking to other employees or gluing their eyes to P.C.’s. When I finally flagged down one of the ubiquitous blue shirts for help, I asked him about one of the built-in features a model had. He gave a quick lo-info response. Then when I turned to BFF, he said he’d let us talk about it. Then he took off, never to be seen again.

There was no way to tell if he’d gone on break or he’d left because his shift was over, or if he really, really had to go to the bathroom. He was just gone. We never did find him, either. So it took more time to get info about the TV we’d wanted and to figure out which line we were supposed to get into for check-out than it should have taken.

As luck would have it, an unexpected defect in the TV we’d purchased meant we had to return it the next day. Because this guy at the Returns counter seemed helpful we dismissed our earlier unhelpful experience as a fluke. But was that “non-working” or “quiet quitting” behavior we’d experienced the day before really just a fluke? No, it wasn’t.

Oh, we did get another TV. But not before we had to wander around like bees high on neonicotinoids in order to locate another blue shirt who could get us the TV size we’d wanted, then take our money.

That’s what really got me. It wasn’t that no one wanted to provide basic customer service. It was that they didn’t want the store to make a sale — or make money. Almost as if they didn’t even want me to buy anything!

Same thing happened when I later went to a super-hardware store I’ll call “Home ETC.”

Earlier that week I tried to order some window treatments from Home ETC’s online shopping site but kept running into blah colors. Only white, off-white, gray, beige, and greige were available. So I phoned the Bloomington store to ask about their limited color selection. After getting trapped in their voice mail jail with a virtual service rep, I finally escaped and got connected to a real person. I talked to a friendly manager I’ll call “Ryan.”

He checked out Home ETC’s website and reassured me they carried all kinds of different colors from a vast assortment of manufacturers. When I explained I couldn’t find that much of a variety in colors, he insisted the store DID CARRY a wide variety of colors. Then he invited me to come to the store and they’d be happy to help me! Yes, he actually encouraged me to come in anytime and they’d help me find what I was looking for, no problem!

More importantly, he gave no conditions on which day or time I could come, or that I had to make an appointment in advance in order to get customer service. It was just come on down to Home ETC and we’ll sell you the venetian blinds of your dreams.

So I did. Like a gullible idiot, I believed him. I made the mistake of believing that somebody in that store would actually want to sell me something when, in reality, no one did.

After wandering around the cavernous abyss that was Home ETC, BFF and I did find the aisle marked “Window Blinds.” But no one was around to help except a female employee sitting at a rounded countertop desk who was visiting with a couple seated across from her in the flooring department. No one else was around.

Eventually BFF and I wandered over to Kitchen Cabinets and asked another woman about finding help with window blinds. She made a phone call, then directed us to “go over there and she’ll help you.’’

“The lady over there in flooring?” I asked. She nodded yes.

So BFF and I trudged over there and sat down at the other side of this curved countertop desk. Although her back was angled away from us, her quick, furtive glances our way did indicate she was aware of our presence — especially since that other woman in kitchen cabinets had just phoned her. So she knew we were there, yet continued to ignore us.

Remember the old days when customer service meant acknowledging anyone who came within a 10 foot radius of any sales associate? Shoppers would automatically hear, “I’m still helping these customers. Be with you in a minute.” Or even a friendly, “We’re busy today, but I’ll get someone over to help you.” But Home ETC wasn’t that busy. Neither was the lady at the flooring department,

Apparently such courtesy is soooo 20th Century now.

As if to punctuate her disinterest, and make sure we knew about it, this flooring lady continued chatting with the couple seated across from her. I could actually hear parts of their conversation. They weren’t talking about flooring. They were just visiting. Sometimes they were just looking at each other, sometimes they were just staring into space. (Sigh) On our end of the counter, though, we continued to patiently and quietly wait.

Then out of nowhere, this old guy pushing an orange shopping cart showed up to ask what we needed. After I answered “Window Treatments, venetian blinds,” he said he couldn’t help unless we’d wanted something off the shelves. But he said he’d check it out. So he walked over to the flooring lady and said something to her, then returned with some old news.

“She’s the one, she’s the one you’d need to see. She’s the master. But you’ll have to wait your turn.”

“That’s what we’re doing,” I said.

“You can wait, but it’ll be a while,” he continued. “Or you can call her.” He reached over to a nearby stand on the counter that held little white cards of employee names and phone numbers. “You can call her from home anytime,” he announced.

So after I’d already phoned ahead and was explicitly told to come to this store in person and after I actually showed up, he told me I could leave and phone this flooring lady from home. Why?

It’s not that I was failing to appreciate any little crumb of kindness from these workers. I do applaud any friendliness anyone extends my way. And, as a worker bee myself, I’m definitely pro-worker.

When it comes to selling me anything and taking my money, however, these workers weren’t making any real effort for an economic recovery at a time when activating our consumer-driven economy would help them and their bosses. Why? The media is blaming “quiet quitting.” I’m blaming GOP strategy and propaganda that’s determined to scare voters into voting for Republicans. But maybe we’re both wrong.

After all, I did go to both stores in non-political clothes. So did BFF. Neither one of us was wearing a MAGA hat or sweatshirt. But at both stores we were both wearing face masks. No one else was, except another lone Home ETC employee who was clearing the aisles and moving some merchandise around. And a handful of blue shirts at Good Buy. Maybe if we’d been more Trumpian, things would have been different…But when did shopping at stores for anything become so politically tainted?