I ‘Quiet Quit’ My Job

I’ve been surrounded by hard workers my entire life. I usually just swallow my burnout symptoms deep, deep down and carry on. My dad and my brother both work blue-collar jobs, and my mom spent my childhood working as a doctor in a children's hospital. I’ve worked my share of odd jobs – I bartended, I swept floors and mopped bathrooms, I worked security and edited papers for rich kids from the Upper East Side. In college, I was a Division I wrestler, and I’d get up before sunrise to lift weights and study all night.

That was my life until a few years ago, when I started my career as a journalist. Now, as a working adult, I actually have more free time than I did as an athlete. But oddly enough, in those free hours I find myself worrying about work. Feeling guilty that maybe I’m not working hard enough. Or worse: that I’m mediocre. 

Hear a version of this story on this week’s episode of VICE News Reports.

In spite of all those feelings of guilt and the fear of mediocrity, the burnout persisted. I felt like I could barely string a sentence together. At night, I found myself sitting on my couch after work, melting my brain watching TikToks. I couldn't even focus on a TV show. 

So, on this cold day, I put in a meeting with my boss, Stephanie, that I had been nervous about for weeks. She’s woman of considerable capability and competence whom I slightly fear on a normal day, but today was not a normal day. I was going to pitch her a story that might get me fired. 

“What I really need you to do,” I told her, “is to let me work as little as I possibly can for a week.”

I realize that now is the time to explain myself: For months, her and the rest of our editorial team have been musing about wanting one of us rank and file producers to churn out a story on the rising wave of discontent that white collar workers have been feeling about their jobs. The buzzwords we’ve all heard like quiet quitting, or the Great Resignation, or ideas about a four-day work week. 

But I’m a bit of a troll – I want to take things even further. “Let's go to the logical extremity of this,” I explained, “like how much do we actually need to work? What if… I work as little as I can for a week while also getting all my stuff done?”

Silence. Then, finally: “It's an interesting idea,” Stephanie said. “Yes, I am actually like, into it.”

I immediately broke into this weird, shocked grunting laugh that I’d never done before. I couldn't believe that my editor had actually bit on this story. But then it sank in that I actually had to do it. Laughing about this idea with my friends is one thing. Actually having to do it is entirely another. 

So here’s what I decided to do. For one week, I’m going to put in as few hours as possible while working on a separate, unrelated episode of VICE News Reports. (You can listen to that episode here.)

To avoid any special treatment, nobody outside of my editors would know about this, and I would track my hours the entire time to see how much time and effort I actually had to put into my job to keep my head above water. 

I had three big questions going into this. One: How many hours in a week do I REALLY need to work? Two: Will my colleagues notice that I’m not working 40 hours? Three: How does this week make me feel? Am I going to be happier? Exhausted? Maybe even bored? 

There was only one way to find out. 

I had ambitions of doing something awesome on the first day of my experiment. But to be honest with you, I partied all weekend. I wake up on Monday morning to a trashed apartment and Red Bull cans on every working surface. And then the statement piece: a sink full of dishes that rose out of the counter like a sick, bacteria-ridden Kilimanjaro.  

I didn’t use any of my Saturday or Sunday to do mundane domestic stuff like chores. Instead, I wake with the limited edition flavor of anxiety that only stems from a week full of work followed by a restless weekend. I decide I’m gonna use my working hours to clean this pigsty.  

Almost immediately, my colleague Mack pings me on Slack. He’s got an interviewee on the phone and he wants me to join: “You around?” Mack asks. My stomach sinks. 

For a brief moment I think about skipping out on the call, telling Mack he needs to handle it. But, ultimately, I do my job. The interview is good but it also drags on longer than it needs to. About an hour or so later, I’m free again. 

I take a shower, I brush my teeth, I clean the dishes and wash the floors. I end up power cleaning my house for three hours and even have time to play with my cat a little bit. It felt amazing, but I also feel kind of guilty. I could have done anything I wanted, but I decided on taking out the trash and cleaning the litter box. It makes me feel small-minded and boring. 

I keep my phone close to me to make sure I could respond to any Slacks or emails that I got. But for the most part, everyone left me alone. 

I go to bed that night feeling a bit more rested and a little guilty. I was presented with the golden opportunity to do whatever I wanted in the whole world and the best that my cloudy, burned-out brain could muster was a few clean dishes and a mopped floor.

Total hours worked: Five

I was excited for this day – I decide that I’m going to go to a midday Brazilian jiu-jitsu class. I train four or five days a week most weeks, but these midday classes are a total mystery to me. It’s primarily composed of freelancers, people who work in the fitness industry, and a handful of professional jiu-jitsu athletes – definitely a tougher crowd than the hobby finance bro you see at 6PM. 

Nobody was bugging me on Slack. I was on top of the other story I was producing. I didn’t really have a lot to do. Then, like a phoenix rising from the workplace ashes, I get a message on Slack. 

“I can't find the actual audio with Tess's pick-ups – any help so I can finish the new mix?” It’s one of our sound designers. On a normal day, I would just send the file over off my desktop. But this wasn't a normal day: I was in the middle of Chinatown, walking into a sweaty jiu-jitsu gym. I get inside and start slacking away, trying to fix the issue and praying to the podcast gods that none of my coworkers try to video call me.

After a few back and forths, we resolve the issue without compromising my location. I end up training with my friend Roger, who is a personal trainer and a badass at jiu-jitsu, but above all else an absolute unit. I don't often get to train with people who are as big or bigger than me – and I’m a big boy – so this was a lot of fun. After class, I grab a Coke slurpee from 7/11, like a kid who just played his first Little League game, and head home.

All in, I put in about four hours of actual work after training, commute time, and general meandering. But everything got done without any further hiccups, and I noticed how much easier it was to get through my work after a midday break. That's when I had the epiphany that I had essentially taken a long lunch break – something I almost never do. 

Total hours worked: Four

One of goal of this experiment was to push the boundaries, so I figure I should get out of my comfort zone. On Wednesday, I hit up my friend Emily, a dance teacher and professional dancer who agrees to give me a lesson. 

I’d been dreading doing this for at least a week. On a good day it takes five beers to get me on the dance floor. Doing it sober was a different story. 

When I show up, Emily tells me we were going to spend the first 20 minutes of the class stretching. This triggers my flight or flight instinct – I have the flexibility of a silent film mummy and I cant stand letting people know that I’m not good at literally everything. But we go ahead anyway, and Emily starts ritualistically tearing apart my calves, shoulders and hamstrings with her stretching system. I’m fighting for my life and the dance class hasn’t even started. 

Emily is a model of patience as we practice turns and other dance steps. After about an hour of training I’m able to complete one full 360 turn before almost stumbling into the glass, but I find it impossible not to check my phone periodically and respond to emails and Slacks. I just can’t put work out of my mind and be present in the moment. 

After finishing the dance session, I head to a coffee shop to wrap up the day. By 4PM I’ve uploaded that week’s episode of VICE News Reports for tomorrow, and all my other work-related tasks are in order. Even though I walked out of the class with two aching hamstrings and a bruised ego, I’m just glad to be trying something different. Working full-time, your life gets monotonous. It feels good to be something other than a work robot for once. 

Total hours worked: Four

I wake up feeling absolutely exhausted. It’s one of those disgusting rainy days in Brooklyn where it feels like dusk at 2PM. But I have two days to go, time to fill, and content to create. I decide to do what I usually do when I feel like doing nothing: Boot up Call of Duty. 

I wanted to talk to people who were playing at 11AM on a Thursday – people who weren't kids skipping school or faking being sick. After a couple of attempts convincing people I was actually a VICE reporter, I finally got someone to talk to me: Alan, a delivery driver based in Ohio. “Do you like your job?” I ask him. “Yeah, I mean, it's a job, you know what I mean?” Alan replies through bursts of automatic MP5 fire. “A good paying job. I'd rather do this all day [though].” 

I press a bit more: “So how many hours a week do you work?”

“Between 40 and 50 maybe,” he says. “I'm not a lazy person – to make a buck, you have to work hard.”

I wince a little when Alan said the words “lazy person.” By his standards, I am definitely a lazy person. There is nobody breathing down my neck at work, making sure I meet some sort of daily quota. I’m not on a 996 schedule like a tech worker in China who’s expected to work 12 hours a day, six days a week, or picking strawberries in the sun for a dollar per carton. I know that I have it pretty good.

I think this fuels a little bit of the guilt I feel as that day ends. But more so, I just feel like I’ve wasted a day – I feel unproductive, lazy; useless, even. I also find myself thinking about how much more fun this would have been if my friends were playing with me. 

That’s a big part of why this week is so hit or miss. Even in my temporary freedom, I’m spending most of this time alone. I’d hoped that this would feel like a weekend every day, but every day just felt like a workday, with less responsibility. 

That Thursday, I played video games for about three hours. I maybe got one Slack that entire day. At this point, it still seemed like I was able to work where and when I needed, without my colleagues really taking notice of my absence. 

Total hours worked: Five

At some point during the process of pitching this story, I became obsessed with the idea of going to the Bronx Zoo. I live an hour and 40 minutes away and none of my friends have ever wanted to go with me. Plus, I just thought it would be funny to try to take a meeting with monkey noises in the background. 

But that fateful Friday morning turns out to be one of the coldest days of the year in New York, with lows of 12 degrees Fahrenheit. But there’s no turning back, so I get my ass up and took myself to the Bronx. 

I cannot emphasize to you how much you should never ever go to the Bronx Zoo in winter. I am miserably cold, all the animals are sad and cold and half of them aren’t even in their exhibits. This is a terrible idea. I wander around for a while, and tried to half-explain my project to some clearly confused and unimpressed zoo workers. Eventually, I stumble on the Madagascar exhibit, a warm indoor oasis that hides me from the icey treacherous climate outside. Inside, I’m met with a flash of serendipity. 

A sign at the main entrance reads: “Lemurs are like us. See that lemur over there? He can speak just like you or me. Why doesn't he? So he can keep playing in the forest and not have to work.”

I never knew how much I identified with lemurs. I take a few work meetings outside, wander around for another hour or so, and get the fuck out. 

Total hours worked: Three

At the end of my working week, I’m left with a sense of appreciation for a job that would let me do something this stupid. I’d worked around 20 hours this week – half my normal schedule – but I feel just as tired as ever when I finished. 

There are plenty of factors here beyond my control. No one’s paying for my life, so I have to work for a living. Our society and my job at VICE follow an already established five-day, 40-hour work week, and journalism is a deadline-driven job.

But a recurring theme throughout this week is guilt. If I wasn't filling my time in a way that my brain deemed productive – whether it was jiu-jitsu or dancing or the zoo – my brain defaulted to guilt that I’m not using my time wisely. I’ve definitely felt this guilt on normal weeks where work is a little lighter – like I’m wasting precious time, or that I'm not living up to my potential. 

I wish I could let go of the shame of being unproductive; of taking a moment to myself where I’m not doing anything. It’s fueled me in the past – when I’m always dissatisfied, I keep going, whether it’s working on a news story or training on a wrestling mat. But life is long and I am tired. And I’m gonna be working for a long time. 

I don’t think I can live like this any longer and I don’t want to. On those lighter weeks, the ones where I can slip away at 3PM on a Friday, I want to stop and smell the roses. If nothing else, I want to allow myself enough grace to not feel guilty about noticing how sweet they smell.