Quiet what?
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I opened the Globe and Mail newspaper recently and read about quiet quitters. Oh, man, I immediately remembered a young dude from some years ago. The day was long, and it ran into overtime, slightly. The guy hopped into his car-pool truck and griped about losing some of his “leisure time.” And he wasn’t kidding. He meant it.
Quiet quitters are now in the news because they’ve openly decided to only do what’s necessary at work. Their life is much too precious to stress at work. Do the bare minimum and go home. I don’t believe they belong in the landscape industry, if they even dare to try it. Here’s why.
Go, go, go
Landscaping work is physical, you get dirty and wet, hot and sweaty. Some days are hard, and some are totally fine. But you must pull your weight on a team. Nobody likes to do overtime, but some days are just too busy, or glitches show up. When you have two more yards to finesse, it makes sense to run overtime a little bit to finish them.
Not pushing at work is a mistake because there is great satisfaction to be had from a job well done. You help the team, and your clients are happy. But when you openly decide to not push yourself at work, you won’t last. Your boss and teammates will call you out on it.
And whatever happened to kaizen, the idea of continuous improvement? To keep learning and improving, you must push yourself. Once I had a long discussion with a younger worker who told me average was good enough. And I strongly disagreed: average is a terrible idea. World-class is better. Aim high and push it. This dude was a quiet quitter before it became news. Now he’s working at a faraway mine, trading his time for good money.
Quiet quitters are sad people, and they don’t belong in the landscape industry. Crush it at work and go for world-class. Then enjoy your leisure time.
