First, there was “quiet quitting” at work, then, there was “coffee badging”, then there was, “acting your wage”.

You may hear these buzz phrases from mostly millennials, who are so tired and burnt out and really cannot handle the pressures of life, to include WORK. It seems, according to this, anyway, that “acting your wage” could backfire for some of these peeps. I say, “good”. I will get to this in a moment.

Now, I am not saying this is all millennials but we are not shocked these trends were bourne out of circles of millennials. We’ve got the “quiet quitting“, the pure resignation of not showing up and not trying. We’ve got “coffee badging“, where one shows up to work, grabs a coffee, stands ’round and chats up co-workers a bit and then all of a sudden develops Ebola and goes home. Then, there’s “acting your wage”, a trend that became popular after a Refinery29 article and a 29 year-old “content creator”, Sarai Soto took to TikTok to talk “toxic workplaces”.

Over exaggerated? Yes, a tad. Any reasonable boss knows that asking a person to work through their lunch is illegal. Any reasonable boss would not bother his/her employees on their day off. So, spare me the theatrics.

The issue with this “act your wage” in the real workplace, (not TikTok), is that workers do the bare minimum as they see fit for their jobs and not what may be listed in their job description. Yet, they expect more. Now, I’m not talking minimum wage jobs here. I am a boss and I know, for a fact, millennials who make far more than minimum wage in my workplace, with leave entitlements and decent benefits included. These “quiet quitters”, “coffee/energy-drink bagders” expect you, as a boss, to understand the days they come to work and are “just not feeling it”. They expect you, and other co-workers, to pick up the slack when they leave in the middle of the day after making up some excuse (but really, they’re just not feeling it). They continue with patterns of excuses and absenteeism and when you address it, as a boss should (after all, that is what you are paid to do), they accuse you of not having “grace and empathy” (true story). They burn their leave entitlements down to non-existent numbers (another matter you need to address as a boss) and promise to improve but, something in their mind tells them they are only getting paid a certain amount of money so they will only work what they’re “worth”. They continue to ignore policies put in place by your department and when you call them on it, they ask for explanations of why this is a policy in the first place, and say that “someone once told them a good boss can explain a policy, a bad boss can’t”. (Hint: I was the “good boss” and explained it crystal clear why calling out less than an hour before one’s shift wasn’t according to policy. This was also put in writing.) They continue to fail in extending the same grace and empathy they expect from others towards their colleagues. They pine for your job, and bemoan that not everyone sees their genius.

Been there, done that.

Simply put, acting your wage is a quick and easy way to get left behind in your career. Employees who refuse to do more than the bare minimum will lose new opportunities to coworkers who show initiative and drive. When you’re part of a team, sometimes you have to go above and beyond your job description.”-Richard Wahlquist, CEO of the American Staffing Association

There’s no “I” in team.

But this is not just a millennial thing. Working in customer service, I have increasingly been in the middle of arguments between two workers who are my age and older about whose job it was to complete a task. The task to be completed could not be done by my department and these two individuals bickered back and forth about whose job it was while the customer kept getting the run-around between departments. I’ve even had some internal departmental disputes with individuals who are more knowledgeable about a certain subject matter, who flat out refused to get on a phone and answer a few questions for another co-worker with an in-person customer who was staging a sit-in until the issue was resolved. It is almost as if people have thrown their hands up and said “it’s not my job”. Calls are increasingly going to voicemail instead of being answered by humans and people are using the “it’s above my pay grade” excuse all too often to not even use their brains and investigate whose “pay grade” the task actually belongs to.

And, in all honesty, it makes me wonder about our culture as Americans.

I am all for the occasional mental-health day. I am all for employees standing up to unreasonable demands from their bosses. I have been on the other side of a demanding boss who required me to come to work even though I was barfing my brains out due to a stomach flu. That sucks. I vowed to never be that boss. I am all for employees sharing their dissatisfaction with their jobs and/or career trajectory. As a boss, it is my job to listen to my employees. It is also my job to keep things real. While our workforce is filled with motivated go-getters, it, sadly, is also filled with entitled, lazy, do-the-bare-minimum coffee-badging, quiet quitters who act (below) their wage and, oftentimes, their maturity when asked to lift an extra hand.

It’s no wonder why other countries are edging us out competitively. It’s time to grow up. Boy, do we have some work to do in 2024.

Photo Credit: CIPHR Connect, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons/Cropped