My Take | ‘Let it rot’ or ‘the big quit’ … eventually it’s reality that bites
- When people look at their phones, they are at the centre of the social universe. But at work, they are cogs in a machine. No wonder many want to quit
In China, it’s called “lying flat” and “letting it rot”. In North America, there is a similar phenomenon known as “the great resignation”, “the big quit” or “the great reshuffle”.
It’s not clear whether they are sustainable trends in employment and underemployment, or only a temporary movement induced by the isolation of the global Covid-19 pandemic that is bound to fade out as the world recovers from the heath crisis.
I didn’t pay much attention to it until my two children, about to graduate from university, said they wanted to “quit” before they had even joined the workforce. That seems like a mentality among some young people rather than their actual employment situation.
Many older people seem to be sympathetic, as they have had to struggle through the rat race all their lives and understand the constant drudgeries, frustrations and anxieties of employment. Who wants that?
Somehow, many young people think work should be meaningful and psychologically or spiritually fulfilling, and that they should enjoy autonomy and be given enough room to express creativity. Why should they waste their youth on “996”, the Chinese slang for unwritten but required overtime work, as in 9am to 9pm, six days per week.
That has long been the norm in Confucian societies not just in China, but also Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore as well. In a way, it’s the adult extension of the fiercely competitive education systems in those places.