As we chatted over Starbucks recently, I listened to a close friend share a personal story of workplace hell. The tale was a painfully familiar one: his new supervisor was applying a series of increasingly passive-aggressive tactics to make him so miserable that he quit.
My friend, someone I’ve known for decades, possesses an unparalleled work ethic shaped by years of military service. Give him a little autonomy, and he’ll work his fingers to the bone. He’s fiercely loyal to his team, another habit learned after years of leading troops. And he’s exceptionally talented, with the bona fides to show for it.
But there was a new sheriff in town, as they say, and things were quickly moving from passive-aggressive to simply aggressive. After a series of substantiated complaints – ranging from basic human resources issues to ethical violations – the new boss was looking for some old school retaliation. So, he focused his efforts on ridding himself of the person he blamed for his problems: my friend.
Listening to the story unfold, I couldn’t help but think of the scene from the HBO series, Band of Brothers, where Lieutenant Winters requests a trial by court martial after being repeatedly gaslit by Captain Sobel. Sometimes our choice is binary: quit on our own or dig in and fight.
Quiet Firing
The practice of quiet firing is hardly new. Even as quiet quitting became all the rage on the heels of the pandemic, most of us who had been around the block a time or two recognized it for what it was: mailing it in, what we often referred to as retired on active duty in the ranks of the military. But quiet firing had been around as long as I can remember.
Not unlike being ghosted in the workplace, quiet firing was a way of getting someone to quit on their own, which saves paperwork, visits from HR, and all the mess of a formal termination. One day you’re in the inner circle, the next day no one responds to your emails, your phone calls go unanswered, and you’re left alone to muddle along. Ultimately, according to Zapier recruiter Bonnie Dilber, you “either feel so incompetent, isolated, and unappreciated” that you leave for another job, or you become so demotivated that your performance drops to a point where you can be terminated. You save your leadership the trouble of actually doing their part to help you a contributing member of a team.
Quiet firing underpinned the culling of the federal workforce earlier this year. First, a return to office mandate for workers who had either remote or hybrid agreements, which actually aimed at getting people to quit rather than commute. Second, Elon Musk’s “What did you do last week?” email, which was a top-down compliance exercise intended to annoy people into throwing in the towel. Finally, the “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation program, which dangled a financial carrot alongside the threat of a very real stick.
The Subtle Signs of Quiet Firing
You may not immediately know if you’ve wandered into the sights of someone looking to quietly fire you. Often, the signs are so subtle you might dismiss them. That’s intentional. Because if someone really wants to quietly fire you, they won’t purposely tip their hand.
So, you have to pay very close attention. One, you have to recognize those subtle signs; two, you have to decide what to do about them. Recently, an article from Suzanne Lucas sparked a reminder of some of those signs, many of which can be in play at one time.
1. Messing with compensation.
Screwing with your pay is a surefire way to get you to quit. “Oops, those damn Finance people messed up again.” The frustration adds up quicker than the bills.
2. Nitpicking time off.
Time off is sacrosanct. “Nickel and dime them on their PTO. If an employee leaves an hour early, take it from their vacation bank. If they ducked out for two hours for a doctor’s appointment, dock their sick time.”
3. Micromanaging.
Nothing will drive you straight to LinkedIn quite like someone standing over you and telling you how to do your job. Except maybe when they do it for you, then blame you because they decided to do your job.
4. Giving bad guidance.
This was the core of the issue between Winters and Sobel. If someone wants you to quit out of frustration, they will purposely give you contradictory guidance and then blame you for not reading their mind. Then they’ll gaslight you at every opportunity.
5. Chumming the sharks.
One of the surest ways to make you miserable enough to quit is to let the bad actors reign free. Every workplace has at least one. All the boss has to do is lock their door and leave the sharks to create mayhem in the void.
6. Playing favorites.
Everybody hates the brown-nosing Blue Falcon. Few things make people more miserable than someone freely allowed to suck up to the boss. When the boss starts to love them like their own child, they might just want you to run for the doors.
7. Changing the rules.
People need accountability. A great way to make you hate your work life is to deny it. The old adage, “Do as I say, not as I do” applies. First, they apply the rules to everyone but themselves. Then they change them. Again and again.
8. Slacking off.
I used to work for a guy who couldn’t get to work before 10:00 a.m. But God forbid if you arrived later than 7:30 a.m., because he was checking. Then he would wait until 5:00 p.m. to answer email, and he expected – no, he demanded – timely responses. I never wanted to quit a job more than that one.
9. Trolling social media.
Lurkers are bad enough. When the boss is hovering over your social media and wants to talk about your posts, it’s even worse. Are you posting about them? Was that meme referring to the workplace? It will drive you to the door. Sometimes, they do that stuff on purpose.
10. Zooming into submission.
There was a time when you could break someone by just having a lot of meetings. Now it’s even easier. They have Zoom. They have teams. They have time. Those constant video check-ins and mouse motion monitors? Yeah, they work. Do it enough and you will quit.
Is this happening to you? Any of it? If it is, you have some soul searching to do, along with some possible career planning. Whatever you do, don’t ignore the signs.
