Are "quiet quitters" merely trying to draw boundaries in pursuit of a reasonable work-life balance, more associated with a European lifestyle than with always-on US work culture? America is debating
They are drawing a line at the 40-hour work week, limiting after-hours calls and emails and generally, if softly, saying "no" more often—some American workers are embracing the concept of "quiet quitting" as they push back against what some see as the stifling trap of constant connectivity.
Maggie Perkins—who lives in Athens, Georgia—was racking up 60-hour weeks as a matter of course in her job as a teacher, but the 30-year-old realized after her first child was born that something was wrong.
"There's pictures of me grading papers on an airplane on the way to vacation. I did not have a work-life balance," Perkins explains in a TikTok video about how she chose—though she did not have a name for it back then—to begin "quiet quitting."