15 ms·

Workers are 'rage quitting' their jobs as a tightening labor market

27 points by a3n 5y ago

a3n 5y ago
> In a statement sent to Insider, a $COMPANY representative said "WA WA WAH WA WAH, WA WA WA WA WA WA WA." > "Nothing is more important than WA WA WA WA WA WA WA."
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't do this here.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
A few anecdotes collected from social media combined with an interview doesn’t constitute a widespread trend. Regardless: Rage quitting a bad job may feel good, but it almost never accomplishes anything positive. Bad employers see a rage quit episode not as an indictment of their management practices, but as confirmation that the employee was a bad apple whose opinions can be disregarded. If you must escape a company ASAP for whatever reason, submitting a calm resignation with little or no notice is going to send a stronger message than performing one last childish act on the way out. Nobody likes losing a good, professional employee. But if your last act is immature and difficult, they will be glad you’re gone.
- danielschonfeld 5y ago
  Spoken like a true boss who can’t even begin to understand the emotions conveyed by employees at the bottom of the chain.
  - tomca32 5y ago
    Spoken like a true impulsive employee who can't even begin to understand how strategic decisions are made or how humans organize in larger organizations such as corporations.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      I imagine that his point is that workers aren't trying to bring about change. They just want to be done.
      - tomca32 5y ago
        Yeah that's a fair point that I didn't consider; you're probably right. Unfortunately, workers are still shooting themselves in the foot by doing this. Having emotional outbursts is always the wrong move and it's one that might haunt you well into your professional future.
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        The workers being referred to here have no professional future in the types of employment sectors they are in.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I thought everyone understood the strategy is to use the excess supply of labor to push people to their limit and squeeze them as much as possible. And in commodity businesses with low profit margins, businesses that do not squeeze as much as possible get crushed by those that do.
      - AstralStorm 5y ago
        You know, that could be made illegal. It's called labor law and kind of missing in the USA. Also insufficient in many other places.
    - effingwewt 5y ago
      Ah yes, you can fire the employee at any time without severance, but how dare we not give two weeks notice, or be more understanding about why the owners schedule late and pay next to nothing, and treat us like disposable trash (spoiler alert- its profit).
    - danielschonfeld 5y ago
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Do these workers care if anything changes? I think they just want to be out of the situation.
  - noasaservice 5y ago
    Retail workers individually have 0 sway in corporate anything. They're just a cog. And if your (mental) health is in jeopardy at your job, quit. Literally. Clock out and walk out. You're not a slave, although with the screaming fits I've been subjected to and seen, they certainly think so.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      Workers in general have zero sway. Every company I have worked with has had high turnover. Every company has had management complain about it. That generally is the end of the conversation, not by employee choice.
  - jhickok 5y ago
    Quitting is how you get out of a situation; rage quitting is making some kind of point.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      Their definition of rage quitting is > So Kendra walked out, and never went back. > The phenomenon of rage-quitting is as old as work itself. Some people prefer to end things with a bang, not a whimper. So things like bridge-burning, walking off sans a two weeks' notice, or even making a scene are nothing new when leaving a workplace. So it seems to include just leaving immediately as well as making a scene.
      - stronglikedan 5y ago
        Seems like they needed to come up with a bogus definition to increase the stats for their story. The scene is the "rage" part.
- steveBK123 5y ago
  Have you ever worked retail/restaurant trade? It is thankless, poorly managed, tenuously stable, randomly scheduled work. No one writes resignation or gives much advanced notice. It's a good idea for parents to make sure their kid does this kind of work for a summer in their teens at least, gives a bit of perspective.
  - neogodless 5y ago
    > It's a good idea for parents to make sure their kid does this kind of work for a summer in their teens at least, gives a bit of perspective. Interesting that this is pointed out, since I noticed they linked to this article, describing these sorts of jobs being a "teenage rite of passage" to be a myth. https://www.businessinsider.com/five-huge-myths-about-working-in-fast-food-2015-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/five-huge-myths-about-workin... > According to researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, about half of the families of front-line fast-food workers depend on public programs, compared with 25 percent of the American workforce. That being said... the "bit of perspective" likely holds some weight. Many adults having no experience in this kind of hourly work simply do not know what it is like, and make judgements that demonstrate the lack of perspective.
    - kd0amg 5y ago
      > Interesting that this is pointed out, since I noticed they linked to this article, describing these sorts of jobs being a "teenage rite of passage" to be a myth. The hyperlink's text claims it is a myth, but the linked article does not refute the idea that working this kind of job is considered by our culture to be a significant growth step for teenagers.
    - steveBK123 5y ago
      I think it used to be, but has become a form of more regular employment for older people over time. People are now busy forcing their kids through various pre-college resume polishing activities/clubs/sports/courses/etc rather than making some minimum wage over the summer.. Anyway one could do a little google instead of just replying in the negative without backing. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/07/during-the-pandemic-teen-summer-employment-hit-its-lowest-point-since-the-great-recession/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/07/during-the-... "In 2019, 35.8% of teens worked over the summer. As recently as 2000, more than half (51.7%) of U.S. teens could expect to spend at least part of their summer vacation lifeguarding, selling T-shirts, dishing up soft-serve ice cream or otherwise working for pay."
octokatt 5y ago
I’m glad. I want services to cost more, I want restaurants to cost the dollar more a plate it takes to pay a living wage, I want for my purchases to stop being subsidized by people on food stamps working two jobs. Happy Labor Day.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  TBF - your federal income tax is subsidizing it. So, you are paying for it, just indirectly, and probably disproportionately (either over or under paying).
  - octokatt 5y ago
    Which is the problem. Food stamps are seen as a moral failing, and the richer you get the easier dodging taxes becomes. I’d rather money flow more directly into pockets (higher wages) than indirectly (food stamps, Medicaid) so the market can be more efficient.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
      We are on the same page - just pointing out how the system works. It is important to point out that the current system is designed to maximize employment. It's easy to have a bunch of services that are subsidized by the top 10% paying >50% of >25% of low-paid service workers' wages (through income tax that pays for SNAP, HUD, etc). Since people are dependent on income for a living - if demand for services drops because the average person is unwilling to pay an extra 25% for services - then these service workers need to be employed elsewhere. Would there be jobs for them? Your other option is to just give them money to do nothing - and the average person gets less services. This doesn't seem ideal for anyone beside the people getting paid to do nothing - who would maybe be 2-3% of the population. And it seems especially unfair for the people who would keep their job - and instead of getting paid to not provide services - they have to actually provide the services!
- fasteddie31003 5y ago
  You are missing the other half of the equation. If all services just cost more that will just result in inflation. I think you want the cost ratio of services jobs to other jobs to increase. That would mean you would want non-service income to be able to buy less services.
MattGaiser 5y ago
I always got the impression that many of these systems were designed to push workers to near breaking point on the assumption that there would always be others to replace them. I am curious whether job satisfaction is actually down or whether people just now have a path to leaving.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Most definitely, which is why seeing all the help wanted signs and stores/restaurants only being open for 8 hours a day makes me happy. The 1AM $5 burrito or 11PM Walmart run was always predicated on those workers not having an option to be home with their families. I am curious if we will see more price differentials for services during evening/overnight/weekend/holiday where we previously did not.
  - Leherenn 5y ago
    In Switzerland, where labour is very expensive, it doesn't get more expensive, places are just closed. Supermarkets are open 8.30 a.m. to 7 p.m. (during the week, they close earlier on Saturday) and the burrito place close at 11 p.m..
    - handrous 5y ago
      That's how it was in the US not that long ago (~20-25 years ago). Then Wal-Mart starting doing 24/7, and McDonalds, and most other businesses didn't match that but did significantly expand their hours.
  - handrous 5y ago
    As someone who's never thought the massively-expanded store hours since the late 90s were a good thing, that's great news. Going back to the only things open 24/7 being some gas stations and maybe the odd pharmacy or urgent care (which, most of those aren't 24/7 now, and I'd rather they be than a lot of the things that are) would be fine. McDonalds doesn't need to be 24/7. Wal-Mart doesn't need to be 24/7. I can't go shop at Costco at 10pm on a weekday, or 7pm on a Sunday, and you know what? That's OK. "But what about shift workers?" we got by before by doing our shopping on off days, including and perhaps especially people who worked normal 8-5 mon-fri shifts—it was fine, except that we couldn't always get exactly what we wanted exactly when we wanted it; and, apparently, companies weren't extracting as much money from us as they could (else, why change policy to have longer hours? Maybe that slight delay in purchasing led to us wasting less money on bullshit, go figure), plus they could still be open 12-16 hours per day and cover that use case without being open practically non-stop.
fasteddie31003 5y ago
I think one factor in people quitting their jobs today is the increased savings rate over the pandemic https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT. Many people have saved up so much during the pandemic that they are no longer living paycheck-to-paycheck and are not willing to trade their time for a wage. Maybe this is a short term phenomena and people's saving will go down and they will start living paycheck-to-paycheck again and they will be more willing to to trade their time for wages.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  There's two parts. A lot of people made a lot more money (from stimulus), and a lot of people have cut their expenses dramatically (because of lockdowns). When you spend less money, it's a lot easier to forgo making more money. And as you mentioned, it's especially easy when you have more savings.
- thraxil 5y ago
  There might be some truth to that for middle/upper class SWE types like those who frequent HN that were able to work remotely during the pandemic and just had their expenses lowered. The article is mostly about low wage workers though and the situation was largely the opposite for them. Almost everyone I know in that category had hours cut while businesses were shut down. Stimulus checks helped but didn't make up for most of the lost wages. I think a lot of them are basically reaching a point of hopelessness where they feel like there's no way for them to get ahead. If you don't see a light at the end of the tunnel, why put up with an awful job in the meantime? Those who didn't get their hours cut instead often had to do more work and have been run ragged (think delivery drivers, etc). My partner is a university lecturer and quit her job recently in large part because she's had to add online and blended courses, which involved much more prep time (basically doubling her workload) but with no increase in her pay. She didn't quit because we had a bit more savings.
neonate 5y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20210903212611/https://www.businessinsider.com/workers-rage-quitting-jobs-in-a-tightening-labor-market-2021-5 http://web.archive.org/web/20210903212611/https://www.busine... https://archive.is/57dgb https://archive.is/57dgb Article is from June.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Pre-covid (but not by much), I saw a fast-food worker rage-quit. She yelled something about being sick of the nonsense, and walked out with a bag (20 pounds, maybe?) of frozen french fries. Someone yelled after her that she needed to clock out, so she walked back in, clocked out, grabbed two more bags of frozen french fries, and walked out. I was kind of surprised, not so much by the rage quitting, but by the brazenness of the theft on the way out.
kirykl 5y ago
Your labor should appreciate in value as workers become more skilled and improve things. If owners are failing to realize this workers should indeed quit because likely they are being paid as a depreciating asset.
mgarfias 5y ago
I feel like I’m about to rage quit. And I don’t work a retail/fast food job. It’s amazing what a toxic manager will inspire.

27 points by a3n 5y ago

a3n 5y ago

> In a statement sent to Insider, a $COMPANY representative said "WA WA WAH WA WAH, WA WA WA WA WA WA WA." > "Nothing is more important than WA WA WA WA WA WA WA."

dang 5y ago
Please don't do this here.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

A few anecdotes collected from social media combined with an interview doesn’t constitute a widespread trend. Regardless: Rage quitting a bad job may feel good, but it almost never accomplishes anything positive. Bad employers see a rage quit episode not as an indictment of their management practices, but as confirmation that the employee was a bad apple whose opinions can be disregarded. If you must escape a company ASAP for whatever reason, submitting a calm resignation with little or no notice is going to send a stronger message than performing one last childish act on the way out. Nobody likes losing a good, professional employee. But if your last act is immature and difficult, they will be glad you’re gone.

danielschonfeld 5y ago
Spoken like a true boss who can’t even begin to understand the emotions conveyed by employees at the bottom of the chain.
- tomca32 5y ago
  Spoken like a true impulsive employee who can't even begin to understand how strategic decisions are made or how humans organize in larger organizations such as corporations.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    I imagine that his point is that workers aren't trying to bring about change. They just want to be done.
    - tomca32 5y ago
      Yeah that's a fair point that I didn't consider; you're probably right. Unfortunately, workers are still shooting themselves in the foot by doing this. Having emotional outbursts is always the wrong move and it's one that might haunt you well into your professional future.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        The workers being referred to here have no professional future in the types of employment sectors they are in.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I thought everyone understood the strategy is to use the excess supply of labor to push people to their limit and squeeze them as much as possible. And in commodity businesses with low profit margins, businesses that do not squeeze as much as possible get crushed by those that do.
    - AstralStorm 5y ago
      You know, that could be made illegal. It's called labor law and kind of missing in the USA. Also insufficient in many other places.
  - effingwewt 5y ago
    Ah yes, you can fire the employee at any time without severance, but how dare we not give two weeks notice, or be more understanding about why the owners schedule late and pay next to nothing, and treat us like disposable trash (spoiler alert- its profit).
  - danielschonfeld 5y ago
MattGaiser 5y ago
Do these workers care if anything changes? I think they just want to be out of the situation.
- noasaservice 5y ago
  Retail workers individually have 0 sway in corporate anything. They're just a cog. And if your (mental) health is in jeopardy at your job, quit. Literally. Clock out and walk out. You're not a slave, although with the screaming fits I've been subjected to and seen, they certainly think so.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Workers in general have zero sway. Every company I have worked with has had high turnover. Every company has had management complain about it. That generally is the end of the conversation, not by employee choice.
- jhickok 5y ago
  Quitting is how you get out of a situation; rage quitting is making some kind of point.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Their definition of rage quitting is > So Kendra walked out, and never went back. > The phenomenon of rage-quitting is as old as work itself. Some people prefer to end things with a bang, not a whimper. So things like bridge-burning, walking off sans a two weeks' notice, or even making a scene are nothing new when leaving a workplace. So it seems to include just leaving immediately as well as making a scene.
    - stronglikedan 5y ago
      Seems like they needed to come up with a bogus definition to increase the stats for their story. The scene is the "rage" part.
steveBK123 5y ago
Have you ever worked retail/restaurant trade? It is thankless, poorly managed, tenuously stable, randomly scheduled work. No one writes resignation or gives much advanced notice. It's a good idea for parents to make sure their kid does this kind of work for a summer in their teens at least, gives a bit of perspective.
- neogodless 5y ago
  > It's a good idea for parents to make sure their kid does this kind of work for a summer in their teens at least, gives a bit of perspective. Interesting that this is pointed out, since I noticed they linked to this article, describing these sorts of jobs being a "teenage rite of passage" to be a myth. https://www.businessinsider.com/five-huge-myths-about-working-in-fast-food-2015-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/five-huge-myths-about-workin... > According to researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, about half of the families of front-line fast-food workers depend on public programs, compared with 25 percent of the American workforce. That being said... the "bit of perspective" likely holds some weight. Many adults having no experience in this kind of hourly work simply do not know what it is like, and make judgements that demonstrate the lack of perspective.
  - kd0amg 5y ago
    > Interesting that this is pointed out, since I noticed they linked to this article, describing these sorts of jobs being a "teenage rite of passage" to be a myth. The hyperlink's text claims it is a myth, but the linked article does not refute the idea that working this kind of job is considered by our culture to be a significant growth step for teenagers.
  - steveBK123 5y ago
    I think it used to be, but has become a form of more regular employment for older people over time. People are now busy forcing their kids through various pre-college resume polishing activities/clubs/sports/courses/etc rather than making some minimum wage over the summer.. Anyway one could do a little google instead of just replying in the negative without backing. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/07/during-the-pandemic-teen-summer-employment-hit-its-lowest-point-since-the-great-recession/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/07/during-the-... "In 2019, 35.8% of teens worked over the summer. As recently as 2000, more than half (51.7%) of U.S. teens could expect to spend at least part of their summer vacation lifeguarding, selling T-shirts, dishing up soft-serve ice cream or otherwise working for pay."

octokatt 5y ago

I’m glad. I want services to cost more, I want restaurants to cost the dollar more a plate it takes to pay a living wage, I want for my purchases to stop being subsidized by people on food stamps working two jobs. Happy Labor Day.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
TBF - your federal income tax is subsidizing it. So, you are paying for it, just indirectly, and probably disproportionately (either over or under paying).
- octokatt 5y ago
  Which is the problem. Food stamps are seen as a moral failing, and the richer you get the easier dodging taxes becomes. I’d rather money flow more directly into pockets (higher wages) than indirectly (food stamps, Medicaid) so the market can be more efficient.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    We are on the same page - just pointing out how the system works. It is important to point out that the current system is designed to maximize employment. It's easy to have a bunch of services that are subsidized by the top 10% paying >50% of >25% of low-paid service workers' wages (through income tax that pays for SNAP, HUD, etc). Since people are dependent on income for a living - if demand for services drops because the average person is unwilling to pay an extra 25% for services - then these service workers need to be employed elsewhere. Would there be jobs for them? Your other option is to just give them money to do nothing - and the average person gets less services. This doesn't seem ideal for anyone beside the people getting paid to do nothing - who would maybe be 2-3% of the population. And it seems especially unfair for the people who would keep their job - and instead of getting paid to not provide services - they have to actually provide the services!
fasteddie31003 5y ago
You are missing the other half of the equation. If all services just cost more that will just result in inflation. I think you want the cost ratio of services jobs to other jobs to increase. That would mean you would want non-service income to be able to buy less services.

MattGaiser 5y ago

I always got the impression that many of these systems were designed to push workers to near breaking point on the assumption that there would always be others to replace them. I am curious whether job satisfaction is actually down or whether people just now have a path to leaving.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Most definitely, which is why seeing all the help wanted signs and stores/restaurants only being open for 8 hours a day makes me happy. The 1AM $5 burrito or 11PM Walmart run was always predicated on those workers not having an option to be home with their families. I am curious if we will see more price differentials for services during evening/overnight/weekend/holiday where we previously did not.
- Leherenn 5y ago
  In Switzerland, where labour is very expensive, it doesn't get more expensive, places are just closed. Supermarkets are open 8.30 a.m. to 7 p.m. (during the week, they close earlier on Saturday) and the burrito place close at 11 p.m..
  - handrous 5y ago
    That's how it was in the US not that long ago (~20-25 years ago). Then Wal-Mart starting doing 24/7, and McDonalds, and most other businesses didn't match that but did significantly expand their hours.
- handrous 5y ago
  As someone who's never thought the massively-expanded store hours since the late 90s were a good thing, that's great news. Going back to the only things open 24/7 being some gas stations and maybe the odd pharmacy or urgent care (which, most of those aren't 24/7 now, and I'd rather they be than a lot of the things that are) would be fine. McDonalds doesn't need to be 24/7. Wal-Mart doesn't need to be 24/7. I can't go shop at Costco at 10pm on a weekday, or 7pm on a Sunday, and you know what? That's OK. "But what about shift workers?" we got by before by doing our shopping on off days, including and perhaps especially people who worked normal 8-5 mon-fri shifts—it was fine, except that we couldn't always get exactly what we wanted exactly when we wanted it; and, apparently, companies weren't extracting as much money from us as they could (else, why change policy to have longer hours? Maybe that slight delay in purchasing led to us wasting less money on bullshit, go figure), plus they could still be open 12-16 hours per day and cover that use case without being open practically non-stop.

fasteddie31003 5y ago

I think one factor in people quitting their jobs today is the increased savings rate over the pandemic https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT. Many people have saved up so much during the pandemic that they are no longer living paycheck-to-paycheck and are not willing to trade their time for a wage. Maybe this is a short term phenomena and people's saving will go down and they will start living paycheck-to-paycheck again and they will be more willing to to trade their time for wages.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
There's two parts. A lot of people made a lot more money (from stimulus), and a lot of people have cut their expenses dramatically (because of lockdowns). When you spend less money, it's a lot easier to forgo making more money. And as you mentioned, it's especially easy when you have more savings.
thraxil 5y ago
There might be some truth to that for middle/upper class SWE types like those who frequent HN that were able to work remotely during the pandemic and just had their expenses lowered. The article is mostly about low wage workers though and the situation was largely the opposite for them. Almost everyone I know in that category had hours cut while businesses were shut down. Stimulus checks helped but didn't make up for most of the lost wages. I think a lot of them are basically reaching a point of hopelessness where they feel like there's no way for them to get ahead. If you don't see a light at the end of the tunnel, why put up with an awful job in the meantime? Those who didn't get their hours cut instead often had to do more work and have been run ragged (think delivery drivers, etc). My partner is a university lecturer and quit her job recently in large part because she's had to add online and blended courses, which involved much more prep time (basically doubling her workload) but with no increase in her pay. She didn't quit because we had a bit more savings.

neonate 5y ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20210903212611/https://www.businessinsider.com/workers-rage-quitting-jobs-in-a-tightening-labor-market-2021-5 http://web.archive.org/web/20210903212611/https://www.busine... https://archive.is/57dgb https://archive.is/57dgb Article is from June.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

Pre-covid (but not by much), I saw a fast-food worker rage-quit. She yelled something about being sick of the nonsense, and walked out with a bag (20 pounds, maybe?) of frozen french fries. Someone yelled after her that she needed to clock out, so she walked back in, clocked out, grabbed two more bags of frozen french fries, and walked out. I was kind of surprised, not so much by the rage quitting, but by the brazenness of the theft on the way out.

kirykl 5y ago

Your labor should appreciate in value as workers become more skilled and improve things. If owners are failing to realize this workers should indeed quit because likely they are being paid as a depreciating asset.

mgarfias 5y ago

I feel like I’m about to rage quit. And I don’t work a retail/fast food job. It’s amazing what a toxic manager will inspire.