Bonus Episode: Dr. Phil on Quiet Quitting

О Боже! Not unlike Kevin O'Leary's napalm on LinkedIn about quiet quitting, Dr. Phil has weighed in on the subject. On Thursday, 9/29, the episode "Quiet Quitting: Lazy Employees or Taking a Stand?" hit the air waves and it featured people on both sides of the topic, including Attorney Ryan who has become a social media sensation on this issue.


Key topics:

✔️ According to Dr. Phil, "quiet quitting is bull."  So is he right? Or not?
✔️ Are there people who advocate for quiet quitting while they're working their tails off? Are they giving you bad advice? 🤔
✔️ Is this just more generational clickbait? Trust me - Xers heard the same message of "Y'all are just a generation of slackers" all through the 90s. I was there and I remember it.
✔️ An entrepreneur on the show talks about running her business and the passion she has for it. But see, that's the thing - is it realistic to expect an employee to have the same level of commitment and buy-in that YOU have for your own business? No, it's not. That's not to say they should do nothing at all, but that the company owner ought to have realistic expectations.

Link I mention in this episode:

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

Transcript

0:15

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host, Sara Causey. Hello, hello. Thanks for tuning in. I wanted to record today's episode to talk about one of the topics. And as you are yet again, the gift that keeps on giving the topic we all can't seem to stop talking about quiet quitting. On Thursday, September 29, Dr. Phil released an episode titled quiet, quitting lazy employees or taking a stand. And he had individuals on both sides of the topic, as well as some people that were probably somewhere in the middle truth be told, one of those individuals was attorney Ryan, who has become sort of a social media sensation, especially around this particular topic. I know that he works on a variety of labor law situations, but he really seems to be an important voice on social media in regards to quiet quitting, how younger generations are approaching the work world really understanding your rights, which I think is great. I think that the proliferation of information has helped people to make better decisions. It's easier to do that research. And it's easier to get questions answered, so that you're not quite as in the dark about, okay, this happened, I got pulled into this meeting, this was said, and this was done. Can I even really do that? Is this legal? You know, even if it's legal? I mean, it's clearly not ethical, is this really something that I should stick around for? So I think, in that regard, having that type of information and expertise, basically at our fingertips is amazing. In terms of this episode itself, I debated on whether or not to even cover it, because I thought of it kind of like Kevin O'Leary's napalm that he dropped onto the market whenever he did his video on LinkedIn about quiet quitting. In that video, he talks about how quiet quitting is a cancer to culture. And then if somebody comes in, they do their work from nine to five, and they slam the laptop shut at five o'clock on the dot. What kind of company culture do you actually have? And towards the end of the video, we get to see that very typical, unapologetic Scrooge McDuck a capitalist style that we expect from Kevin O'Leary, let's not forget that there is, in my opinion, a Hollywood esque element to all of this. We expect even these business people and anybody that's involved in the media, to some degree, they are playing a role. So we expect that kind of hard nosed, a hard driving Scrooge McDuck kind of attitude from Kevin O'Leary, would you expect him to come out on camera and act warm and fuzzy and sunshine and rainbows? Of course not, you would wonder what in the hell you were watching if he did. So towards the end of the video, perhaps in character, you know, Judge for yourself on that. He talks about how he would like to get the quiet quitters into his competitor companies so that they will fail. I mean, it's it's very much meant to be a controversial video for clickbait. It's meant to get people riled up, regardless of whether you agree with it or you don't, because it's going to elicit a passionate response. And that's why when I see that kind of clickbait, I have mixed emotions about talking about it, because it's like, on the one hand, I don't want to give it any more attention. But at the same time, if it's bringing up relevant points, especially relevant points to the job market, the labor market, what's going on in the greater economy. I've not been shy, in my episodes about telling you, I believe in economic poopoo storms coming. I think, to some degree, we're already in it. And it scares me to think about people who are woefully unprepared, whether it's because they're consuming, biased news. They're looking at things like toxic positivity and toxic optimism. Well, if I just bury my head in the sand, if I just ignore the stock market, if I just ignore uncomfortable statistics, then I don't have anything to worry about. I would hate to see people get crushed under the wheels of whatever is coming. Because I don't think we're all the way there yet. I think right now, we're sort of in dress rehearsal. I know some commentators have argued that they they think we're probably in the opening act or the initial stages of whatever economic downturn is yet to come. I really don't think so. I don't think that we've seen the full dog and pony show by a mile. And I'm not trying to sound Debbie downer, and I'm not trying to do fear mongering here. We've been through downturns before. We've been through recessions before I'm not sitting here. saying that I think all of society is going to collapse and we're getting ready to have Mad Max Road Warrior Thunderdome conditions. Believe me. There are people online saying exactly that you better know how to fight in the Thunderdome. You better be You better be prepared to light your cigar or toast your smores on the fire of the apocalypse. And it's like give me a flippin break. You know so many of those people they've never seen combat. They've never been in a situation where a country has fallen. The people I know, who have served this country who have been in foreign nations when they fall in none of them. Not a single one of them says, Oh yeah, I can't wait for the apocalypse. I can't wait for combat. I can't wait for war. People who have actually experienced warfare know that war is hell. So I am very suspicious. And I really look down my nose at people who act like oh, just let it all burn, let the apocalypse happen. There'll be the first ones that poop in their britches, if something really does go sideways. So no, I'm not sitting here saying that I think full on Full Tilt apocalypse or giant economic Cataclysm is coming. More than likely we're in for another 1982 recession or 2008 global financial crisis 2.0 That's really what I think is going to happen or some combination thereof. There are too many signs and signals that remind me of what we've seen in the past. So while I afford this kind of clickbait, let's all get everybody riled up, let's get people mad. It Like It also becomes generational clickbait and become socio economic clickbait, let's get people fighting. If you are fighting amongst one another, about whether quiet coding is good or bad, then you're not focused on broader economic issues, you're not paying attention to what the web is doing, you're not paying attention to what the Fed is doing, you're not paying attention to what the state is doing. You're just bickering over silly items that aren't necessarily going to help anybody. So I want to be really careful not to feed into that. I want to cover this topic as best I can, without getting too far into throwing napalm on the market. So on this broadcast, I feel like attorney Ryan gets on there and says his piece and does it very articulately. He talks about the idea of busting your butt for 20 or 30 years for one company hoping that you're going to get rewarded at the end. Probably not gonna go so well for you. And I agree. I think for those of us, particularly in Gen X, obviously I'm biased to being part of that generation. That's the lens through which I see the world. But I think we lived through so many upheavals that it's it's hard to imagine what it must have been like, say for my grandparents, you know, I've talked to before, typically not in flattering terms about Larry wing gets book, it's called work for a reason your successes, your own damn fault, yada, yada. And how his father worked for Sears Roebuck for all those years, and it reminded me a lot of my grandmother who did the same. And she was a telephone operator for Sears back when that was a BFD when everybody waited with a breath that was baited for that catalog to come out. And that was the arrangement, you go to work, you do what your boss tells you to do, you don't make any waves, you have some loyalty to the company and they have loyalty. In exchange, you're going to get the pension, you're going to get the gold watch. So that in your elder years, you can go do whatever the hell you want. You give us the prime of your life, you make the sacrifices, and you don't cause trouble for us. And we'll take care of you at the end so that you have good health care. You have some benefits, you don't have to worry. That was supposed to be the trade. But I think for those of us in Gen X, we really saw all of that get shot to hell. Now I've talked before about the Enron scandal that made a huge impression on me, as a young person, seeing people crying on TV, you know, when you're a young adult, you're getting out in the world you're getting started. You're trying to to really grab adulthood by the horns and figure out what you want a life and there's people crying on TV, saying I had all of this money saved. I had my golden parachute. I had my nest egg and it's gone. I will literally have to work for the rest of my life. Not because I want to, not because I chose to. I did everything quote, right. And I got leftover. That makes a big impression. At least it did for me. I had another major turning point. Around the time that I was 30. I had a friend at work who I was close to and he was not only a friend but an on the job mentor that I learned a lot from. He was also introverted. I called him my go to misanthrope in an affectionate way, because we just had that kind of baseline level of understanding with our introversion that most people were not necessarily Like our cup of tea, we weren't going to be Suzy cream cheese, Welcome Wagon, we weren't going to be the people that wanted to go to the parties and do the social stuff. We had an understanding with one another. And it was nice to have that kind of buddy at work, who saw the world in a similar way. And he was diagnosed with cancer. And it happened so fast. It was like he was healthy, everything was fine. And he had planned out his retirement, he had a whole bucket list of things that he intended to do. And in fact, we had a trip planned. For shortly after he retired, it was going to be a group of us like me and my best friend at the time. He his two daughters, their spouses, we were going to get like a group together and go on an Alaskan cruise to celebrate his retirement. And that never happened. I mean, he he had his list of things that he wanted to do and accomplish in retirement and got to do zero of those things. He got sick, and within just a few months, and I really mean like a few months, two or three at the most between the diagnosis, and his going into hospice and his passing away. It felt like a whisper or a breath. And that impacted me a lot to mean seeing these industries that are supposedly too big to fail, and they fail anyway, we have to bail them out seeing these Wall Street fat cats and corporate cronies that just mercilessly screw the little guy typically see no time in jail. They're never stopped. Nothing is ever really abated. It's like the the can just gets kicked down the road further and further for the next generation to have to deal with seeing all of that, seeing my friends lash on the job, mentor die before his retirement, having all of these plans and bucket list items left undone. And then I remember people at the company, maybe they meant well, I don't know. Maybe they were just high on their own supply. I'm not sure. But I remember hearing people at the company saying things like, well, at least he was happy here. At least he was doing a job he liked at least he didn't suffer for a long time. And I would just sit there and think, are you nuts. Because he and I had had private conversations. I knew how he actually felt I knew he was ready to go. I knew that he felt like he had put his time in. And he had this bucket list. We had this trip planned and everything. So I knew that it wasn't like he just work to live and live to work and couldn't wait to be there every day. I knew how he really felt. And those types of experiences for me as a teenager, a college kid, a young adult, and then a full on adult in her 30s It was like I don't want that to be me. I don't want to sell my soul to a company. I don't want to trust that corporate America is going to take care of me. Just like I wouldn't trust the government to take care of me. Are you crazy? Do you really think that social security is going to be around and it's going to be robust by the time that I'm in my 60s? Well laugh you want to talk about smoking a cigar and toasting your s'mores on the fires of the Apocalypse, I'd be a giant idiot if I thought that I could rely on anybody else I feel like for for those of us Gen X and below, the onus is really on us to take care of ourselves not to rely on some outside figure to do it for us. So I feel like to me, Attorney Ryan's point is very well made. If you think that just just dig in there, you know, have that 1940s 1950s ethic of the parents and grandparents, you know, if you just work hard, then everything's gonna be fine, and you're gonna get a reward for it. I'm so sorry, Hal, you know, in the the episode I talked about before where I mentioned, Allentown and pink houses, like Billy Joel was talking about this back in 82. Every child had a pretty good shot to get at least as far as their old man got, but something happened on the way to that place. It's like even back then, we could see this situation taking shape. The idea of the classic American Dream, the classic American middle class, if you work hard, you stay out of trouble you keep your nose clean, can be anything you want to be. You pick a company, you stay loyal, you give them your loyalty first. And they're going to do right by you. They'll make sure that you stay on even if other people are laid off. They'll make sure that you get the gold watch and the pension and the health benefits. You're going to be okay. We just don't live in that world anymore. And I think some of the panelists on the other side of the topic on this show may be a little bit too reticent and hesitant to it. MIT that I think we can go a little bit maybe too far off into? Well, there's just no opportunity, because I think that's on the other side of the spectrum. I think you have the the hopium crowd that wants to pretend it's still the 1940s or 50s. And it's most assuredly not. But then on the other side of the spectrum, you have people that act like it's all hopeless, everything is vanity, everything's a waste of time. Why even try? We have to do something. I do not think it's healthy for the human body or the human brain to just sit and be stagnant to have no passion, no interests, no gusto, no, nothing. That's not a fun way to live. You know, and in some of the other episodes, where I've talked about quiet quitting, what kind of a life are you formulating for yourself? If you look back, and your whole career was just trying to game the system, I sat in a queue, and I screwed off on my phone for eight hours a day. What kind of a life is that? I mean, how is that edging you closer to what you want to do in this world? So far as we know, we've just got the one shot. Now maybe the people who believe in reincarnation are correct, maybe we get more than one shot, I don't know and wouldn't claim to. But for the time being, let's assume you've got this one opportunity. You've got this one life to do with what you want to do. Is your passion, relentlessly surfing on a cell phone. I understand Believe me, if you say Well, hell, my passion is not stocking shelves at the grocery store. My passion is not entering code into a computer like a drone all day, I get it, believe me. But sometimes those jobs can be a means to an end, they can be a stepping stone to something better. One of the scariest parts, for me of that first business that failed, was I jumped off into the Grand Canyon, and hoped that the parachute would open. And it didn't what I've told the story many times no need to go into it again. Suffice it to say I went splat at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and really screwed myself up royally. And in hindsight, if there had been some way that I could have better leveraged myself financially kept some kind of a day job and had money coming in. While I built my business, I wonder if it would have been different. This time, it certainly has been because I waited until I was really sure. And I felt like the time was right. And I wasn't being as risky. Financially, it didn't represent as big of a ripping off of the band aid and hoping that I didn't take all of my flesh with the band aid when I ripped it off. So I say all that to say, there are times when we may have to hold our nose, there are times now when I might have to take on a project that makes me want to hold my nose, and I'm not real thrilled about it, but I need the money. Or I want the money. It may be that there's some financial goal I have, and I don't want to put it on a credit card or I don't want to take money out of savings. I want to just make that money so that I can buy what I need free and clear. One of my animals may have an injury or they may have a sickness, as you know, I do animal rescue and rehabilitation. And you know, sometimes when you are taking in an animal that has not been well cared for, you have to do mitigation, essentially, you had a remediation type work, doing the things that the previous owner should have done, but didn't. So you may have a horse that needs dental work, you may have a cow that sick, you may have a sheep that sick. And those bills add up, trust me, they're not cheap. So in order to get from point A to point B, there may be times that I have to do extra work. Sometimes it may be for a client I really like and then I think is amazing. There may be other times I'm doing work for a client that I think is possibly nuts, possibly not even on this planet. But I'm doing what I feel like I have to do to get what I want. And I do think there was one of the panelists who I think he was trying to get to what I was saying there, he just maybe wasn't going about it in the best way. Because he was talking about sacrificing and delayed gratification. And I think some of the other panelists were looking at it like, well, you're just telling us to, you know, sit down, shut up, do a job that we completely hate. And the goal has been the ball has been moved so far down the court that you're giving us a goal that's not very achievable. And both of those things are valid. Let me let you in on a little secret about life. It's not always so cut and dry and black and white. Sometimes things that seem to be completely contradictory can actually both be true at the same time. I've talked before about books like squeezed by Alyssa court, and cruel optimism by Lauren Vermont. I've also quoted the article from Pew Research documenting how the US middle class has decreased considerably. So when we look at the percentage of people who were considered middle class in 1971, we see that it was 61% 25% were considered to be lower income, while only 14% were considered to be upper income. Now we juxtapose that with 2021. And we see that 29% of people are lower income. 21% are upper income, while only 50% are considered middle income. It's clear the middle, the mid class is getting smaller, there's more people Hello K shaped economy, there's more people than there used to be the upper class and more people than there used to be that are lower class while the middle class is getting squeezed. So I think to sort of arrogantly sit back and say, Well, you have the same opportunities that I did back in 1971. No, the hell they don't. They don't, when you look at the data, you have to be realistic and say it takes more money. I mean, I can remember my parents, as baby boomers talking about how much easier it was in their generation, to have one parent who worked outside the home and one parent who was a stay at home. Typically, okay, you know, don't know hate mail, I'm not trying to get into anything about gender dynamics. Back at that point in time, typically, the man in the family worked outside the home, and it was considered the breadwinner. Typically, the woman stayed at home and was a stay at home mom. That's how it was for a lot of middle class families. And some lower class families to that was just sort of standard operating procedure back in the 50s. But then, as time went on, it became more and more difficult for women to stay at home and be that stay at home parent, they had to go into the workforce as well. And yes, we can look at World War Two and how women had to step up. And the nation had to just really do what the crisis demanded at that point in time. But I think it's irrefutable that it's way the hell more expensive now, to live to have your basics and to be considered middle class in 2022, than it would have been in 1952. I think if if anybody tries to argue against that, You're crazy. You're not reading the data, you're off somewhere in law. And I don't know. So I think one of the panelists was trying to make the point about opportunity. But I think that it was maybe not coming across the way that he meant for it to. I do think that in any society, in any situation, you have to decide for yourself what you want out of life, and at least try to go after it. I think when we get too far into the defeatist mentality of where they're just there is no opportunity. There's no point in trying to do anything. What's left? You I think back to Camus and the myth of Sisyphus, I mean, are you going to have a cup of coffee? Or are you just going to stop existing? Are you going to try to imagine Sisyphus happy? Or are you just going to resign yourself to the grave? Like at some point, you're going to have to make the decision for yourself? Okay, I wasn't born into the best economic circumstance, I wasn't born into the best time generationally to try to start a career. What can I do about it? What is within my means? And I think that is one reason why we've seen quite quitting, I think people have gotten tired. And they're having this backlash against the bogus idea that some people do still have that things are the same as they were a generation ago or two generations ago, really. I mean, when you look at the average car payment, you look at the average house payment, and how much it just costs to live. Even if you think about here's the standard of living I had last year, and you look at how much more money you're gonna have to bring in this year just to have the same standard of living, not to advance not to get ahead but to live basically give or take the same way that you did last year. It's it's crazy. So I just to me, there has to be some kind of logical middle ground between saying, well, there just is no hope. There's no opportunity, there's no possibility to advance there's no possibility to do anything to better yourself versus it's so easy. If you don't want if you don't become an overnight millionaire, you're just lazy. If you don't want to work at the grocery store with the same passion as the guy that owns the place, there's something wrong with you. No, no, no, no, no. And there's a woman on the panel who is an entrepreneur, she made some comment about how she hasn't slept in 30 years and she's proud of it. And I thought Okay, couple of things come up for me here, looking in your direction, Elon Musk, it's unrealistic, in my opinion, to think that your employees are going to have the same level of commitment and the same level of buy in to your company that you do. I'm sorry, that's absurd. It's your baby. You chose to do that they didn't. They chose to be w two employees. That's what they're looking to do. And so to expect them to have the same level of passion and commitment and buy in To be like, Andy, with Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. People don't want to do that. They're not into that. That's No, just No, they're not going to have the same level of commitment and affection for your baby as you do. And they're not supposed to. That doesn't mean that you should hire someone to do literally nothing but stare at the wall or play on their cell phone, there should be a job description, and there should be some expectations. And whenever Dr. Phil kind of presses attorney Ryan a little bit, he admits that, because Dr. Phil says that, in his opinion, quiet quitting his bowl, people are not doing themselves any favors by quiet quitting. And he points to Attorney Ryan, and he's like, you know, you're a business owner. You're a hard worker. And I think that Ryan's response was pretty good. Because he says the onus is on me to come up with a job description. That makes sense, yes, I set the bar high. And yes, I have high standards. But I tell people that I put everything that they're supposed to do and everything that they're supposed to know in the job description so that I don't have to go back later. And try to demand that they do extra thing, extra things after hours, or try to surprise them with things that they didn't see coming. And I hope that there's more transparency. I know that more states are pushing for pay transparency, for example. And I think that all of that just needs to be put out on Front Street. Here are the hours, here's the description in full. Here's the pay, you want it or you don't. And I think that that will make it easier for people in the ever transactional economy that we have. It'll make it easier for people to decide, is this a transaction? I want to take part in? Yes, I'm willing to do this. No, I'm not. I expect you to be on call. Your core work hours are eight to five. But occasionally we have someone we have to deal with on the Pacific coast. So there might be times that you need to take a phone call at seven. Can you do that? No, I can't. Okay, next, I mean, at least the expectations are being put out up front. So it's not so much of a bait and switch where somebody might get mad or upset or feel like they got suckered later on. I mean, maybe all of this is headed towards more transparency and more honesty, from the hiring managers as well as the employees. That's not a bad thing, in my opinion. But to get back to this entrepreneur, you might also think this hyperbolic language of I haven't slept in 30 years, and I'm proud of it. Well, first of all belief for you. Secondly, that's a complete exaggeration. If you literally had not slept in 30 years, you would not be alive on this planet. And I think that's another thing that the younger generations are rebelling against is this extreme exaggeration. You know, I always hated the idea of like, heavy is the head that wears the crown. You have to be necessarily vague, for obvious reasons. But I worked for a person at one point in time, who was like that. He had a lot of ideas. I'm trying to think of the best way to put this. He had a lot of ideas about how the office should run. And it was generally his way or the highway. He had a receptionist who was a narc, I'm trying I'm trying to be nice here. But like, I just have to put it all out and be honest. He had a receptionist who has an arc. And the expectation was we were to be there button seat from eight to five periodic to launch was from 12 to 12 to one. And that was that if you were five minutes late, she was supposed to tattle on you. If you tried to leave five minutes early. She was supposed to tattle on you. If you came back from lunch late or you tried to leave for lunch early. She was supposed to tattle on you. I think she may have even been timing our bathroom breaks, I would not be at all surprised by that. I think our phones calls were probably also monitored. I mean, it was just a surveillance kind of environment like that. But here's the thing he came in whenever the hell he wanted to, he would saunter In late he would leave early, he would take long lunches, sometimes he'd be there, sometimes they wouldn't. He dressed however he wanted, which was typically very casual. We were supposed to be dressed up in business attire, but he came in and a T shirt and jeans looking like a frat boy most of the time. But his attitude was, well, it's my company, I can do whatever the hell I want. I'm the boss, I make the rules. Okay, fine. But then you don't also get to cry in the coffee and talk about oh, heavy as the head that wears the crown. I have so much responsibility, oh, let this cup pass before me. Like let's all get out our little miniature of islands poker. I don't like that attitude. I'm an entrepreneur and a business owner and a freelancer myself, because that's what I've chosen to do. I don't expect anybody else to have the same level of commitment to my business or my freelancing operation as I do. It would be unrealistic. And I also don't go around and cry in my coffee in front of everybody about oh, I have to do this. And my quarterly taxes are more than I thought and Oh, give me a break. I feel like younger generations have really looked at that. kind of attitude and said, Well, why do I need to be as bought into your business as you are? Why do you expect me to be slave labor for you? You started this business of your own freewill. Nobody held a gun to your head and told you to do that. Why do you feel like I need to be on call 24 hours a day to support your business? There are some people I'm sure who are willing to do that. You know, it's been said before you can sell anything if the price is right. There are probably people out there who'd say, yeah, you pay me enough money if you get the money in the benefits, right? And you want to call me at three o'clock in the morning. Go ahead. There's probably people out there who would? There's a lot of people out there, though, I think especially the younger generations, who are like, No, I don't think so. I don't think I want to be called at three o'clock in the in the morning with some fake ass emergency, by my boss, just hard pass. Dr. Phil, also, I think makes a good point. I think that he raises a really good question that I have been suspicious about throughout this movement. Because I feel like there are people out there not saying that anybody on this episode is one of these people. I want to be emphatically clear. I'm just sort of speaking anecdotally, if you will. Are there people out there who are advocating for quiet cleaning? While they are meanwhile working their tail off? That very well could be? Because let me tell you, I'm not interested in being the grasshopper who sang all summer. I don't know exactly where the bottom is. For this economy. I don't know exactly how tough it's going to be. You have predicted a long hot summer, followed by a winter of discontent. And unfortunately, my predictions are coming true. The things that I've talked about for the job market, the things I've talked about for the overall economy are happening. So there's no way in hell that I personally would just sit back right now and do pretty much nothing. I think that would be an excellent way to wind up destitute during whatever this is. I didn't survive the.com boom and bust. I didn't survive the Great Recession slash global financial crisis by sitting back on my keister and trying to figure out how can I game the system? How can I do basically nothing. I did whatever I felt like I needed to do to meet the crisis and to have money in my bank account. It wasn't a lot. There were times when all I had left was pennies. I've talked before about having to basically Panhandle at work for Toll Road money. I'm not going to sit here and tell you it was fun. I will sit here and tell you, I survived it. I will tell you, I made it through to the other side. So I myself would not say you know what I think I would want to plug in in a place right now and figure out how I could sit in the cube or sit at home and pretty much do nothing. I'm also not sure if I would want to slam my laptop shut at five o'clock. I'm not telling you what to do. I cannot give you advice tell you what to do anything like that. You have to ultimately decide what's best for yourself your sanity, your finances, your family, all that. Now would I want to be taking calls at three o'clock in the morning Hello. What I want to be as bought in to somebody else's company as they are. And the expectation is, you're going to sit down shut up and do what you're told you're a peon. I'm the feudal lord or the Dutch patroon. And you're the little peon, nobody. No, no, I love corporate America, because I don't like that crap. I did Mogae my pay if you want to talk about paying dues. When us actors Listen, all through the 90s. We were called the slacker generation. And we didn't want to pay our dues. We just wanted everything handed to us. I mean, this argument about generational clickbait has been around since forever. Probably my grandparents generation heard the same thing from their grandparents and so on and so forth. There were probably people in the civil war in the Revolutionary War, getting told by their elders that they were lazy and spoil. I think it's probably been that way since forever. But, I mean, no, I've been there and done that. Nobody can say I've never sat in a cubicle. I've never worked for somebody else. I've never had long commutes. I've never had to eat a dirt sandwich. But that's the thing. Like, I think sometimes as you get older, you realize if I need to temporarily eat a dirt sandwich, if I need to take a job that I don't really like, or deal with a boss who I think is a jerk. I'll do it at least temporarily to get the money or to get the benefits. I think you get selfish in a healthy way. And you figure out, I'm going to do what I need to do to survive. I cannot control the power brokers, I can't control Wall Street or the government. I can't control if we get asked to give some company a bail out. There's only so much that I can do. But I know this. I'm going to survive. We're going to eat. We're going to stay warm in the winter. We're going to stay cool in the summer. We're going to do whatever we have to do to make it. I know that. And I think I think maybe as we go into this, some of that grit and determination may come out just by necessity. When did it we're not. So I wish there were other ways for it to come about. But I really think that we're headed into something bad. And I don't know that slamming a laptop shut at five o'clock or being incommunicado is going to be the best way to overcome it. I don't know that it's not me. And I really think like attorney Ryan said, the onus is on the hiring manager to create a job description that makes sense and to set expectations up front, so that everybody knows clearly what they're agreeing to. In the absence of that, as we're in some kind of transitional period, we're looking to see where are the great resignations slash quiet quitting? Where does all of this go? What's What's the eventual outcome? How does the dust settle on this? I don't really know. I hope, more transparency and more honesty is the answer truly, that would benefit everyone. In the meantime, if it were me, would I want to get into a job going into a downturn where layoffs whoring are increasing? Would I want to quiet quit? Would I want to calculate out the bare minimum? Would I want to try to figure out a way to game the system? Probably not. That's not not the choice that I believe I would make, I think that I will be prepping. I think I would be trying to save money. I think I would be cutting unnecessary expenses. And I think that I would be looking, I would get really cold and really strategic? Because let me tell you something. Okay, I'll put on my Dr. Phil hat here. Let me tell you a little something. Corporate America is cold and strategic. Do you think that they care about the individual working person? No, let's get real. You need to be that cold and strategic about yourself? It's not about doing what's best for corporate America, it's about doing what's best for you, particularly going into an economic downturn. What do you need to survive? Would it be in your best interest to take a phone call it eight o'clock? Not because it's what you want to do. But because you need to stay employed? Maybe we get a big revolution out of this? I don't know. I don't know. I wouldn't claim to have all the answers. In the meantime, if it were me, I would want to know that I was going into this in as good of shape as possible. And I would want to be intrical to the company's operation. If I were a W two employee working for somebody else, I would want to be as integral to that operation as I could be. And I would just make up my mind like I did in the Great Recession of oh eight. By God, if they close this place down. I'm the last one leaving. If they lay off people on the last one getting a pink slip, they are going to need me too bad to let me go and I was able to have that outcome. Not saying that everyone will. I just think you have to try. If you don't try, then you're not going to know. Stay safe. stay sane. I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We'll see you next time.