How to Be a Great Resigner
A Podcast Convo about Quitting Better
Last Saturday morning, a newsletter flitted into your mailbox about the Great Resignation. Here’s a quarter-hour podcast about being Gen Zs and quitting work.
[And if you missed the newsletter, here it is for your convenience…]
This summer, Ben Casselman of the New York Times announced that the weirdest story in recent employment history has come to an end: “The Great Resignation Is Over.”
In case you were distracted by a global pandemic or, more recently, the hottest summer in the last 4 billion years, let’s do a Great Resignation Recap. Since April of 2021, people have been quitting their jobs at a rate of nearly 4 million a month. One economist notes that we haven’t seen job quit rates like this since 1973. Pundits have argued whether the Big Quit will give way to the Big Regret or simply the Big Stay. But now that the American workforce has resigned from resigning, it all feels like a moot point.
So, what now? What do you do when the labor cycle moves from the possibilities of a great resignation to the stuckness of a not-so-great job?
I recommend a mode switch. Focus less on how you feel about your job and more on how you relate to work itself.
This mode switch is more than a change of mind. It is a change in what Eric Jenkins calls your “primary orientation” towards labor itself.
Let me make this mode switch strange for you. Don’t quit your job. Quit yourself.
Bear with a little etymology. The word quit for us today has mostly negative connotations. Nobody likes a quitter, etc. But look up the word in the Oxford English Dictionary, and you’ll see that it used to mean something very different. Back in 1225 CE, the word quit meant “to behave or conduct oneself, esp. satisfactorily or in a specified way; to play one's part.” In other words, quitting didn’t have to do with stopping. It had to do with your your way of doing a thing. In the good old sexist days of yore, people said, “Quit yourself like a man,” meaning “Stay strong.”
All this to say, that I’d like to recommend reflection on how you comport yourself, or (to return to the old English) how you quit yourself, not just towards your particular job, but towards work itself.
In 2021 and 2022, I interviewed 47 people from the so-called Generation Quit. Doing that research confronted me with four postures towards work:
The Thespians were among the shrewdest and most disempowered of the people I spoke with. Having just entered the workforce after graduation, they had to do a lot of playacting. Look, they weren’t posers. But their jobs didn’t give them much to work with. I talked to one professional who had taken a new job during the pandemic, working remotely. She soon discovered that her boss never read more than two lines of an email. His unresponsiveness forced her to play the role of someone who already knew what was going on. That sucks. But even so, being a Thespian can be a vital posture towards vocation, helping you keep clear which parts are you and which parts are a role you play at work. One Black professional I spoke with described putting on what she called “the Face” during Zoom calls when her White colleagues presumed that their experience was the same as hers. Her fierce mask communicated an identity larger than her role.
The Deconverts had spent a lot of years and a lot of tuition dollars to prepare for a job—only to leave that career for something else. Their willingness to pivot way from a dream job takes some pluck. It’s hard to leave what parents had expected of you (You should be in teacher!) and what professors had promised for you (You have a great future in this field!). But as my research taught me, Deconverts have learned to be bluntly practical about vocation. My work, your work, most people’s work, probably won’t change the world. It can, however, put food on the table and pay the bills and get you a vacation now and then. These people’s posture reminded me of what St. Thérèse of Lisieux used to call “the little way.” She was referring to a mundane and unimpressive goodness that can be a path of grace through ordinary life. Deconverts have given up on heroism and quitted themselves in the Little Way.
The Improvers were determined to use work to solve big problems in society. Some people prioritize personal meaningfulness in their work. Others prioritize stability. Improvers are purpose-driven people who believe that their own stability can be meaningful for the world. Work, in other words, is for the common good. They were the public servants, the social entrepreneurs, and the nonprofit managers. I bet you feel just a tinge of skepticism about this posture. I do, too. Sometimes, we all have to say, look, your job’s just a job. But the Improvers have a response worth listening to. They say that the climate’s too hot, and the country’s too unfair, and their ancestry is too sacred, to just do the 9 to 5 thing. Use work to make things better. In the great shake-ups of late capitalism, Improvers are asking, what new shape might work today for the good of the world?
And, finally, there were the Therapists. My guess is that most people reading this newsletter fall into this category, if only because the millennial professionals, who make up much of the Mode/Switch subscriber list, have taken leadership positions in their organization. You probably have other employees under your care. Whereas being an Improver relies on how you cultivate the meaningfulness of your work for the common good, being a Therapist means looking for how you cultivate the meaningfulness of other people’s work. That requires posturing yourself like a coach, an encourager, and a cultivator of brave conversations. Sometimes, it means being a consultant or a marketer or a PR person. Sometimes I have my doubts about this posture, too. It sounds like a sellout to the evils of capitalism. You’re just making everybody better adjusted to a terrible situation, providing padded seats on a compromised submersible? But instead of “burn it down!” the Therapists ask, how to create what Adam Grant has called better “subcultures” in organizational life and work.
Most of my interviewees adopted more than one of these four postures. You might do the same. Let’s say you posture yourself as a Therapist towards work; you might try being a part-time Deconvert. Why? Therapists can care too much and burn themselves out. A little skepticism about your job’s ultimate meaningfulness can be good for your soul. Or, let’s say you’re a Thespian towards work. A shape-shifter. A role-player. Try adopting the posture of an Improver, maybe every other Tuesday. Keep your poser self honest. Look squarely at how inequitable things have become. Do something about inequity near you.
Remember, these postures are more about work than about your particular job. That means, you can adopt these postures and still quit your current position, if you need to. (The Big Quit may be over, but you’re not locked in for the Big Stay.)
This week’s Mode/Switch asks you to consider if the change you need is a new workplace or a new work posture. Adam Grant’s book Think Again offers a good closing word: “Our happiness depends more on what we do than where we are.”
