About seven years ago, the news warned us of ‘Quiet Dying’ as just another passing trend among the youngest generation in the workforce. Now, I’m stuck here, unable to retire, forcing my worn body to hold up what’s left of our world. I’ll never forget the ‘Day of Clocking Out.’ The news showed helicopter footage from above a farm in Southern California. That day, I was supposed to announce the layoffs of my company, but the trend made layoffs unnecessary. Back then, I didn’t understand it.
I miss the days when I’d be golfing and they’d be bringing in the money. I haven’t had a day off in three years. Even when I lost my finger, and even when I was vomiting blood from Covid-28, I still had to come in and keep the machines running. Many of my colleagues, once all powerful men and women in every industry, have now died, starving, hysterical, naked in the streets. I refuse to quit.
No one’s buying my product. The boxes are stacking up. I haven’t seen a truck drive by in a month. We didn’t think they’d drop off the face of the Earth like they did. We thought they’d take it, begrudgingly, like every generation before them.
Sure, we pushed it to the limits. We kept the wages low, the prices high, and our benefit packages as their only option. We told them we had the same to deal with, and we worked our way up out of the cave of labor and into the fresh air field of executive power. When that lie wasn’t believed, we awarded them impressive-looking paper weights as trophies for their hard work. When the trophies for dealing with our scam didn’t work, we gave them a false sense of hope by adding as many words like ‘executive,’ and ‘senior’ into their job title each year, in order to trim down their expected annual bonuses.
I see buzzards circling the setting sun light. Their population has exploded over the past few years. I rest my skeletal body down on the cement of the loading dock. My sweat stains the gray rock with a human-shaped ‘I was here’ graffiti. I don’t know why I continue to work day-after-day, as if it actually benefits me. I wonder if the folks who followed the ‘Quiet Dying’ trend have ever felt the same way. I’ll ask them soon when I close my eyes.