The Great Retention

Over the past three years, employers have faced many difficulties when it comes to job recruitment and staff retention. Many businesses are unable to find enough people to occupy available jobs in a job market that – Wait, hang on a second, the editor-in-chief just sent me something… Okay, never mind. It now appears that not enough people are quitting their jobs, much to the chagrin of management.

“Nobody wants to quit anymore!” says Marcus Dougal, CEO of Shining Sun Property Management.

Yes, part of doing business is a healthy level of workplace attrition, or a gradual reduction in staff resulting from employees leaving and not being replaced. For the sake of bombastic, engagement bait headlines we’re going to go ahead and call that process “quiet layoffs”.

Quiet layoffs usually happen naturally and many business managers rely on them in order to cut costs without actually having to do anything.

“This younger generation has no quit ethic,” says Dougal. “How is a business supposed to function when all the employees just keep coming to work and doing their job?”

Dougal even tried to tempt some workers into walking out by offering the staff a pizza party in place of a year-end bonus but says that just made some workers vow to stay even longer, perhaps out of spite.

"I don't know what else to do," says Dougal. "We made them come back into the office and gave them more responsibilities, all the while keeping pay raises well below inflation rates. And they're still coming to work! If this trend doesn’t subside, some of these employees might actually stay here long enough to retire!”

Effects of this new phenomenon, called The Great Retention because buzzwords sell ad space, can be seen all over:

• Just last week, a sign on the door of a McDonald’s stating “MIGHT AS WELL JUST COME IN I GUESS. WE’RE FULLY STAFFED TODAY. NOBODY WANTS TO NOT WORK ANYMORE" went viral across social media as did several help-wanted ads from small businesses and franchises specifying “Now hiring people who don't show up!”.

• Grocery chain Publix has reported a 37% increase in cakes ordered by companies celebrating employee anniversaries. There has also been a 17% increase in pizzas being delivered to businesses for employee gatherings as reported by Domino's, Pizza Hut, and Papa John's.

• Boomer-aged Facebook users have began angrily posting that large retail and grocery chains have all gone almost entirely to employee-operated cash registers, leaving such posters insulted that they are no longer trusted to ring themselves out at self-checkout.

• The burgeoning Anti-Quit community on Reddit (r/antiquit) has recently surpassed two million active users on their subreddit rife with screenshots depicting text message conversations between managers and employees where the employee refuses to not come into work, stories shared about times users decided to stick it out at a job, and advice requests from those having trouble staying at work.

We had the chance to speak to Anti-Quit influencer Fuck You, I’m Staying (who asked that we withhold his real name) for some insight on this issue.

“A lot of people are calling it ‘quiet working’,” says Fuck You, “but we prefer the term ‘acting your engage’.

“We’ve seen the vocational struggles of previous generations,” Fuck You continues, “and we don’t intend to repeat those mistakes. These corporations, they think they can treat us like garbage, undercut our pay, not offer us any decent benefits, and expect us to quit? No, it doesn’t work that way anymore. If they’re not going to treat us with the value we deserve then they can at least look us in the eye as we troop into work every day and continue to work hard. That’ll show ‘em!”

As The Great Retention continues to roll forward, companies are finding themselves fully-staffed with hard-working employees who aren’t going anywhere. And those employees aren’t budging despite the fact that this trend creates an organizational bottleneck inhibiting upward movement into positions that they wouldn’t get anyway because companies usually just shuffle the same people around those roles for years at a time anyway.

Until this trend peters out, CEOs like Marcus Dougal will need to learn to cope.

“I’d honestly even settle for a little quiet quitting at this point,” says Dougal. “Just some indication that these employees don’t really care about this job.”

The biggest fear for corporate America right now is that The Great Retention becomes the norm and workers remain in roles no matter how badly they’re treated, a problem to which there is no clear-cut solution.

“I mean,” says Dougal with a shrug, “We can just do regular lay-offs if we have to.”

Oh yeah, I guess that works too.