After a solid year of giving my attention to a company that never respected me, I finally decided it was time to cut the cord.

As a writer, being given a daily quota of articles to contribute was never a problem for me. 

At Company X, I was told to contribute four articles per day within an eight-hour shift. I’m a fast writer and I always have been.

I would typically complete my quota within the first two hours of the day. That left me with six unused hours on my shift.

Around three or four months in, I was told I needed to fill the rest of my workday with additional article submissions… at no extra pay. 

My decision to quiet quit was set in motion.

Quiet quitting to avoid unpaid labor

Obviously, I wasn’t stoked about being told to do unpaid labor.

Being a fast and efficient writer resulted in me being penalized. The punishment for working quickly was getting more (unpaid) work added to my plate!

I knew I’d be on the fast track toward burnout, career exhaustion, and lowered morale if I agreed to contribute more work each day without a pay raise.

So, I did what anyone else would naturally do in my situation. I “quiet quit.”

I would write all four articles in the first two hours of my day as usual, but I would wait to turn them in.

I’d submit them two hours apart throughout the day by using a timer to keep me on track.

This way, it looked like I was keeping busy my entire day and I wouldn’t be forced to do extra work for free. 

Keep in mind that when I accepted the position in the first place, I was agreeing to contribute four articles per day… Anything above that quota was NOT what I initially signed up for in my contract.

Four articles per day, no matter how fast I was writing them, still equated to 2,000 words of brain power.

Being forced to write more pieces than the slower writers on my team was undoubtedly going to lead me down the path of burnout, lowered morale, and resentment against my bosses. 

Quiet quitting led to me getting quiet fired

Quiet quitting is a term that explains workers choosing to do the bare minimum of their job requirements.

Quiet quitting means you refuse to do any additional unpaid tasks or labor.

So there I was, doing the exact job description I was being paid for, according to my contract.

But in the eyes of the company, my quiet quitting was probably a huge sign of disrespect. 

They wanted me to contribute more articles within my workday if I was finishing early. But they didn’t want to pay me for those extra articles. Talk about trying to squeeze the life out of an employee. 

At some point along the way, it was probably pretty obvious I was turning in my work at a slower rate than usual.

I went from being a very fast writer to suddenly slowing my submissions down in a major way.

A couple of months later, I got tired of pretending I was a slow writer. I grew annoyed about having to submit my articles in two-hour increments with a timer to remind me.

I decided to leave the full-time contract at Company X altogether. I offered to stay on with them as a freelancer because as a freelancer, I’d have the freedom to turn in my work as fast as I wanted without anyone trying to force me to do extra work.

As a freelancer, I wasn’t stuck hovering over my laptop for a full eight-hour shift. I was able to submit all four of my articles within the first couple hours of the day and then move on with other things. 

Company X obviously didn’t like seeing that and proceeded to cut my pay in half by making claims that my work was “never high enough quality.”

It was weird because none of the editors I worked with ever brought concerns to me about mistakes or errors in my articles leading up to this announcement. 

If there had been a paper trail of editors sending my work back for revisions, I’d understand that I was failing at my job.

Since none of the editors were asking me to revise my work (at all) within the last several months, the massive pay cut seemed to be coming from a very PETTY place.

In other words, I was being “quiet fired.”

Getting quiet fired is when a company starts treating you badly in hopes that you’ll be the one to quit. Company X certainly got their way.

Things with Company X weren’t totally terrible the entire time, though.

I met a group of great girls, I learned better SEO practices, I mastered trending searches for article pitching, and I expanded my portfolio of published articles.

As a writer, what more could I ask for?

Every job I’ve had in my life has been a stepping stone to something better. Every new job I land pays better than the last. 

The new company I’m currently with has an incredibly sweet editorial team. They pay me significantly more than Company X ever did.

I’m grateful for what I learned from them, but I’m also grateful I’ve been able to move on to something that better suits me now. 

I don’t regret quiet quitting. It was a sign of self-respect.