It’s not the crime but the cover-up. And it’s not the video but the reverberations. In the past few weeks the term “quiet quitting” has entered conversations about the workplace. A 17-second clip on TikTok, a social-media platform, in which an American called Zaid Khan embraces the notion of not going above and beyond at work, has caused an awful lot of noise.?

這不是犯罪，而是掩蓋事實(shí)。不是視頻的問(wèn)題，而是反響的問(wèn)題。過(guò)去幾周，“躺平”一詞進(jìn)入了有關(guān)職場(chǎng)的對(duì)話。社交媒體平臺(tái)TikTok上一段17秒的視頻片段引起了很大的爭(zhēng)議。在視頻中，一位名叫Zaid Khan的美國(guó)人接受了不要在工作中有超越(自我)的想法。

The video itself is amazingly anodyne. A piano tinkles. Bromides such as “Work is not your life” and “Your worth is not defined by your productive output” flash on the screen. Mr Khan implies that time not spent hustling at work can be better spent playing with a bubble machine and admiring trees.?

視頻本身令人驚訝地平靜。鋼琴聲響起。諸如“工作不是你的生活”和“你的價(jià)值不是由你的產(chǎn)出來(lái)定義的”之類的陳詞濫調(diào)在屏幕上閃過(guò)。Khan先生暗示，花在忙碌的工作上的時(shí)間，可以更好用來(lái)玩泡泡機(jī)以及欣賞樹(shù)木上。

Dull or not, it stamped on a nerve. Workers approvingly shared their stories about deciding not to work overtime, about prioritising work-life balance and about doing enough to get their job done without succumbing to burnout. Several bosses promptly lost their moorings. Kevin O’Leary, a businessman-cum-television-personality, called it “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard”. Arianna Huffington, another entrepreneur, wrote a LinkedIn post in which she described quiet quitting “as a step towards quitting on life”.

不管是不是無(wú)聊，它都戳到我的神經(jīng)了。員工們贊同地分享了他們決定不加班、優(yōu)先考慮工作與生活的平衡、盡力完成工作而不過(guò)度勞累的故事。幾位老板立即失去了他們的根基。商人兼電視名人凱文?奧利里稱這是“我聽(tīng)過(guò)的最愚蠢的想法”。另一位企業(yè)家阿里安娜?赫芬頓則在領(lǐng)英上發(fā)表了一篇文章，她在文中將“躺平”描述為“邁向放棄生活的一步”。

The fact that some employees feel unenthused about their work is hardly new. In all workplaces employees show varying degrees of commitment to their jobs. Some work late, others leave at 5 o’clock sharp, a few seem to do little more than respire. A survey of workers around the world by Gallup, a pollster, found that only 21% of them are engaged by their jobs. The very idea of going above and beyond requires a distribution of effort, with less committed colleagues providing a baseline against which others can be judged. The nature of the work also matters: it is easier to be engaged by some jobs than others. It is unsurprising, too, that quiet quitting has a particular resonance now. Lots of employees feel detached from their work.?

事實(shí)上，一些員工對(duì)自己的工作缺乏熱情并不是什么新鮮事。在所有的工作場(chǎng)所，員工對(duì)工作表現(xiàn)出不同程度的投入。有些人工作到很晚，有些人5點(diǎn)整就下班了，還有些人似乎除了呼吸幾乎什么也不做。民意調(diào)查機(jī)構(gòu)蓋洛普對(duì)全球員工進(jìn)行的一項(xiàng)調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn)，只有21%的工人全身心投入到工作中。超越(自身)的想法本身就需要分配努力，不太投入的同事則提供一個(gè)基準(zhǔn)，其他人可以據(jù)此做出判斷。工作的性質(zhì)也很重要：有些工作比其他工作更容易讓人投入?，F(xiàn)在，“躺平”引起了特別的反響，這也不足為奇。很多員工都覺(jué)得自己脫離了工作。

The bargain of hard work for higher pay is less attractive than it once was. A succession of big shocks, from the financial crisis of 2007-09 to the pandemic, has made career planning seem pointless to some. Higher salaries go less far in many places: housing affordability is at its lowest level on record in Britain, according to Halifax, a lender. All of which may make some workers less motivated to pull all-nighters in search of a promotion.?

以努力工作換取更高薪水的交易已經(jīng)不像以前那么有吸引力了。從2007-2009年的金融危機(jī)到新冠肺炎疫情，一連串的重大沖擊讓一些人覺(jué)得職業(yè)規(guī)劃毫無(wú)意義。在許多地方，更高的工資并沒(méi)有起到多大作用：據(jù)貸款機(jī)構(gòu)哈利法克斯稱，英國(guó)的住房負(fù)擔(dān)能力處于歷史最低水平。這一切可能會(huì)降低一些員工為了升職而通宵工作的積極性。

The melodramatic reaction of some bosses looks stranger at first glance. This is not the start of a revolution, after all. Mr Khan’s post may have garnered 3.5m views on TikTok but the most viewed video on the platform has been seen 2.2bn times (it features an illusionist on a broomstick). Even slackers need to make money; showing application is still a pretty reliable way of getting ahead in the workplace.?

一些老板的夸張反應(yīng)乍一看很奇怪。畢竟，這不是一場(chǎng)革命的開(kāi)始。Khan的帖子在TikTok上可能獲得了350萬(wàn)次觀看，但該平臺(tái)上觀看次數(shù)最多的視頻已經(jīng)有22億次(視頻的主角是一個(gè)騎著掃帚的魔術(shù)師)。即使是懶人也需要賺錢(qián)；展示自己的應(yīng)用能力仍然是在職場(chǎng)取得成功的一個(gè)相當(dāng)可靠的方法。

Even so, for many chief executives, it may well feel as though the ground is shifting in new and disturbing ways. Consider the types of people who tend to make it to the corner office. These are individuals who almost certainly want to be on the highest rung of a career ladder, who are heavily influenced by monetary incentives and who have made work their life. Quiet quitting is simply not in their make-up.?

即便如此，對(duì)許多首席執(zhí)行官來(lái)說(shuō)，他們很可能會(huì)覺(jué)得形勢(shì)正在以一種新的、令人不安的方式發(fā)生變化。想想那些傾向于進(jìn)入高管辦公室的人吧。這些人幾乎肯定想要登上職業(yè)階梯的最高層，他們深受金錢(qián)激勵(lì)的影響，并把工作當(dāng)成了自己的生活?！疤善健备静皇撬麄兊娘L(fēng)格。

Yet old certainties about what motivates people have changed. The pursuit of purpose matters more than it did during the formative years of many of today’s bosses. The modern version of Gordon Gekko would run a social-impact fund and say “green is good”. Research published last year showed that co-workers and culture matter more to people’s sense of job satisfaction than pay, a blow to anyone who thinks that the prospect of landing a bigger pay cheque is all it takes to gin up wild enthusiasm.?

不過(guò)，關(guān)于人們動(dòng)機(jī)的舊的定論已經(jīng)改變了。對(duì)當(dāng)今的許多老板來(lái)說(shuō)，追求目標(biāo)比他們成長(zhǎng)時(shí)期做啥更重要?，F(xiàn)代版的戈登?蓋柯會(huì)經(jīng)營(yíng)一家社會(huì)影響基金，并說(shuō)“綠色是好的”。去年發(fā)表的一項(xiàng)研究顯示，同事和文化對(duì)人們的工作滿意度的影響比工資更大，這對(duì)那些認(rèn)為只要有更高的薪水就能激發(fā)熱情的人來(lái)說(shuō)是一個(gè)打擊。

The pandemic has discombobulated bosses in other ways. Advice to burn the midnight oil jars when everyone else is worried about burnout. Plenty of corner-office occupants want employees to return to the office, the environment in which they built their careers; the end of summer has seen another push from many American companies to fill up the cubicles again. The idea that employees may all be playing with bubble machines rather than going the extra mile feeds suspicions about remote work.?

疫情在其他方面也讓老板們感到困惑。當(dāng)所有人都在擔(dān)心自己會(huì)精疲力竭的時(shí)候，又建議大家熬夜繼續(xù)工作。許多高管希望員工回到辦公室，回到他們職業(yè)生涯的環(huán)境；夏季結(jié)束后，許多美國(guó)公司又在推動(dòng)員工們重新坐滿隔間。員工們可能都在玩泡泡機(jī)，而不是多付出一點(diǎn)努力，這種想法加劇了人們對(duì)遠(yuǎn)程工作的懷疑。

The quiet-quitting kerfuffle tells a tale of two alienated groups. One comprises those disenchanted employees who wonder what the point is of working themselves to the bone. The other is a less obvious tribe: those in the corporate elite whose way of thinking about the workplace is under threat.

“躺平”的喧囂講述了兩個(gè)被疏遠(yuǎn)群體的故事。一種是那些不抱幻想的員工，他們想知道拼命工作的意義何在。另一個(gè)群體則不那么明顯：那些企業(yè)精英，他們對(duì)職場(chǎng)的思考方式正受到威脅。