From Rage Applying to Grumpy Staying: The boomer boss guide to gen Z work lingo

Over the past couple of years we’ve seen a rise in work-related buzz phrases, like ‘quiet quitting’ and ‘desk bombing’. Generally spawning from TikTok, they provide a great, and often hilarious, insight into gen Z’s perspective on work, bosses and colleagues.

If you’ve found it a bit difficult to keep up, we’ve compiled a handy translation guide.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of these have stemmed from dissatisfied employees who feel they are underpaid and overworked.

Gen Z work phrases you should know

• Quiet Quitting: doing the bare minimum of your job requirements without volunteering any additional time, energy or enthusiasm. You won’t catch quiet quitters starting early, staying late or attending non-mandatory meetings.
• Quiet Hiring: Here’s one we’ve all experienced. A workplace fulfilling the needs of the company by delegating additional work to current employees instead of actually hiring more people. And that of course leads us to …
• Acting Your Wage: Similar to quiet quitting, this involves unhappy workers only doing what is required of their (usually inadequate) pay grade. There will be no overtime, taking on extra tasks you’re not paid for, or replying to weekend work Slacks.
• Bare Minimum Mondays: Doing as little work as you can get away with on a Monday. I can assure my editor I definitely don’t do this.
• Quiet Firing: The act of making a workplace or job so unpleasant that people leave of their own accord. This saves on the likes of severance in the US or redundancy pay here in Australia.
• Rage Applying: Getting so frustrated with your job or boss that you begin applying for new roles out of sheer anger. Potentially linked to quiet firing in some workplaces.
• Grumpy Staying: In my experience, this tends to follow Rage Applying, after you come down from a spiral. But regardless of the circumstance, grumpy staying usually happens when you don’t have a choice but to stay in a job you don’t like, or decide its easier to stick with the devil you know.
• Desk bombing: When a colleague rocks up to your desk unannounced, interrupting your flow with irrelevant questions or stories. Every office has someone who is notorious for this. If you don’t know who it is, it might be you.
• #QuitTok: The trend of gen Z workers filming themselves quit their job. It is usually over a video call and it’s pretty funny.

The behaviour is backed by data

Of course, there are those who argue these behaviours already existed and we just have names for them now thanks to a generation that grew up sharing their lives online.

There is also an argument that some of these things aren’t indicative of any real change in employee behaviour. The TikTok algorithm is strong after all, and some viral videos don’t necessarily mean anything tangible is actually happening.

We certainly saw a similar argument around the Great Resignation seeming more prolific than it actually was.

But according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) latest job mobility report, released today, 1.3 million people did actually change jobs during the year ending February 2023.

This equals a job mobility rate of 9.5% of all employed people changing jobs during the year. While this was the same rate as the previous year, this figure is still the highest rate of job changes since February 2012, when it sat at 10.5%.

Further to that, 2.3 million Australians left or lost a job between February 2022 and February 2023. That was an increase of 200,000 people from the previous period. Of those workers, 32% reported leaving for a better offer or wanted a change — a figure that was up 21.7% since February 2021.

So say what you will about young workers, but people are looking for better pay and conditions elsewhere if they can’t find it in their current roles. And they’re not afraid to post it on socials.