You are being paid for your output, not your time.
And most of us have been fooled into thinking that devaluing our work is somehow noble and virtuous.
It’s worth saying again.
You are not paid for your time. You are paid for the output from the work you do.
Sometimes it’s obvious: a farmer is paid for the amount of food they produce, not how efficient they are at producing it. A woodworker is paid when they sell a table or chair they’ve made, not for the number of hours needed to make it, and so on. {1}
But we forget that wages — hourly and salaried — are also tied to our output.
Don’t believe me? It’s easy to test.
Watch videos on your phone throughout your whole shift. Stand around and do nothing. See how long that does not affect your "hourly" wages.
Your productivity — even though your pay is nominally based on hours worked (or how much time has passed, for salaried workers) — cannot drop below a certain level. Therefore, your wages are not just about time, they’re tied to your work output. {2}
Think about that when employers make comments about how they imagine work-from-home employees go about their day. Think about how you’re paid for your output, not your time, when they issue and try to justify return-to-office orders. Particularly if that justification is an ableist neurotypical idea of how to ease loneliness spouted by middle managers that seem to think work-life balance means you should make your work life be your social life.
Devaluing Your Own Labor
There are several layers of abstraction and mediation making the link between your output and your wages less explicit. For the most part, this is convenient for everyone. When I worked at a hospital, even if patient volumes varied, my paycheck stayed the same.
But while we are continually made aware of the lower limits of productivity, the fact that the the lower limit to one’s productivity at a certain wage level exists at all implies there is also an upper limit to that productivity at that wage level.
That’s a wonky paragraph, so let me put it more simply:
If Taylor does better than their peers, being more productive by 10%, but gets paid the same amount, then they are actively reducing the value of their work by 10%. Same wages, different output.
Think about that when you re-read this definition of "quiet quitting":
Quiet quitting refers to doing the minimum requirements of one’s job and putting in no more time, effort, or enthusiasm than absolutely necessary. As such, it is something of a misnomer, since the worker doesn’t actually leave their position and continues to collect a salary.
The definition of "quiet quitting" exposes the unspoken assumptions of the managerial class. The entire "problem" is that you are only doing the exactly what you are supposed to be doing. That you are not doing extra without being compensated for it.
And that is a problem.
By keeping the relationship between output and wages obscured, it makes it easier to change justifications when it’s convenient — for the employer, not the employee. It’s an information inequality that tips the scales significantly, distorting any free market forces.
This is why the resistance to RTO orders and "quiet quitting" (aka "doing your job") are seen as threats. After regaining the time and money that we used to spend (unpaid!) just commuting to workplaces, RTO mandates are rightly seen as unneeded and uncompensated expenses. Toxic expectations of doing extra, uncompensated work for free can be resisted by individuals…by simply just doing what they’re supposed to do.
When you’re hired for a job, you are hired with the expectations of doing a specific amount (and type) of work for a specific amount of pay and benefits. If the expectations of the amount of work — including the labor, time, and expense of unneeded travel to a physical location — changes, then the compensation should change as well.
After all, aren’t you worth it?
{1} You may pay more, but that’s because of other aspects — the materials used, the strength of construction, its uniqueness, or even just the fact that it was made by hand — not because it simply took longer to make. Sort of.
{2} Technically, it’s the rate of your output, with a minimum floor. And while a lot of our work no longer produces physical output, this applies to experiences and intangible output, like from education.