There is something pleasing about the story of the Italian teacher Cinzia Paolina De Lio, who was recently dismissed for being off work, in one way or another, for 20 years during her 24-year period of employment. De Lio is appealing, but probably didn’t do herself any favours by reportedly telling local media: “Sorry, but right now I’m at the beach.”
She joins the ranks of anti-work heroes, including the Spanish “phantom functionary” who was claimed to have pulled a six-year sickie or the Italian hospital worker who reportedly skipped work entirely for 15 years. Those are the headlines; the stories behind them are likely to be more nuanced and probably sadder. Absenteeism is rarely an act of pure audacity or a principled philosophical stand. The individuals involved all disputed their employers’ accounts. But what’s interesting is how much we like hearing about them anyway.
The TikTok hashtag #quittok, where people resign (or talk about how life-changing quitting has been), has 677m views, and 406,000 people follow Shoji Morimoto on Twitter, where his bio states: “I’ll lend you someone who doesn’t do anything (me).” He gave up a job he didn’t enjoy as a freelance writer and hires himself out doing … well, nothing. In return for travel expenses, Morimoto has kept picnic spots and queue spaces, accompanied people on train journeys or to restaurants, spectated and sat around. The full story is in his enjoyably odd memoir, out this week. He didn’t actually write it, he explains in the introduction, just answered a writer and editor’s questions, because writing felt at odds with his Rental Person philosophy.
What do we get from these latter-day Bartleby, the Scriveners, declaring, like the scribe in Melville’s short story: “I would prefer not to”? Wish fulfilment, maybe, but a challenge, too. They’re unsettling, asking the confronting question: “What if you just … didn’t?” Arguably, it’s a thought experiment that stretches back to “Consider the lilies of the field” in the gospel of Matthew, but the modern iteration is enjoying a prolonged post-Covid moment. Quitting, resignation and general what’s-the-point-ness have generated endless chin-stroking and paragraphs of panicky analysis on LinkedIn. We seem less and less sold on the value of work in its present form. Striving feels daft, staring down the barrel of ecological catastrophe; consumption hastens planetary disaster; the stuff people used to work for – a home, economic stability – is no longer available, so what, really, is the point?
I appreciate the challenge posed by this wave of anti-productivity. Morimoto’s rejection of work is grounded in his belief that value is innate, not a function of what a person contributes, and that seems salutary. At my desk, working, I screenshot the cartoonist Sophie Lucido Johnson’s idyllic, dreamy drawings of people enjoying the wonder of the world and each other, with anti-motivational slogans: “You are already trying hard enough,” “Unless you’re a river in an old song, you’re not lazy,” “Maybe fuck grit.”
Is another way possible? Er, no. Jacking it all in remains a fantasy. Morimoto lives off savings; the others were salaried (suspected) slackers. To do so would mean overthrowing capitalism, and oof, that sounds like a ton of work, which is what we’re trying to avoid here. I don’t think any number of TikTokers saying: “You work more than hunter-gatherers, babes” will really inspire us to cast off our bonds and radically reshape society. Anyway, most of us are in the ambivalent middle, somewhere between rise and grind and “let it rot”.
But the Bartelbys can help around the margins, in making choices where we’re lucky enough to have them. Is it worth saying yes to a new project, extra hours, more responsibility? From where I’m working, writing about not working, I can see my hens dust-bathing in a heap of feathered contentment, occasionally pecking a passing bug. My son is reading in the shade and our tortoise is basking, motionless, legs outstretched, recharging with the rays. It looks nice out there, like one of Lucido Johnson’s drawings. Does it make sense to be sitting in here, squinting at a screen? Maybe. But it’s good to be poked into asking the question, now and then.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
