🤫 Quit your job. But make it ... quiet.

It’s Tuesday, Boston.

🧑‍🍳 There are a lot of folks giving local restaurant recs. But if you’re picking just one to listen to, an actual industry worker is probably your best bet. That’s what you’ll get in Boston.com’s new series “Yes, Chef.” First up: A day’s worth of eats from the bar director at Moon Bar.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Wu is going for round two

• Thanksgiving traffic looks … wild

• R.I.P. to Mass.’ oldest resident

Up first…

OFFICE APPROPRIATE

WTH is “quiet quitting?”

Here’s a radical idea: What if you stopped going above and beyond at work and simply did what was required of you? Welcome to the latest installment of our “Office Appropriate” series: Quiet quitting.

🧑‍💻 Quiet quitting isn’t about quitting, full stop. It’s about quitting “the idea of going above and beyond” at your job. Quiet quitters perform all their assigned duties, but stop short of going beyond what’s absolutely necessary. The idea first flooded our FYPs back in 2022, and has received its fair share of criticism. But according to one study, it can now be used to describe about 50% of our workforce. That said, not all jobs are quiet-quittable. As one B-Sider put it: “I am a nurse, no such thing for us.”

📈 Young workers’ expectations might be a little high. Jayne Mattson, a local career management consultant, describes quiet quitting as a reaction to young workers’ high expectations of big responsibility, raises, and promotions right off the bat. But that type of thinking will likely lead to disappointment, she said. Progression up the corporate ladder is rarely fast, and most people will have to deal with a bad boss or two before seeing the fruits of their labor. “That’s why it’s called career progression,” she said. “It doesn’t come overnight.”

💔 But young employees have a right to feel down. At the same time, Gallup reports that workers feel less engaged, less cared for, and that they have fewer opportunities to develop at their companies. 

🥲 One 28-year-old consultant told us she began quiet quitting after noticing she wasn’t getting rewarded for trying harder. “I actively saw other people being promoted and my manager couldn't tell me what I needed,” she said. Another 25-year-old PR specialist described how a co-worker she shared responsibilities with left and was never replaced, leaving her to do the extra work with no pay raise and no support. “[I felt] like I could just disappear … and no one would notice,” she said. (Both women are anonymized here due to the possibility of career repercussions.) 

🤫 Setting some boundaries can be a way to take back control. And that’s ultimately what quiet quitting is about. For the PR specialist, it meant closing her laptop at 5 p.m. instead of routinely working late. “It was difficult to adjust to [quiet quitting] for me,” she said. “But, once I settled into it, it felt like it really improved my quality of life.”

TOGETHER WITH THE HANDEL AND HAYDN SOCIETY

Unleash your inner virtuoso 

🎻✨ Want to be in a room full of folks who can talk Beethoven without missing a beat? Join H² (H-squared), H+H’s lively network for young music lovers. For just $96, you’ll score tickets to three amazing concerts this year (yes, Messiah on Nov. 29 is included) and gain access to exclusive events and networking receptions where you can sip champagne and mingle with fellow aficionados. And if you want to bring a friend (or date), it’s only $32 a ticket. Join now and enjoy the classics in great company.

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🙋🏻‍♀️ It’s (pretty much) official: Mayor Michelle Wu is running for reelection. And, well, we kind of already knew that. This past weekend, Mayor Wu confirmed to WCVB that she’ll seek reelection next year, but we shouldn’t expect the formal announcement until after she’s welcomed her third child, sometime in January. Rumors are already swirling about who might challenge her *cough* Josh Kraft and Ed Flynn, but they’d likely have an uphill battle, because, surprise surprise, no incumbent Boston mayor has lost a reelection bid since 1940. 

🚘 Prepare to sit in a parking lot on I-95 this Thanksgiving week. AAA released its Thanksgiving travel report on Monday, predicting around a record-breaking 80 million folks will be traveling over the holiday week, ~72 million of whom will be hitting the road. Want a teaser? Afternoon traffic between Boston and Portsmouth, N.H., via I-95 North is projected to see a 117% increase on Tuesday, Nov. 26 *sobs*. We’ll give you more deets next week, but as an early TL;DR: The worst times to drive will be the Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving.

💸 One unexpected cost of a functioning T: Overtime pay. We mean that literally. Overtime pay for MBTA workers is on pace to exceed a total of $130 million, up $20 million over 2023. More than 6,000 of the MBTA’s nearly 8,400 workers are taking overtime pay, including Transit Police Lieutenant Manes Cadet, who took home $236,472 in overtime alone. Why? The agency attributes the increase to the scale of the work it took to eliminate slow zones, but the MBTA is notorious for “substandard” timekeeping. 

🇵🇸 Tufts’ pro-Palestine group just got dealt a serious blow. Tufts’ Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which has been on interim suspension with the school since early November, is now officially suspended through 2027, announcing its “formal break and disaffiliation” with the university. Tufts said the suspension is because the group “failed to complete sanctions” from its previous violations, of which there are nine. But the SJP is standing its ground, posting on social media that it will continue organizing and demonstrating against Tufts.

QUICK QUESTION

🗳️ As of right now, would you vote for Mayor Wu to be reelected?

ONE LAST THING

R.I.P. to Mass.’ oldest resident

If you’re ever thinking “I’ve lived a lot of life,” may we introduce you to Herlda Senhouse. 

The 113-year-old Mass. woman and the second-oldest person in the U.S. whose age was verified, passed away Saturday (for context, she was born before World War I). And while reaching centenarian-plus status is certainly an achievement, that’s just part of her story. 

The Wellesley resident had a heart of gold. She co-founded a charity that helped local Black students pay for college, and she enrolled in Boston Medical Center’s New England Centenarian Study at age 105 to help researchers pinpoint how rare souls like hers live so long. 

Do-gooding aside, Senhouse loved trips to Encore Casino with friends (where she was treated like royalty by the management) and had the stamina to play a nine-hour game of Phase 10 into the wee hours of the morning just a few years ago.

A friend described her as being small “but had big-person energy.” Rest easy, Herlda.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🪦 Thanks for reading! Can I steal that line for my tombstone?

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, Handel and Haydn Society, for supporting local journalism and connecting music lovers throughout Boston. 

🤒 The results are in: 34% of B-Siders say that they’ve had COVID twice. But only one reader said this: “Eight. Times. That I know of!” OMG.

💃 Keep up with us @BostonBSide on IG, TikTok, and Twitter. Send comments and suggestions to [email protected] or [email protected].