Now you see, to me, this 'quiet quitting' is what we used to call 'proper work'. You came in at nine, did your job, and were putting your coat on at 4:55. If your boss wanted you to stay late, he came to you and asked, several days before, and promised time-and-a-half (double time at weekends). If he (it was always a he then) needed an extra or out of the way task doing, you shrugged and said 'not my job', and he'd have to do it himself. If it became a regular thing, the union made damned sure that somebody new was hired to do it.

The union negotiated everybodys' pay rise every year. Promotions were simple - if the manager left or retired, his deputy got promoted, the supervisor became deputy manager, the clerk who'd been there longest became supervisor, the longest-serving junior became a clerk and they hired a school-leaver as the new junior. An excellent, fair and practical system known as 'Buggins' turn' which had kept the UK at the forefront of world industry since the 1800s.

Then came Thatcher, the fanatical 51st Stater who changed the rules to match the US system where everybody's supposed to break their silly necks trying to climb the corporate laddder and become a CEO. Of course, executive posts in the UK are only available to those who've been to the right schools and whose fathers play golf with the directors. The result was that offices became toxic places to work, stuffed with bullies, arsehole-creepers and the occasional grizzled old class-warrior like me, always ready to throw a spanner in the bosses' works! Of course, under this shiny new system, British industry fell off the bottom of the league tables.

So I spent my working life 'quiet quitting'. I'd still be doing it now if my passion for fair play hadn't pushed me into union activism and eventual 'constructive dismissal'.