Above and beyond

Go above and beyond

Today’s expression is “go above and beyond.” That was part of Zaid Khan’s original TikTok video on “quiet quitting .” Do you remember what he said? He said that “quiet quitting” is about “quitting the idea of going above and beyond.”

To “go above and beyond” means to give extra effort, usually in a way that exceeds what is expected. This is a very common term in human resources. At work, if a manager says that an employee goes above and beyond, that’s usually a good thing—in the manager’s eyes. That usually means the employee has done more than what’s in the job description. That the company has a certain set of expectations, and this employee—this person who went above and beyond—exceeded the expectations, the person did more than what was expected or required.

The idea of “quiet quitting” is about not going above and beyond for a job, or at least not always going above and beyond.

You can see how this leads to a vicious cycle. If you go above and beyond at work, you’ll get recognized and maybe get a nice raise or bonus. But now what you just did—that’s now expected of you. So to go above and beyond again means to do even more. And the cycle repeats itself, and now we have people quietly quitting.

However, let’s look at it from another perspective. Don’t you like it when businesses go above and beyond for you? I have an example. I use a piece of software called ClickUp to manage my work here at Plain English. It really helps me stay organized and prioritize my projects. I’m not even a paying user of ClickUp; I use the free version.

But I wrote to customer support with a question about how to use the site and the support person recorded a screen capture video to answer my question, sent it to me, made sure I understood what the video was saying, and this all happened within half an hour of me sending my question in.

That is going above and beyond! I’m a free user and within half an hour I had the attention of someone in customer service, who recorded her screen showing me how to do something. This is above and beyond because it’s more than my expectations. When you’re a free user, you expect to probably get a reply to an email, but at least I expect a one- or two-line response and maybe some links to existing support articles.

I don’t expect a lot of personal attention—even as a paying user I don’t always expect that. It’s nice when it happens, but I never expect anyone in customer service to record their screen and answer my specific question. But they did that at ClickUp; they went above and beyond. They exceeded my expectations.

So let me ask you a question. Is it possible for companies to go above and beyond for their clients if all their own employees are quietly quitting? How can a company go above and beyond for their customers if all their own workers refuse to go above and beyond for the company? And do you want to live in a world in which nobody goes above and beyond? I don’t think I want to live in that world.

JR’s song of the week

JR’s song this week is “Every Breath You Take” by the Police. He was at a place called Ravinia here in the Chicago area. It’s a nice outdoor performance space with a big picnic area. It’s a lot of fun; he was there and saw Sting, the lead singer of the Police, who performed this song. “Every Breath You Take” by the Police is also part of one of JR’s favorite shows, “Stranger Things.”

See you next time!

So that’s all for today’s Plain English lesson, number 503 for Thursday, September 15, 2022. No quiet quitting here. We are fully engaged here at Plain English. A big thank-you again to everyone who joined us for our 500th lesson special. If you missed it, or if you want to re-live all the fun times, you can check out the replay at PlainEnglish.com/500.

We’ll be back on Monday, like always, for another great Plain English lesson. See you then!