With the changing dynamics of the workplace, we get to see several trends coming up. Right now,‘Rage applying’ is trendy not only all over workplaces but also on social media. The Pioneer’s Tejal Sinha spoke to a few employees who shared their experiences related to the trend and also with the psychologist to understand the reason and what requires to be done in such cases.
The dynamics, or the world, of the workplace, keep changing day-to-day with several new trends that get introduced. A trend that was all over the internet for a long time was ‘Quiet Quitting’.Quiet quitting doesn’t mean actually quitting your job. It just means doing what’s required and then getting on with your life—having more work-life balance. Quiet quitting is the art of not taking work too seriously, mostly used by Gen Z workers, who have helped the term go viral on social media.
And now comes its cousin, Rage applying to the picture. Rage applying is an act of “revenge”, for employees who feel unappreciated and overlooked. Rage applying denotes an attempt to channel your anger and frustration at work or at your boss into applying for multiple jobs at once. This usually happens when you are very dissatisfied with your current job and are looking for ways to get out of this workplace. Employees who feel underappreciated, burned out, or uninterested in working for their managers participate in this new workplace trend.
To understand how it actually works, we connected with Smrithi Saluja, an IT professional. Every time Smrithi was ‘fed up’ with her work, she always felt like going on a trip to calm herself down.
“See, the thing here is that every job will have pressure no matter what. However, one cannot work beyond their capacity. It gets difficult to even work. It not only affects my work but has also started affecting my mental health. I could barely sleep for 4-5 hours. But the sad part here is that it’s not just about the workload, but your superiors or employers using terms like ‘Fit for nothing’.
I was even told, ‘You girls have to work at home and not in offices’. People talk about mental health in the workplace, but there’s still that age-old patriarchal thinking. I had no choice but to apply to multiple other organisations after a certain point, and I’m glad that my superior is now a woman herself and is quite understanding,” Smrithi, who had applied for seven jobs, explained.
On the other hand, the improper treatment led Sukesh Chatterjee to apply for more than 15 jobs.“No employee would want their employer to appreciate them every single day. There might be a few. But it’s important for employers to understand that if one does a good job genuinely, they should be appreciated. People might say they work for money, but after a point, it is obvious they want to be appreciated.
I used to always give my best at work, but my former employer never appreciated me. He only appreciated the ones he liked. This might sound wrong, but it is what it is. I was always told that my work doesn’t show my passion for my job. I tried improving to a certain point. However, I had even received aggressive emails. I wasn’t given proper pay. And when I was questioned, I was yelled at in front of my colleagues and juniors,” she added.
Something that we could understand from the above employees was that they had a lot of frustration, which led them to rage. In order to understand more in detail, we spoke to Srilatha Rai, a clinical psychologist, who said, “Most rage-applying occurs when individuals channel pent-up feelings of frustration and rage into action. People tend to rage-apply when they feel as if they’ve been underappreciated, passed over, or stuck in a toxic work environment. However, one also should learn why one wants to quit the job.
There could be many reasons, be it a dead-end job or salary. Rage applying could have a positive result, but not always. It’s generally wise to process their anger and frustration before taking action. Some people find that they leave a series of jobs for the same reason — such as a critical boss — only to find later that unaddressed personal issues may be a fear of conflict or trauma that contributed to the problems.”
She continued, “Sometimes it wouldn’t be the job, and sometimes it’s you. If you job-hop without reevaluating your goals and yourself, you might wind up in the same scenario in a different place. The riskiest aspect of rage-applying is a vicious cycle of dissatisfaction. If you don’t do the work to understand why you’re unhappy in your current role, you run the risk of walking into another culture, dynamic, or boss that doesn’t work for you.”
There is a chance that the new job will not provide the desired work-life balance as the previous one did.This may lead one to regret shifting to a new job in a hurry. Shifting to a new job is a huge decision to make, and that should never be done in a hurry or with heightened emotions. And so the psychologist suggests speaking to their family, friends, or colleagues.This would not only allow them to vent their frustrations, but it would also allow them to consider whether they really want to apply for a new job.
