The Quiet Exhaustion At Work
It’s 2:47 PM on a Wednesday. I’m in the open-plan office, fourth floor, the hot desk by the fake plant that someone ordered from Amazon last Christmas. My manager just pinged me on Slack: “Quick sync in 5?” I typed “sounds good!” with an exclamation mark because not using one feels like a declaration of war now.
Quick sync means 45 minutes. I know this. My whole team knows this. We all keep showing up to them like it’s fine.
But here’s the thing nobody sees. I’m smiling. My face is doing the work face. Head tilted slightly, eyebrows raised in what I hope reads as “engaged.” Inside, my chest is doing this thing where I can take breaths but they don’t land. Like trying to fill a balloon that’s already full.
That’s quiet exhaustion at work. Not the kind where you yell or cry in the bathroom or update your LinkedIn in a fit. The kind where you sit very still in a chair that costs the company $800 and your soul just… leaks out. Drop by drop. Hour by hour.
Last Tuesday I was at my desk until 9:13 PM. The office was empty except for the cleaning crew with their mop buckets. I wasn’t finishing anything urgent. I was just… sitting. Staring at a Slack thread that ended two hours earlier with “sounds good!” from me. I don’t even remember what it was about. Probably the launch deck that has been “almost there” for three weeks.
I had dinner at my desk. A granola bar and half a banana that had gone brown. I told my partner I’d be home by 8. Then by 9. Then by 10. Then I just turned my phone face down because saying “one more email” again felt like lying, and I was already too tired to lie well.
This is the part that messes me up. I have a job. A real one. With a salary and health insurance and a fancy title on LinkedIn that I sometimes believe and sometimes laugh at in the shower. My parents brag about me at dinner. “She works at a tech company. In the city.” They say it like it’s a permanent vacation.
So why am I this tired?
Because I’m not doing anything dramatic. I’m not pulling 80-hour weeks like some startup founder story. I’m not even working late every night. Most nights I’m home by 7. I make dinner. I watch something. I sleep eight hours most days. I’m doing all the things.
But here’s what I do during those eight hours at work. I absorb. I absorb my manager’s anxiety about the board meeting. I absorb my coworker’s passive-aggressive comments about “bandwidth.” I absorb the Slack notifications that come in waves until my phone vibrates against the desk like a tiny heart attack. I absorb the meeting that was supposed to be 15 minutes and turned into a strategy session where someone said “let’s table this” three times and nothing got tabled.
By 4 PM my face hurts from performing okay.
My friend Maya quit last month. No two weeks notice. No exit interview drama. She just stopped showing up on a Friday and posted a beach photo on Monday with the caption “chapter 2.” Everyone at work said she was “so brave.” I said it too. We all said it.
But I also thought: how?
How do you just leave? Where does the energy come from to even send that email, to box up your stuff, to walk past security with a box of plants and a half-empty coffee mug? I thought about it. I thought about it for six months. I have a folder on my desktop called “next thing” with three saved job postings I never applied to.
Last week my therapist asked me what I’m afraid of. I said “letting people down.” She nodded like I’d said something profound. I wanted to say “no, I mean specifically. I’m afraid of the look my mom would give me if I told her I wanted to quit.” But I didn’t. I just nodded back.
The worst part? It’s invisible. That’s the whole thing.
I don’t look tired. I don’t look like I’m struggling. I come in with a clean shirt and my hair done. I ask people how their weekend was. I bring pastries on Fridays because I’m “the one who brings pastries.” I’m nice. I’m functional. I’m good at my job, even. My reviews say so. Three years running.
But I’m running on what now? Coffee at 9. Another at 11. Lunch at 12:30 where I eat at my desk because going to the lunchroom means small talk and I’m out of small talk. Snack at 3. A walk around the block at 4 where I don’t listen to anything, I just walk. Dinner at home where I tell my partner “it was fine” and “yeah, busy.”
It was fine. It was busy. That’s what I say every day.
There was this moment last Thursday. I was in a conference room. Six of us around a table that could fit twelve. The projector was making that faint buzzing sound. Someone was presenting slides with way too many bullet points. I was taking notes in a notebook I bought specifically to look like I was taking notes. I drew a small circle in the margin. Then another circle next to it. Then I connected them with a line and stared at it like it meant something.
My chest was tight. My palms were damp. The AC was on too high but I felt hot under my collar. I wanted to put my head on the table. Just for ten seconds. Just to feel something cold and solid against my forehead. I didn’t. I wrote down “great point” next to someone’s mid-sentence and nodded.
Later, in the bathroom, I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked fine. Tired, sure. Everyone looks tired. But fine. I splashed water on my face and went back.
That’s the trick of quiet exhaustion at work. It looks like fine. It looks like everyone else. It looks like you just need a vacation or a better sleep schedule or to drink more water.
“Quick sync in 5?” “sounds good!” “sorry can you hear me? I think my mic’s broken” “no you’re good” “ok cool so basically what I was saying is…” “yeah yeah” “you’re muted btw” “oh god sorry” “haha no worries” “ok so as I was saying…” “yeah”
That was Tuesday. 47 minutes. Action item: me, follow up on something I forgot by Thursday.
But it’s not fine. And a vacation won’t fix it. I took one in May. Six days in Lisbon. Walked around, ate pastries, looked at the ocean. Came back and felt exactly the same. Maybe worse, because now I knew what I was missing.
The exhaustion isn’t in my body. It’s in the gap between what I show and what’s happening. The gap is where I live now. I wake up already tired of the performance. I smile before I open my eyes. I rehearse “how are you?” answers in the elevator. I craft emails in my head while brushing my teeth. By the time I sit at my desk, I’ve already worked three hours.
No one pays me for those three hours. I don’t even know who I’m doing them for.
Here’s what kills me. I don’t hate my job. Not even close. The work is interesting. My coworkers are mostly kind. My manager, when she’s not panicking about Q3, is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. The coffee is good. The office has plants. I have a standing desk I was excited about for exactly one week.
I just can’t keep doing it the way I’m doing it. The way that has me checking Slack at 11 PM and again at 6 AM and again on the toilet. The way that has me apologizing for taking a sick day because my brain needed one, not my body. The way that has me saying “no worries!” when someone moves a meeting into my lunch hour for the third time this month.
No worries. Always no worries. The no worries are killing me.
I thought about writing this and pretending it was about someone else. A friend. A character. That would be safer.
But it’s me. It’s me sitting in the chair by the fake plant, clicking thumbs up on Slack, eating a brown banana, lying to my partner about when I’ll be home, drawing circles in a notebook, saying “great point,” looking fine in the mirror.
It’s me.
And if you’re reading this and your chest just did that tight thing, the straw-breathing thing, the small clench that nobody can see — I don’t have advice for you. I don’t have a fix. I’m still in it. I’m still showing up tomorrow at 9 with a clean shirt and a smile that’s already half-built in the elevator.
But I see you. That’s all I got. I see you.
Tags: [“Work Burnout”, “Office Exhaustion”, “Quiet Quitting”, “Mental Load”, “Tech Industry”]