The Quiet Exhaustion At Work

It’s Tuesday. 2:47 PM. My calendar says I have a 1:1 with my manager in thirteen minutes and I’m sitting in the women’s bathroom on the fourth floor with the door locked, scrolling nothing on my phone. The fluorescent light above the sink is flickering. I noticed it three weeks ago. I haven’t said anything.

My eyes sting.

Not crying-sting, just that dry burn you get when you’ve been staring at a screen for seven hours and your body forgot to blink. I’m wearing the same navy blue cardigan I wore yesterday. I don’t have energy to pick a different one. My coffee went cold on my desk an hour ago. I think my manager thinks I’m passionate about the Q3 deck because I always look engaged, but really I’m just too tired to show my actual face.

This is what quiet exhaustion at work actually looks like.

Not the dramatic burnout people post about on LinkedIn with the “I quit my 6-figure job to follow my passion” caption. Not the burnout you can name in a therapy session with a clear cause and a clear next step. I mean the other one. The one where your resume looks fine, your manager says you’re doing great, your mom asks why you look so tired and you tell her “just a long week” and she believes you because you look like a normal person holding a normal job in a normal office.

But inside something is running on fumes.

I landed this job eleven months ago. I was so happy. I remember the acceptance email — I screenshotted it and sent it to my best friend at like 11 PM on a Sunday. He replied with a single 🔥 emoji. I sat in my apartment for twenty minutes just smiling at my laptop. The first three months felt like proof that I’d finally made it out. I decorated my desk with a tiny succulent that died in May. I brought homemade cookies for the team and watched three people actually eat them.

When did it flip?

I keep trying to locate the exact day. Was it the Tuesday my skip-level asked “so what’s your five-year plan” and I panicked? Was it the Friday I stayed until 8:30 PM rewriting a one-pager nobody read? Was it the morning I cried in the elevator at 9:02 AM because I couldn’t remember if I had eaten breakfast?

Was it all of them, stacked?

I don’t know. That’s the thing. Quiet exhaustion at work doesn’t announce itself. It slips in the back door while you’re busy being grateful you have a job. It rides in on the back of every “just one more thing” Slack ping. It grows between meetings that could’ve been emails and emails that could’ve been silence.

Last Wednesday I had six meetings. Six. By 4 PM I had used the word “aligned” fourteen times in different contexts. I aligned on the timeline. I aligned on the metrics. I aligned on the messaging. I aligned with marketing. I aligned with legal. I aligned with my own reflection in the laptop camera and that one scared me a little.

At one point during the third meeting I caught myself rehearsing the next sentence in my head while my colleague was still finishing hers. Not because I don’t care about what she’s saying. Because I had stopped being able to absorb anything new. My brain was full. Like, literally full. The little notification sound at the top of a full inbox.

I typed “thanks so much, that makes sense!” into the chat. She seemed satisfied.

What was I even thanking her for?

I sat through the rest of the day smiling. Said “have a great evening” to two people I genuinely like. Walked to the subway. Stood on the platform. Got home. Ate a granola bar standing over the sink. Did not turn on the lights. Did not check Slack — I know that’s a privilege some people don’t have, I know that. But I had the privilege that night and I used it.

Sat on the edge of my bed in the dark. Stared at the wall. Stared a long time.

And then I thought: okay, this isn’t sustainable.

Not in a dramatic way. In a small, factual way. Like noticing your phone is at 4% and you don’t have a charger. You don’t panic. You just clock it. You just know the next part of the day is going to feel different.

That’s what quiet exhaustion at work is. It’s not the 4% panic. It’s noticing the 4% for weeks and still not plugging anything in.

I called my mom on Saturday. She lives six hours away by train. She picked up on the second ring like always. I asked how her hip was healing. She told me about the physical therapy. She asked if I was eating enough. I said yes. She asked if I was sleeping enough. I said I was working on it. She asked if I liked my job. I said yeah, it’s a good job.

Then she got quiet.

“Mom?”

“I’m here, baby. I’m just listening.”

“I’m okay. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Well, you sound tired.”

“I know.”

Silence on her end too. My mom doesn’t push. She’s a retired schoolteacher, forty-one years of first graders, she learned a long time ago that sometimes the kid just wants to sit on the line and breathe into the phone. We did that for nine minutes. I timed it later because I count things when I’m anxious.

After we hung up I cried for the first time in months.

Not sobbing. That ugly loud kind I don’t usually do. Just tears I wasn’t planning on, the kind that surprise you in the middle of brushing your teeth. I stood in my bathroom and cried for maybe four minutes and then I washed my face and went to bed. I didn’t feel better afterward. I didn’t feel worse. I just felt wet.

That’s another thing nobody tells you about quiet exhaustion at work.

It doesn’t always announce itself as sadness. Sometimes it’s just absence. You stop looking forward to things. You stop dreading things. You just continue. Like pressing play on a song you don’t love but don’t hate. It gets you through the playlist. It counts as listening.

I used to be a person who had opinions on weekends. I’d have favorite coffee shops. I’d send my friend links to articles with commentary like “this is so me” or “this guy has never experienced joy.” I’d get excited about a new Thai place opening on 9th. I’d plan outfits three days in advance for things that didn’t matter.

That person is in there somewhere. I can feel her. Like a tenant who hasn’t paid rent in five months. I know she’s still technically my roommate. But she keeps her lights off and I keep walking past her door.

Monday morning I opened my laptop. 9:01 AM. Slack was already lit up. Twenty-three unread messages in the team channel, four in my DMs, two in #random, one from my manager with a little 👀 emoji that I’m now irrationally afraid of.

I replied to the manager first. Of course I did.

Then I scrolled the team channel. Someone had posted a meme. Someone else had posted a win. Someone had tagged me asking for an update on the Q3 deck. The Q3 deck I had been rewriting at 8:30 PM on a Friday. The Q3 deck that, when I showed it in my 1:1 last week, my manager said “this is great, just one more round of edits.”

Sure. One more round.

I opened the deck. Stared at slide four. Slide four has been in the same place for eleven days. I have a note from my manager that says “tighten this up.” I don’t know what to tighten. Slide four is already three bullet points. I have stared at it long enough to have a personal relationship with slide four. Slide four and I are not in a good place.

I closed the laptop.

I didn’t go hide in the bathroom this time. I just sat at my desk with my hands in my lap for forty-five seconds and felt my chest do that thing where it gets small and tight and you have to consciously remember that you are a mammal who needs oxygen.

Then I opened the laptop. Replied to three more messages. Smiled at someone passing by. Went to the meeting. Performed. Clocked out at 6:04 PM.

Came home. Ate a leftover dumpling cold. Did not turn on the TV. Got into bed at 8:45 PM. Slept eleven hours. My body clearly thought the previous six months were a personal attack.

I woke up Tuesday and wrote this.

I don’t know who it’s for. Probably for the other person at the office who keeps their head down and says “doing well!” when asked. The person who has a doctor they haven’t called. The person who says “oh my god, so busy” with a smile that doesn’t reach their eyes because the muscles in your face are tired too. The person who has a pink iCal and a green iCal and a yellow iCal and three of them are full and none of them have anything to look forward to. The person who has been telling themselves “just get through this week” every week for four months.

You know who you are. I know who you are. We sit next to each other in meetings.

I’m not going to tell you to take a vacation. I’m not going to suggest a bubble bath or a digital detox or a morning routine or a side hustle you can start on weekends to feel purposeful. I am exhausted enough to know that the answer is not in a productivity newsletter.

I’m not going to tell you it gets better. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know your life.

I just know that this is what quiet exhaustion at work feels like, and I wanted to say it out loud. Once. In a place where no one I work with will read it.

Because the worst part — the part I haven’t told anyone — is that I think I’ve gotten good at it. Good at being tired in a way nobody can see. Good at showing up. Good at saying “absolutely, happy to take that on.” Good at wearing the right cardigan and drinking enough water and remembering to stretch in the middle of the day because I read somewhere that helps.

I’ve gotten good at pretending I’m not running on fumes.

And the scary thought — the one I keep almost having and then swerving away from — is that I don’t know what the version of me looks like when she stops pretending. I haven’t seen her in so long. I don’t know if she’s still there. I don’t know if she’d even fit through the door I came in.

But I noticed the light flickering in the bathroom this morning. I really noticed it. And for some reason that felt like something.

Not sure what.

Just — something.