- - Employees Who Don't Get Raises Are Quietly Checking Out

Rachel SchneiderJanuary 15, 2026 at 10:00 AM

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Have you ever given 110% to a job, only to have your raise leapfrogged? It’s deflating, right? One worker decided to stop overdelivering and called it a raise of their own. According to a viral Reddit thread in r/antiwork, u/0naho spent five hours in their car during work hours playing video games after learning they wouldn’t be getting a salary increase this year.

“No raise this year,” they wrote. “Gave myself a raise by doing less work.”

At first glance, it sounds like slacking off. But for many employees, it’s a direct response to stagnant pay, rising living costs, and executives taking home bonuses while frontline workers see nothing.

The Numbers Behind the Frustration

DjelicS / istockphoto

Multiple surveys suggest 2026 salary increases will remain minimal or nonexistent for many employees, particularly in mid-level roles. For some, inflation has already eaten away at any raise they might have gotten, making their paychecks feel particularly lackluster.

Even in companies reporting record profits, raises are scarce. One Redditor, who is a director-level employee at a Fortune 200 company, commented on the thread and said no one above the lowest pay grades is getting a raise this year, despite strong earnings and big investments in acquisitions and AI.

Both Sides Are Dialing Back

Redditors shared story after story about their own experiences with bonuses being cut, despite the impressive performance of their respective companies. Instead of rewarding employees, the bosses and CEOs in question were taking lavish vacations.

One Redditor commented, “We had a similar situation a few years back. Hella busy, working OT every day and a Saturday for 3-5 weeks straight. The owner was enjoying all the extra income so much that he called from Hawaii to let us know he was going to stay an extra couple of weeks, and to tell us we should work that weekend. It rubbed me the wrong way. I stopped giving up my weekends to them at that point.”

While CEOs are taking upper management to Disney World and leaving the little guys behind, workers are growing increasingly tired of not being given an income boost. One Redditor put it plainly: “Abuse them as much as they abuse you.”

A Growing Trend

Economists and workplace analysts have a term for this: quiet quitting. Employees meet expectations but refuse to take on unpaid labor.

For some, it’s about mental health; for others, it’s a line in the sand. Either way, it signals a shift in the traditional employer-employee dynamic: Workers are recalculating what they owe their employers, based on what employers actually give them in return.

Have you ever decided to not work as much because you didn’t get a raise? Share your experience in the comments!

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Source: “AOL Money”