5 Workers Describe What ‘Quiet Cracking’ Looks Like

Kevin would hyperfixate on bad memories. Masiel would snack. Sara would cry on her way to work.

“Quiet cracking” describes the silent struggle of feeling dissatisfied at work and unable to leave. Frank Giampietro, EY’s chief well-being officer, told Business Insider that these employees “feel stuck where they are.”

Unhappy workers can stay because they need the paycheck or because they worry that another job would be more of the same. Recently, a rocky job market has left many workers feeling like they can’t change positions. And sometimes it’s just easier to maintain the status quo. After all, change can be scary and comes with risk.

Five workers who have experienced “quiet cracking” told Business Insider why they felt trapped — and how they navigated their situation.

Chanel Douglas’ initial reaction to reading about the “quiet cracking” trend was simple: “I thought, ‘Oh wow, it’s not just me.'”

Douglas is a single mom in a small state and a niche position she worked her way to without a degree, which many jobs require.

“For the cost of living and the life that I’ve built in this career, I feel very stuck, so I just go in every day and try really hard not to break by lunchtime,” she said.

A 37-year-old facility planner in healthcare, Douglas said she’s more stressed at work than ever before, with multiple contributing factors coalescing to create what felt like “a perfect storm.” Douglas said she consequently experienced “significant mental health challenges,” including a panic attack that led her to take a temporary leave to seek treatment.

Feeling trapped in a job isn’t new, though the term “quiet cracking” is. Kevin Ford, 56, told Business Insider that he experienced it over 15 years ago in an information technology role.

Ford felt misaligned with the company’s management culture. He was learning about new areas of business in his MBA program, which he wanted to pursue. As a middle manager, Ford said he had gotten his team running smoothly, but he wasn’t sure he was adding value anymore.

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His company was paying for the MBA, and Ford felt that he needed to protect his team from what he described as upper management’s poor treatment.

“I would get hyper-focused on things that were going on,” Ford said. “I was thinking about it all the time and having flashbacks to these different events that weren’t happy at work.”

Ford said that his work performance at the time also dropped. “It’s not good for your employer and it’s not good for you,” he said.

Ford said that he spent a year and a half feeling trapped, until he finally decided to leave.

Worker dissatisfaction is also common. In 2024, Gallup found that 31% of US employees surveyed felt engaged at work — but only 18% of workers reported feeling “extremely satisfied.” Worker satisfaction was 19% in May 2025, down from 28% in January 2014.

Business Insider recently surveyed readers to ask if they had experienced “quiet cracking.” Of 163 respondents, 154 said they had experienced it.

Survey respondent Will Reddington described his “quiet cracking” symptoms: “Huge lack of motivation, fatigue. Constant feeling of being unheard.”

Product security engineer Masiel Morillo, 32, said that, coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid layoffs, many people didn’t want to “rock the boat.” Her primary symptom was overeating.

“I’m definitely a snacker, so that’s how my anxiety presents,” she said.

Work can be stressful. Having a challenging workday isn’t necessarily a sign of an organizational failing — it’s often just part of the job.

Sara Stroman, 44, knows this. She thinks the idea of finding balance at work is “a joke”; everyone is just doing the best they can.

But there’s a difference between a hard workday and a bad workplace. Stroman described a food distribution sales job where her boss treated her like an administrative assistant, though she was a top-selling salesperson.

“I felt trapped in a toxic environment where I was never going to do enough or be enough,” she said.

Stroman said she kept it together, being friendly with her coworkers in the office but crying on the way to work. Saddled with credit card debt from her college years, Stroman felt that she needed the money too much to quit.

Eventually, she hit her breaking point. Driving to her community garden plot, Stroman described driving past a street with her deceased father’s name. It was Father’s Day. The song on the radio told her, “It’s time to go.”

“I took it as a sign,” Stroman said. “It’s time for me to devise my exit strategy.”

She moved slowly but deliberately, giving herself a mental end date by which point she wanted to have left the job.

“I was able to say goodbye on my own terms,” she said.