Quiet Part Loud
Why to Always Say It
Welcome to your favorite type of Shelf Life, the screed type, wherein I complain at length about the status quo. This is my favorite type of Shelf Life to write, because I don’t need to have any knowledge to write it; I need only have feelings. I have plenty of one and not enough of the other, so this is an ideal use of my writing time.
Note: My word processor autocorrected “any knowledge” to “aunty knowledge” somehow (I must have added a stray U) and I want to assert that I do have loads of aunty knowledge. I don’t have any bio niblings but I am an honorary fun aunt to many lovely children. Do you need an honorary fun aunt? I will pick a fight with your dad. I will buy you a drum set for the holidays. I am become ungovernable.
Speaking of being ungovernable: Today I am making the argument for saying the quiet part out loud, for writing down the unwritten, and speaking the unspoken.
“Saying the quiet part out loud” refers to accidentally revealing the truth of a matter, or your true feelings on said matter, in the course of saying something else. This is a popular phrase on social media but it has its roots in The Simpsons—as do many phrases in the common American lexicon.
In a clip from The Simpsons season 6 episode 18, “A Star Is Burns,” Jay (a crossover character from The Critic) asks Krusty the Clown, “How can you vote for Burns’s movie?” Krusty replies, “Let’s just say it moved me . . . TO A BIGGER HOUSE. Oops, I said the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet.” You can watch the clip here. The implication is that Krusty received a bribe from Mr. Burns to vote for Burns’s film, which Krusty was ostensibly supposed to keep quiet.
Here’s a more recent example from the social media site formerly known as Twitter (I redacted the username but you can figure it out):
In this tweet from April 14, 2023, a screenshot from the Wall Street Journal opinion section reads: “An Unintended Consequence of Student-Debt Relief: Will Young Americans Volunteer for the Armed Forces in Adequate Numbers?” The tweeter comments, “They said the quiet part out loud.”
In this case, the tweeter suggests, “the quiet part” is that the ever-rising cost of higher ed and unaffordability of student loan repayment are intended to funnel young Americans into the armed forces in hopes of securing job skills or funding for higher ed through the GI Bill. By questioning whether student loan debt relief might reduce the number of young Americans joining the armed forces, the opinion writer has accidentally or inadvertently “said the quiet part out loud.” They accidentally revealed the unspoken truth that we were all politely pretending not to know.
“The quiet part” refers to the part we’re all supposed to know, but not say. Like the unwritten or unspoken rule, it’s expected that we all know this information without it being written or said. This supports the belief that there are some social rules that are natural and fundamental, and that we as human beings come equipped with this knowledge, ready for use.
This is not true. Human beings are born knowing how to suck and cry and that’s it. Everything else is learned.
Unspoken truths, unwritten rules, and “the quiet part” share a commonality: The widely held belief that “everyone” knows these rules. I am extremely suspicious of the word “everyone.” I have seen more than my fair share of garments and neutral lipsticks that promise to flatter “everyone” that look awful on me. There is rarely a true “everyone.”
When it comes to unwritten rules in the workplace, I think about how one learns an unwritten rule—it’s by observation. If someone works in a corporate environment and had a parent who worked in a corporate environment (especially a same-gender parent), then they had years to observe facets of that type of workplace. They may have seen their parent dress appropriately to go to work, noticed what time they arrived and came home from work, and, importantly, overheard gossip about their workplace and fellow coworkers.
If a person works in a corporate environment but grew up with parents who did not work in that type of environment, they won’t have the same preparation. This doesn’t mean they have no preparation for this specific workplace; they just have a different preparation than the person in the first example.
Given time to observe their workplace, the person in the second example will learn the unwritten rules. But the person who came in on Day 1 already knowing some of these unwritten rules has an advantage—and the advantage is not through their own hard work or study, but comes from the luck of their circumstances.
Let me give a real-life example. I worked at a company with a full-on handbook that included information on the dress code. The dress code didn’t say anything about shorts, for or against. It didn’t say shorts were in, it didn’t say shorts were out. Just no word at all on shorts. However, it was an unwritten rule of this workplace that shorts were not acceptable work attire, even on casual Fridays during the summer. We had an employee who habitually wore shorts on casual Fridays in the summer. They were not aware of the “unwritten rule.”
No one, apparently, cared to explain the unwritten rule to this employee, either. Instead, many of my colleagues formed a general opinion that this person was unprofessional; or, at least, less professional than their peers.
At time time—it was a long time ago—I scratched my head at this. Like, “Why don’t they know not to wear shorts? Nobody told me not to wear shorts, and I know.” With the benefit of hindsight, the memory of this workplace situation drives me right up the wall.
If we’re not supposed to wear shorts in this workplace put it in the dress code in the handbook. Further: At one juncture, someone took it to HR to put a stop to this colleague wearing shorts. HR’s response: “It’s not against the dress code, they can wear shorts if they want.” Then put it in the dress code in the handbook that shorts are okay. There’s clearly a need for this unwritten rule to be written down one way or another. Can we just make a decision and write down the rule?
It is probably well-known to readers of Shelf Life that I have ADHD, because I talk about it a lot. I sometimes refer to myself as justice-spec ADHD (spec is short for specialization, in this instance). People with ADHD experience justice sensitivity at a higher rate than the non-ADHD population1, and I am one of those ADHD experiencers with higher-than-normal justice sensitivity. To me, it feels unjust to have unwritten, unspoken rules that are known to some and not to others.
Unwritten rules are particularly unkind to a couple of groups in particular. One of these is the neurodiverse community, including the ADHD and Autism communities. Both of these neuro-atypicalities can make it challenging to pick up on, read, interpret, and apply social cues.
The other group I am thinking of, to whom unwritten/unspoken rules are particularly unkind, are those who did not grow up belonging to the dominant culture. The American corporate environment is highly white eurocentric. Those who grew up with a different cultural background may bring different cultural norms and understandings to the workplace. This is how white/euro hair styles, dress styles, and speech patterns have come to be considered “professional” in contrast to hair, dress, and speech styles from other cultures.
I’m trying to use “professional” with giant scare quotes in all instances because it’s a cop-out word that doesn’t mean anything. I mean, it does mean something. It means “exhibiting a courteous, conscientious, and generally businesslike manner in the workplace.” It doesn’t mean leaping from the womb armed with the knowledge of whether shorts are allowed in this particular workplace or not.
All this is to say that if you are a person who is in a position of power—whether that is through authority, or seniority, or being generally well-liked among your social group, or whatever—use your power to seize the unspoken or unwritten rule and demand that it be spoken or written or at the very least acknowledged as an unspoken, unwritten rule. Be the person who says, “Hey can I get clarification about—?”
If the rule is important, speak it and write it.
If the rule is not important enough to speak and write, question whether it truly is—and whether it should be—a rule.
Don’t assume everyone knows the quiet part; say the quiet part out loud.
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https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23223013/