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- Naomi Osaka announced Monday that she would withdraw from the French Open, just days after tennis officials fined her $15,000 and threatened to oust her from the tournament for opting out of its mandatory news conferences. Ms. Osaka explained via Twitter that speaking to the international media takes a heavy toll on her mental health, compounding the anxiety inherent to Grand Slam tournaments. “I thought it was better to exercise self-care,” she wrote, adding that the tournament’s rules mandating press access are “outdated.”
Setting aside the unfair public scrutiny that is often leveled at Black women athletes like Ms. Osaka, the tennis star’s choice echoes another, broader phenomenon. Far and wide, in public and in private, workers are choosing personal boundaries over professional ambitions. Rather than comply with mandates to return to the office, employees are quitting altogether. Job vacancies in the United States are at a 20-year high.
The problem, as others have noted before me, is not a sudden scourge of laziness. The problem is work.