Category: Business Article

Posted in Business Article, Coffee Break, Opinion

Woke or Just Sans Serif? Is Your Font a DEI Hire?

Posted on by Nathan Westerberg

Good morning everyone and welcome back to Breakroom Breakdown! Now, there is a topic I have been wanting to discuss for a very long time and that is how to decide what font to use in your documents, emails, etc… I’ve been waiting for inspiration to strike me, but never in a million years could I have predicted it coming up due to a font being considered “too woke.1“

You read that right, the break news from the United States State Department is that their current font being used (Calibri) was started during the Biden Administration for “woke reasons” and they will be reverting to the previously used Times New Roman. For the record, Times New Roman was the primary font used from 2004 until 2023, which is likely also why this was the favorite required by most high school teachers. It was in 2023 that the decision was made to switch to Calibri, which has been the fault in Microsoft tools since 2007. The reason for the switch? Wokeness at its worse. The decision was to shift to a sans serif font to make it easier to read, in particular by those with impaired vision or reading disabilities like dyslexia. It is for those reason that the Americans with Disability Act requires the use of sans serif fonts on signs and similar postings. So we can thank Marco Rubio for making this decision to help squash out the silly woke notion of making it easier for people to read.

To help clear up the terminology for those who are unaware of the anatomy of font (which is fascinating, by the way) sans serifs simply means “no serifs.” Serif is defined as the small lines and flourishes on certain fonts as a means of guiding eyes while reading it. In particular, serif fonts (Times New Roman, Garamond) are ideal for use in print such as news papers and books. While they tend to work well there, on a screen they can blend together and make it more difficult to read. In particular for those with certain disabilities, which is why they opt for fonts known as sans serif (Calibri, Helvetica). If you have not noticed, I have opted to switch to a sans serif font (known as “Open Sans” here in WordPress). Is it different? Yes. Is it that big of a deal if by doing this I have now made it easier for people? Call me woke, but heck no.

If you view below, you can see a side-by-side comparison of the fonts in question being used at the State Department (courtesy of NPR)2:

Comparison of the fonts Calibri and Times New Roman, with dates indicating the years 2023 and 2025. Calibri appears on the left side for 2023, and Times New Roman on the right side for 2025.
Source: NPR

While I realistically can see they are different, the truth is at the end of the day I do not see them as so different that it truly matters. I must argue that Marco “Little Marco” Rubio is not truly accomplishing anything aside from continuing his assault on anything that can be considered “DEI.” But even this should be considered scraping the bottom of the barrel in an attempt to go against a font that he does not like, especially as I refuse to believe he types up any document himself. But it did bring up a good topic of how, what fonts are good choices to use in a professional capacity? Maybe we can help Little Marco come up with a suitable replacement instead of Times New Roman (which is tad bourgeois in my opinion).

Reviewing a few different sources, I keep running into the same details so evidently this is has been long thought out. First, it is evidently not uncommon to use two different fonts in certain forms of writing. It is often that you might use a decorative font for headers and then a simpler one for the body with Times New Roman and Arial being a pretty common example. It is also worth nothing that in addition to your font, you will also want to consider your primary size (the State Department was 14 to go along with their Times New Roman) and this is because the readability of efficiency of a font can be heavily impacted based on the size being used. As we will all remember from school, Size 12 was our go-to for documents but we are certainly free to up it a little bit.

Further, the type of font really should be impacted based on what it is being used for. Serif fonts like Times New Roman or Georgia are great for being printed out and read. But it is common for them to be a strain on your eyes for long reading on screens, in which case sans serifs should be considered3.

Besides readability, we also have other considerations often associated with certain fonts. Our serifs are so popular because they offer an older feel, as they are meant to be reminiscent of a type writer and so they have distinguished feel. Sans serifs, however, are designed to give us a cleaner and more modern feel. Interestingly, despite meant to feel modern they are also meant to also look more like handwritten script since most people do not have serifs on their handwriting4.

At the end of the day, the font you choose has a lot to do with the specific branding you want your choice to relay (you might not want to choose Wingdings) but it also has to do with how the font is being used. In Rubio’s case, he is changing the font used in the correspondence used by the State Department. Given that this is going to include both print and digital, it does make sense to try to stick to one font between both. And given that I will wager the majority of the correspondence will be digital, I would argue that a screen-friendly sans serif would make the most sense and that his argument about the font being “woke” simply does not hold water. As multiple sites have confirmed, a sans serif like Calibri is the preferred method for screens to the point that Microsoft fully switched over to it almost two decades ago.

As a friendly reminder to my readers who might be unaware, to be woke is actually a compliment. It refers to someone being mindful and knowledgeable of certain injustices and making the conscious decision to not ignore it. So I am going formally recommend to all of my readers, lets go woke and push for the use of sans serif fonts in the future. We might not be able to end the social injustice in this country, but we can certainly scare them off when they see the terrifying lack of serifs on our typography.

Please give us a shoutout if you have been inspired to go woke and limit your serif use online. Further, I have been very inspired to learn more about fonts and would love to hear from typography nerds out there. Drop some cool fonts and facts for us all to read going into this weekend.

As always, I’ll see you round the Breakroom.

  1. Lee, M. (2025, December 11). Calibri font becomes the latest DEI target as Rubio orders return to Times New Roman. AP News. Retrieved December 11, 2025, from https://apnews.com/article/rubio-state-department-fonts-calibri-times-new-roman-1fcdc92f8229efd515fe44ae9ca16137 ↩︎
  2. Treisman, R. (2025, December 11). The State Department reinstates an old font, in a typeface about-face. NPR. Retrieved December 11, 2025, from https://www.npr.org/2025/12/11/nx-s1-5640715/state-department-font-times-new-roman-calibri ↩︎
  3. (2024, December 19). Best Professional Email Font: Ultimate Guide. Publicate. Retrieved December 11, 2025, from https://publicate.it/blog/professional-email-font ↩︎
  4. (2024, August 27). Different Types of Fonts And How to Choose One. Microsoft. Retrieved December 11, 2025, from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-life-hacks/presentations/different-types-of-fonts-and-how-to-choose-one ↩︎

Good morning everyone, and welcome back to the Breakroom. This week I want to talk about a topic that I have touched upon in the past but have been wanting to devote a piece to for awhile: quiet quitting. When this phrase first came to light, I thought I was going to miss my opportunity in being able to talk about it while it was still fresh. But we are around 3 years in and still this topic continues to come up so let us view if the world still continues to see this as an issue?

What is quiet quitting?

For those unfamiliar with the phrase, you might be thinking it means someone basically just silently quits their job. In reality, quiet quitting is defined as doing the minimum job requirements for your job. Some examples might be not working overtime shifts, only answering emails during work hours, not seeking extra tasks or projects not assigned to them, not attending meetings not mandatory, and not coming in early or staying late1. This phrasing became famous in 2022 when Gen Z employees began posting videos and content on TikTok talking about how they are doing the minimum required of them.

So this is not to say the work is not being completed, simply that employees are doing their assigned tasks in line with their job. You might be wondering where the concern arises from this. The primary belief is that this shows an employee is discontent with their job or company, no longer inspired or motivated to be overachievers at work. The belief is also that when people begin to quiet quit, they will inevitably fully quit or become so lax that they are fired. An article from Gallup chose to argue that quiet quitting is just the beginning because eventually employees begin doing less than their minimum work because every job requires a certain degree of extra work such as collaborating with colleagues or meeting customer needs2.

While many of us thought this might be a silly internet slang that would disappear, it seems to have some pretty strong staying power as it makes the knees of senior leaders quiver.

One of the key reasons leaders and organizations see this as an issue is they feel employees should be ready to prove themselves at work and continue to go above and beyond. As this practice goes on, they can see certain employees not engaging with their colleagues as often or being absent from unnecessary meetings or information events. There is then the concern that this could lead to poor attendance or quitting last minute, thereby causing strain on the remaining staff. Even if they do not quit, management has reservations about continuing to employ and pay someone not doing more than what is expected of them3.

Why do people quiet quit?

Unlike many of the articles I have reviewed, Paychex did go into detail on some of the primary reasons that people choose to become quiet quitters. Their list consists of:

-Lack of recognition
-Frustrations over compensation
-Poor work-life balance
-Lack of growth opportunities
-Toxic work culture

As you can see, many of these issues fall on the employee not having confidence in the future of their career with this company. There is that expression that no one notices when you do your job well but they notice the moment you make a mistake. Perhaps nothing has become more important to quiet quitters than work-life balance. Rather than wanting to work 50 to 60 hours a week, many employees would rather devote that time to family or personal hobbies.

Where Paychex starts to deviate from their informative prowess is their suggestions on how to address possible quiet quitters. Some of their recommendation include making it easier to establish a work-life balance and pay them a fair compensation. The former is what the employee is already doing, and the latter is something your company should already be doing.4

Opinion: Is quiet quitting an issue?

Now I have read a few articles in preparation for this, and I have seen dozens of others over the years and I believe I have come to a conclusion. This is nothing more than the McCarthys of the business world panicking over the fact that employees do not want to break themselves at work when they are seeing no true benefit. As the title of this blog post suggests, quiet quitting is no more a threat to the American way of life is than Communism is.

Every article confirms that quiet quitting is doing the minimum required of your job. That is not being bad at your job, that is literally doing your job. Some of the articles claim that quiet quitters have increased absenteeism, are making more mistakes, and simply are not doing their job to a proper quality. That is not considered quiet quitting, that is simply not doing their job and these two should not be equated to each other.

The purpose behind quiet quitting is still establish clear boundaries between work and life, something that we find baffling in the United States but is the norm everywhere else. The moment I clock out for the day, that is it. I am no longer being paid and work is not even on my radar. I will not do work tasks in the evening, weekend, or on vacation because I am no longer working. It is very easy for corporate executive who makes six or seven figures to criticize those barely making more than minimum wage for wanting to focus on their personal life rather than work. Some people enjoy centering their lives around work, but many people do not and that is okay. We should be encouraged to use our paid time away, spend time with family and friends, or just plain staying in and playing video games.

What about not wanting to go to a happy hour with coworkers after work or get together for a morning huddle to gab about things going on? For many of us, our coworkers truly are coworkers and are not people we would normally socialize with outside of work. So rather than having to spend 10 minutes listening to Susan show pictures of her grandchild, you are allowed to just skip it. And to those leaders out there, this does not mean they are an uninvested employee or someone who is not a team player. They simply want to be colleagues and if you try to say “but I think of us as a family” then that is a red flag and you need to evaluate if you are actually the problem.

So I will not accept anyone trying to explain that quiet quitting is a problem, because it is not. Not every employee should be expected to prioritize work over their personal lives because for many, work is simply a means of affording their hobbies and passions. But I will say, I know plenty of people who might change their tune if they were suddenly being paid that same wage that senior leaders see, so perhaps Paychex does have a point in offering people more money.

If I am being fully honest with everyone, part of me is convinced that promoting the “epidemic” of quiet quitting is simply gaslighting on major scale. We have leaders, executives, and business experts all overpaid and have likely not worked a real job in decades telling us that doing standard requirements of jobs are not good enough. That you are not a good employee unless you work overtime, come in early and stay late, work off the clock, and prioritize work over everything else in your life. You read these articles from experts and I truly felt gaslit into believing I was living in a parallel world and I was the crazy one.

Quiet quitting is not a threat to the American workplace and frankly I am going further to say it is not even real. It is quiet literally just doing one’s job.

  1. Klotz, A. C., & Bolino, M. C. (2022, September 15). When Quiet Quitting Is Worse Than the Real Thing. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved November 13, 2025, from https://hbr.org/2022/09/when-quiet-quitting-is-worse-than-the-real-thing ↩︎
  2. Harter, J. (2022, September 6). Is Quiet Quitting Real? Gallup. Retrieved November 13, 2025, from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/398306/quiet-quitting-real.aspx ↩︎
  3. Masterson, V. (2022, September 2). What is quiet quitting and why is it happening. World Economic Forum. Retrieved November 13, 2025, from https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/09/quiet-quitting-explained/#:~:text=Quiet%20quitting%20is%20the%20art,Xer%2C%20reports%20the%20LA%20Times. ↩︎
  4. Whitney, H. (2024, May 14). Quiet Quitting: Meaning, Signs, and How To Prevent It. Paychex. Retrieved November 13, 2025, from https://www.paychex.com/articles/human-resources/quiet-quitting ↩︎

Quiet Quitting: The Corporate Red Scare

Quote• Posted on by Nathan Westerberg