To think most office jobs exist to waste time and make people feel important?

I'm in the private sector. I'm a software engineer. In my experience, middle managers can be a bit pointless. The number of times a middle manager has gone off on holiday and things have run a bit more smoothly is quite funny. It must be good money, though, otherwise said middle managers would have buggered off by now.

Lots of roadmap meetings that go nowhere, lots of silly goal-oriented one to ones that end up being therapy sessions. None of it is helpful in the long term, but it keeps people in jobs and thus keeps the unemployment figures down.

Pointless job or not, it pays the bills.

Let's all get our feet up then. Fuck taxes, fuck schools, fuck public transport, fuck hospitals (time wasting wankers), fuck the bars and the restaurants and shops in central London. Let's close everything? Where do you live OP? It somewhere super grim and boring?

I think a lot of places end up inefficient because they don't evolve. I work somewhere where our legacy IT systems are 20 or 30 years old and can't talk to each other, there are people who've been in role the entire time, and they're still dependent on literal paper processes. It takes hours a week to gather the information from all these systems to make sure essential decisions are correct.

The problem is, moving from these old system to quick shiny systems require 30 people, rather than the 5 currently working in the department so its just been put off for decades. Now they're all heading to retirement in the next 5 years the company have realised they need to do something and suddenly a load of new people (me included) have been hired to fix things and move us to the 21st century.

My older colleagues haven't been lazy this entire time, they've actually worked long hours and been pretty clever about solving issues in the face of the IT problems, but they've been hampered by technology. When the government talks about underinvestment causing low productivity, it is offices exactly like this one they mean.

@SharpGreyOwl have you seen the film Office Space?
Absolute CLASSIC !
A bit dated in places as it's late 90s but is hilarious.

It’s also worth noting that I work in the pharmaceutical industry which has A LOT of red tape! These office jobs are actually scientists, engineers and quality control/assurance specialists etc doing very necessary jobs. I find the term “office job” to be a bit insulting! Do people want their medications made to standard or not?

Same, “office job” but very little in the way of paper for me…in fact on a whole our aim is to be paperless.

I worked in an office meeting people face to face sorting their council tax and housing benefits, amongst other things- there never wasn’t a queue. I don’t the people queuing thought they were wasting their time talking to me - some may have if they didn’t get the answer they wanted

We don’t have any pieces of paper int his office and haven’t for some time 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'll assume the OP didn't get any of the jobs they applied for then.

Have lots of meetings where they draw up plans to give work to others, have more meetings while eat all the nice food. Then come down hard on everyone else for not doing enough.

I wouldn’t worry about it. AI is rapidly moving into entry level admin jobs and through iterative advancement will soon be able to cope with defined disciplines within project management, finance etc.

A lot exist to make the roles of the most senior personnel easier. A lot of businesses would collapse without the office workers. They’re the ones who keep the cogs turning.

This.

I have a job that strictly speaking doesn’t “need” to exist - society would keep going without it. But it serves a function that ultimately improves things. I spend a lot of time in meetings that feel pointless (to me) and also probably inviting others to meetings that feel pointless (to them). It’s public sector and there is a lot of red tape and things to consider around coproduction, efficient use of public funds, transparency etc etc so things DO take forever and sometimes it can feel frustrating and a bit pointless - especially when another team wants to have an opinion on what you are doing. But it’s necessary in order to ensure things run in a way that ensures things are done according to due process and the public duty is met appropriately.

Also, people need to work and feel like they are contributing regardless of what that is. So YABU.

Just came to recommend that book too 👌 Really opened my eyes and still applies today even though it's a bit older. I very much have a bullshit office job. Doesn't make it any less stressful though unfortunately!

Oh hello, random three words name poster with a really abstract 'discuss' thread. Why don't you share some of your own experiences that make you think this?

What industry do you work in @SharpGreyOwl?

I’m not office based any more but when I was I think that was the general assumption of lots of people. However the company I used to work for closed the office permanently at the start of lockdown, some staff were made redundant and others went on to work from home.

The amount of calls and emails the remaining staff got asking how do tasks which were done quietly in the background before was amazing. We would just get on with things in the office, sorting out problems, getting urgent items couriered out, dealing with complaints, spending hours preparing training materials and new unit manuals as well as all the ordering that went with opening a new site, getting ready for conferences etc. Never really involving the operations teams or other senior management unless necessary.

When we could no longer do their everyday mundane tasks and they had to start outsourcing them themselves there was uproar.

Yes we used to arrange lots of meetings and travel but that was a very small part of our roles.

Why would an employer pay people just to shuffle paper about pointlessly though. It's their loss ultimately if there is no actual work to do.

Not the case in my experience, no.

Anyone bored with shuffling paper and generally doing nothing can come and join me in the office I work in.
40 hours a week isn't enough (although I refuse to do more hours) and I often leave on Friday with unread emails and arrive on Monday to a full inbox. On top of that there are phones to answer and jobs that come personally from colleagues coming into the office. The pay is piss poor for the complexity and amount of work I am expected to get through.
Please post links to the paper shuffling jobs - I am at breaking point.

Lots of undigested naieve assumptions being presented here lately as though they are reasoned ideas.

Have you read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber? Lots of data to back up your claim.