Pointless office jobs

Your employment isn't the purpose of your life, it's what pays for your life. If you were a subsistence farmer or hunter gatherer your work wouldn't have any deeper meaning than enabling you to live either.

You find the purpose outside work. It's called work for a reason.

Most public sector jobs are pointless. IMO 90% of them could be abolished tomorrow and 90% if the tax-paying public would experience no tangible difference to their lives.

This in spades

Some of us want to enjoy what we do and have purpose to our day. Feel personal achievement and progression and value. I do understand we all go through periods of our life where this isn't possible. OP has come to a point of change, and I applaud her for talking about it. That's the first stage of making it happen. I also recognise some people have no interest other than doing the basics of what's required of them in their role - if that suits them, that's ok.

I worked in mind numbingly pointness admin roles for years, I'm looking at you NHS, and agree that much of the work I was asked to do was utterly pointless but was propping up the equally pointless work being done by the poor sods in the levels above me and the management team. I really couldn't believe some of the stuff we had to do, months if not years spent on projects and pilots that came to nothing.

You need to have a fulfilling life outside work. I also agree with a previous poster who suggested that AI will take over most admin work in the not too distant future.

Try reading David Graeber on bullshit jobs - you will recognise a lot of your situation in it.

I feel like this op! I work for a big corporate and I think tbh if my entire team disappeared they would still make loads of money and defo no one would die. But I need the money so I suck it up and try and get meaning from voluntary roles eg being a school governor and helping with my DCs sport club

Im public sector, if you abolished my lob, no one would receive care

Are you my boss, OP?

Seriously though, even though it's a first world problem, I get why you're fed up and you are allowed to be (so I don't think you should get a hard time). Many jobs which matter are hopelessly underpaid and many well-paid jobs are ultimately pointless. I would be saving money in the hope that I could retrain and leave.

A man has been found guilty for fraudulently holding FIVE full-time public sector jobs. How many more jobs are there like this in the public sector?

@OonaStubbs very few these days. Do you think the public sector can afford dead weight?

Have you got a link to the case please?

In my corporate life, I thought 90% of my time was totally wasted, but the other 10% made a huge difference.

The wasted part was pointless meetings, firefighting, responding to JFDIs from the grown ups etc.

I switched to something completely different and although I earn less now, the potential exists to earn as much as I want to, in a much more rewarding manner.

Oh, and don't bet on AI changing much. My guess is that all the juniors will be using it to turn bullet points into ten page reports to go up the tree, and all the grown ups will be using it to condense 10 page reports into bullet points.

Why don't you try to move into something more meaningful and still quite well paid. A sector you are more excited by? I've always looked for jobs I would enjoy but that's probably why I'm not paid as much as you.

Oh to be paid £80k pa to do something pointless.

Save the cash, redundancy is never far away xxx
Yup doing a pointless job is shit
But £££ makes your life work

I have felt this OP.
If you log in to your Government Gateway account it gives you a breakdown of your taxes paid for the last year and how it was spent. I found it helped me to be able to say my work gave 2k to education or whatever.

Public sector workers are no way more pointless than private. The worst bit is when public sector employees are prevented from doing their jobs through dodgy contracts and private sector meddling. Hello Palantir. On a smaller scale go into any public sector office and ask what is being paid for that they could do themselves for cheaper, there will be plenty but no-one listens to them.

Yes and not just that, who do you support in the office. Especially as women I think, are you giving a voice and mentoring to junior staff, encouraging others etc that all makes a huge difference

What do you actually do? Office job could be lots of things!

Can you say anything about your area of work without it outing you OP? I’m intrigued as to what can be so pointless… especially at a salary of 80k?

And while I know we can’t live our lives being ever thankful for what we have, financial security is a big one.
I am facing unemployment at the end of the year and the uncertainty that brings clouds every aspect of my life.

I know what you mean. I also have a “bullshit job”, which is the official term! Apparently 40% of us feel this way. The thing is, people have different skills. Some people work on the ground doing the real work with animals and children. Some of us would be crap at that, but we are good at saying pointless things in pointless meetings. Charities don’t need a million people working for their charity who don’t have the relevant skills to offer practical support. But they do need financial support. My advice is keep the job, take the money, and use that money to support charities who are doing the work that you wish you could be doing.

Yes I recognise this, I suppose my job is pointless in that it's really just for making a big company more money or saving them money.

I don't love it, but I do like trying to bring order to chaos and creating systems. I would love something more rewarding, but unfortunately I also love not having to think about money and holidays and children having clubs/activities and eating out, so I guess I am stuck with it!

I'm interested in what it is that you do where you earn that much money and don’t do anything meaningful. I agree with PPs that many or even most office jobs have impact, even if it is not earth-shattering.

I mean I don’t save people’s lives or provide them with food, but I do have a role which is useful in the context of my (creative) industry. Without me or someone else doing what I do, a lot of things would not be well done that currently are. I earn a lot less than you @Probablygreen. I like what I do tho (that’s the thing with creative industries – we pay badly but you know you love it).

So yes, what do you do, so that we can suggest how to make it have more meaning. Could you swerve into some senior management role in a charity, or healthcare admin?

Or yes, @StAmelia makes a great point about being a senior woman in an office. Could you start to mentor a younger woman on your team? Not in a patronising way but supportively (and discreetly). Might make you feel a bit more worthwhile?

But no one can tell you that because you're quite right - it is pointless! Most jobs are. You're lucky that you're in a pointless job that pays well and isn't too stressful.

There's no way to make a pointless job more enjoyable. You can enjoy spending time with the people at work (if you like them/have things in common) and you can enjoy the peace of mind that earning decent money brings. Other than that, you need to seek joy outside of work. Do another degree or a short course, start doing something artistic just for pleasure (rather than a necessary side hustle), volunteer somewhere that makes you feel happy and useful, enjoy free time with your family.