Pointless office jobs

Some of these companies must have seriously crap managers if the work could be done in one day a week and yet they are paying huge salaries for full timers to twiddle their thumbs and pretend to be busy.

You’re earning a very high salary for a job that doesn’t sound like it brings you any stress or impact on your home life, apart from the fact that you’re bored. Many people would be very happy to be in your situation. I work in a highly stressful and demanding role which eats into my home life unless I’m careful and I earn less than you. I wonder if it would help you to pursue something outside of your work environment (a course, study, a hobby) which would balance out the humdrum of your job? Unfortunately if your job is as pointless as you say it is, you might find that your company will find a way to do without your role either through restructure or because AI will compensate for it in some way. This is why the course/study may be a good idea in case you need to get into another field! I’m not trying to be unkind, mindless brain numbing boredom is very challenging to sit in day in, day out but you can always look to do something else.

I don’t know about nursing or care work being soul destroying. For some I’m sure it is, but the nurses and care workers I know love their actual jobs, even if they hate the management, and of course they’re very tired most of the time. They’re certainly in no doubt that what they’re doing is very important.

One of my jobs is domestic help and ‘companionship’ for elderly people for little more than minimum wage. It’s the opposite of soul-destroying. It feeds my soul! It’s easy work but vitally important to the clients. I go home feeling satisfied because I know I’ve done something useful and needed, and I’ve made a difference to someone’s day.

Imagine how much better our social care system would be if they got 80k for back breaking work making people's last days better and the offices were full of 30-40k max roles. The country would shift. Men know they aren't going to make themselves money that way though, as it's women's work and a lot of us will do it freely.

Suits the managers, as they keep getting paid for doing nowt. I worked in an office where the whole marketing team was let go, the department shut down. Except the manager, who was moved to another area. Because he was the boss’ mate… Unbelievable!

No, I didn’t mean those jobs are soul destroying at all! I meant doing those hard and difficult jobs, especially care work for the money they receive is soul destroying.

Must be the jealousy getting in your way this time

It makes me feel ill that there are people out there doing very little for 70-80k per year. I’m not blaming the employees, why wouldn’t you do a job where you do a tiny amount of work for mega bucks? Just adds to my overarching doom feeling that the UK is in such a mess!!! 😩

I understand that. I earn v well and often wonder 'why'. I sometimes walk through the office and think that I cannot believe humanity signed up for this. I would love to work with animals instead, but I would be financially poor. I grew up poor and dont want this again. So I have all the money and security. Basically live my dream but it is pointless. I try to find more meaning outside work now, which has been lacking too as I spent years in survival mode with no capacity for anything but work.

I spend quite a bit of money on therapy so I am starting my actual life.

Oh I see @mtobrokeme. It wasn’t clear because you said ‘not as soul-destroying as a care worker earning minimum wage, or a nurse, or any of the multitude of jobs…’
It did sound like you meant the jobs were soul destroying.

The OP and others have been discussing wanting to do something meaningful. Those jobs are meaningful, they just need to be much better paid. Maybe if there weren’t so many people earning 80k pushing bits of paper around a desk or doing nothing at their desk for 38 hours a week, there’d be more money in the budget for the people doing the real work!

The managers don’t want to rock the boat as they would be on the chopping block if it’s discovered how little everyone does

And reflecting more on it, it depends on what people really mean by ‘soul destroying’.

Hard work on low pay can be depressing and exhausting and make people feel undervalued. But they do know that what they’re doing is important.

Pissing about for megabucks allows a person to maintain good health for longer and live a pleasant lifestyle. But the person isn’t necessarily under any illusion that they matter to the world. I can see how that could damage self esteem.

There should be so much more rage about pay for pointless jobs and how underpaid essential roles are. Always outcry whenever anyone tries to strike for better pay and conditions though. Also need to get rid of derision for roles like care/support work and also to assume that anyone can do the job. You need a certain temperament to do the work.
If I had to work in an office, I'd go feral and jump out of the window.

If I was a shareholder here I'd be very unhappy and want the excess staff fired

Yes @chaosmaker, more rage would be good.

I wonder if those being paid huge salaries for non-jobs advocate for the hard workers who are underpaid in their own organisations. Offer to take a 5k pay cut so the person who cleans the office loos can earn a bit more, for example. Not something that would or could happen in the real world, I’m sure, but I’m not sure why.

Some of the replies!

not everyone earns the same, some people earn more than you, some less. Doesn’t mean they are/aren't happy. people ARE allowed to vent when they’re feeling miserable. They’re entitled to feel that way.

being dissatisfied is nothing to do with a salary. Being paid lots of money but bored out of your skull is soul destroying, you’re trapped.

if you earn fuck all, there ARE potential options, you can always go UP, you may have to re-train, you may need to consider moving house/job.

when you’re the main wage earner, when you’ve got a SEN child to care for, a SAHD and household to maintain, it weighs heavy.

ive been single parent, low wage, living pay cheque to pay cheque, well in fact there was always too much month for my salary. It was awful, it was stressful. I wasn’t earning much at all, my ex was a total dick and I was on my own.

life Is better now, but money only gives you options and choices, it certainly doesn’t make you happy all by itself. You need fulfilment and contentment. If you’re working in a job that doesn’t do that, you can find activities outside work to compensate, but your brain is still rotting between 9-5.

@Probablygreen i always felt unmotivated and low when I came back from holiday, it will pass. 6 weeks to Christmas and who knows, maybe you’ll have a blinding flash of inspiration to make a difference to your day to day.

Must be very hard earning £80k doing basically nothing....though I kinda get it. I'm on 6 figs doing very boring repetitive work but thankfully only have to work 2-4 hours a day.

Have you thought about applying to other jobs?

We're all in the same boat. No one likes their repetitive job

I understand OP, I have a very pointless job albeit less well paid. For 52k I'm a 'Relationship Manager' looking after third party vendors of our product. The product would sell without me, a lot of what I do is social and simply about flattering people - but I also managed to be insanely busy. It has perks, I get to do fun things, work very flexibily and I mostly enjoy it but it is utterly pointless and adds no value to anyone.

I'm on £60k in a public sector role that is fairly niche in the wide scheme of things. Family and friends don't understand what I do and refer to it as a bullshit job, which I find offensive. I work bloody hard for my money and while my work might not be directly visible to the person on the street, I can guarantee that they feel the benefit in an indirect way. I often find myself staring at my screen but not because there's nothing to do and it all feels pointless, but because I'm paralysed with stress at all the things coming at me at once.

That said, I took a secondment last year, within my organisation. Same pay and supposedly same responsibility level. This job was exactly as some have described on this thread. Literally two hours of work per week - and almost completely remote (2 days per month in the office) so I can tell you I caught up on a lot of boxsets while collecting my paycheck. I looked at it as a much needed rest and compensation for the 100s of unpaid overtime hours I've accumulated in my core job. I did report it but nobody wanted to know. It made me sick that in one organisation, there are people making themselves ill with workloads and others sitting around having a right jolly. Call me naive but the thought had never occurred to me before and I assumed we were all in the same boat.

I do have a good work ethic and want to succeed in my career so I did work proactively to find avenues of activity and do my work to the highest standard whil in the secondment. I soon found myself ostracised by my teammates because I was making them look bad with the amount I was producing, compared to them. Even then, I was only stretching the work out to around 15 hours per week and the bosses didn't seem to care about my proactivity - I guess they were annoyed that it gave them more to do, so I soon dropped back to a couple of hours work and just enjoyed the paid break.

I've been back in my core job for 10 months and losing the will to live with the stress and demands on my time. Knowing about the inequality just makes it worse. I'd like to say I'd love to have another job like my secondment but honestly I wouldn't - I was bored to tears and hated that situation as much as I hate my current stress. From that point of view, I can understand the OP's situation. Surely there are some happy medium jobs out there at this payscale?

Haha it was something like that. Cockroachs crawled across my desk occasionally to keep me company!

Gawd it was awful. I mean I'm lazy but not that fucking lazy! I wanted to put a wax dummy there and just go to the pub. Nobody would've noticed. 🤣

Could you change your job role? I don't mean apply for a different one. I mean continue working in the same one, but change what your responsibilities are.

Find shortcuts to doing the pointless work, and branch out into something actually meaningful the rest of the time, that will improve the organisation, and society overall.

E.g. frame your role in sustainability terms. Which can include financial considerations, but is also much broader, and of course there are many indirect financial savings that can be made with an environmental focus on your work, (even if it appears to cost more at first, doing the right thing always saves money long-term).

So you could drive renewable energy (NOT biomass) initiatives, active travel for employees and service users, ethical food served in the building, support relevant grassroots projects, screen The People's Emergency Briefing, get staff pensions with the least bad pension provider (there is no truly ethical pension yet, unless you use SIPPs) etc.

I bet whoever is supposed to be doing that role in the organisation isn't getting far enough with it (whether because they don't understand/value the scope of it, or because they are blocked by other policies/departments). There's a lot of greenwashing within those job roles; few people are willing or able to take action that makes a significant difference.

But maybe you have more power, with different levers to use. And inter-disciplinary approaches should be more effective. Make your capitalist role into an anti-capitalist one.

And yet today I went to Aldi where I saw an elderly man struggle with the self scan checkout . Looked around for staff and no one immediately available.
This was after my doctor's appointment where I was told to download an app to get info from health service . Imagine if I could have called a number to be answered by someone at a desk or WFH that would know the answer to my query .

I do sometimes. I am really glad to have a stable job though, and look for meaning elsewhere in life. Job stability= a clear head after work, no job worries. Having said that, I actually cried in front our HOD, and I've been given more meaningful work since they found out how low I'd got.

Just suck it up. You’re lucky to be in a job with a decent salary

Why are you trying to goad a response? Are you a deeply unhappy unfulfilled person? I’m thinking that’s the only reason for your odd posts. Maybe get some fresh air? It’ll do you the world of good ❤️