Those with “bullshit jobs” how Is your work with the covid?

[Acrylicsocks]

I’ve got a regular busy non-office job and I’ve always been intrigued when reading about people who have office jobs where there is nothing at all for them to do all day?

It made me wonder how they are all going with this covid. Are you “working’ from home? Been furloughed? Been made redundant?

[Ghostlyglow]

I think in our case it's because the managers were desperate to prove how essential and "frontline" our bit of the NHS is to protect their own jobs. We could have been furloughed but no - we all got given computers and were sent home. We are working but it's by no means essential.

[Acrylicsocks]

Yes I’m probably more interested in the bullshit jobs where there is very little to do.

So are these people still pretending to work from home or have they been furloughed?

[CormoranStrike]

I am doing more work than ever before - I’m knackered

[SuperStay7]

I don’t have a bullshit job. But I have realised since WFH that I can do the bulk of my work in about 3-4 hours and then just be available via phone and email for any queries. I don’t need to sit glued to a screen for 8 hours a day. It will be hard to go back to the old presenteeism again,..

[LockdownQ]

Can’t think of anyone where I work (Civil Service) who is twiddling their thumbs.

I work in policy and I could easily get away with doing nothing most days. As long as I respond quickly when needed

[Sittinonthefloor]

“Brand management, marketing is massively important” is it though? I think we have a different understanding of the word important. It certainly doesn’t add anything to society. It’s just a part of advertising; an aspect of our consumerist culture. If you are launching a new product, advertising might be important to you, but I don’t think that adverts are ‘useful’ to society as a whole. I don’t think a pr person getting a mention for their product in a Sunday supplement is important.

[JohnRokesmith]

Brand management, marketing etc is massively important. You can’t call a job bullshit just because you don’t understand what that job is.

This is very true. David Graeber’s list of pointless jobs includes “corporate compliance officers” which shows, firstly, that Graeber doesn’t understand the purpose of compliance and, secondly, that he’s an idiot.

Another problem is that there are a lot of situations where the problem is less bullshit jobs than shit employees. Broadly speaking, you have employees who are uninterested, unwilling, or unable to do useful work, so they spend their days shuffling paper, instead. I used to work in the civil service, and knew plenty of people who would claim that they were doing bullshit jobs. Actually, they were supposed to be doing something worthwhile, but it was easier to dodge work, and justify this to themselves by claiming that their work was pointless.

[whatshebininagain]

techtonicplates

"I'm sick of people who think someone else isn't doing any work just because they don't personally see them doing it."

Absolutely. At the moment that's my DH. Just because I'm sitting at the table "staring at a computer" doesn't mean I can just drop it when he needs a had with some -bullshit- job he can't be arsed doing on his own. There are people who can't get their jobs done till I do my bit, "bullshit" as it may be. For the want of a nail, the war was lost and all that.

[whatshebininagain]

I'm definitely busier WFH. Teams meetings that go on forever where someone has to put their "hand-up" to speak rather than being able to "read the room" for a pause.

Also having to e-mail someone back and forth rather than just pick up the phone or, heaven forfend, pop down to their office to speak to them in person.

[draughtycatflap]

“The Covid”? Ugh...

Goes back to bullshit job of pressing nose against catflap.

[Sittinonthefloor]

Minty - that is what’s happened though. The brand consultant I know has lost most of their clients or been ‘paused’. Of course branding is important, but when things are tight obviously cutting someone who advises on branding is less painful than other choices. These are small companies with few staff who may well go under anyway - they simply can’t afford to pay someone to advise them on their branding at the moment. You will probably argue that they can’t afford not to, but if they haven’t got the cash they don’t have the cash. I do understand what the person does and they spend a lot of time doing it - but is definitely not something that adds anything of value to society. A lot of the time the spend is finding new clients and reading magazines to keep up to date with trends. This is not useful work!

[tectonicplates]

Interesting that admin assistants are on that lost that someone posted earlier. A lot of admin work is "hidden" so that other members of the office don't realise it's going on. I've worked at more than one place where an admin assistant or PA was let go, and then everyone started saying how come we're so busy? Why hasn't x been done? Er, because you let go of the person who used to do it? And then people start complaining about having to do admin which is taking up extra time.

I'm sick of people who think someone else isn't doing any work just because they don't personally see them doing it.

[EmbarrassedUser]

I’m so bored, I have hardly anything to do. I spend most of the day watching YouTube and TikTok whilst being on full pay (public sector office job- WFH)

[MintyMabel]

It’s pointless, they could just tell the photographer themselves and now these companies are needing to make savings paying him as a middleman can be cut without much impact.

Because “they” have all the time in the world to do stuff like that? “They” also tell the accountant how much to pay their staff. Why don’t “they” just pay the staff directly.

Brand management, marketing etc is massively important. You can’t call a job bullshit just because you don’t understand what that job is.

[Fandanglethat]

The news yesterday said people are doing 2 hours less work. I reckon its more.

Because my commute is shorter and the journey to collect the kids is shorter I'm averaging 2 hours MORE work per day!

[Ghostlyglow]

We spend hours, days and forever checking and double and triple checking stuff that is 99% correct (which is a pretty good average when you consider human error potential, but anyway) . Then our managers produce endless graphs and reports for their many meetings. It's soul destroying.

[SmileyClare]

A lot of people of people will be or have been made redundant. That's the sad truth of it.

My mother in law calls it "The Covid".

[wheresmymojo]

You're definitely confusing 'bullshit' jobs with under occupied workers.

Bullshit jobs can be extremely busy (and weirdly often involve the longest working hours) but you spend most of your time doing things that are of no value to society.

So I used to be a management consultant which is the epitome of a bullshit job.

You work very, very long hours writing reports that hardly anyone reads and creating lots of PowerPoint presentations. Then you might implement a change that gets undone six months later by another set of management consultants with a different approach.

[Hardbackwriter]

I was talking to the OP who, as I said, I think mixed up two different things (and referred to the same book as you). And OP didn't say 'are you worried you're at risk of redundancy?' (a fair question if your job feels pointless), she started from the assumption that they had nothing to do all day, which as I said is a different thing.

[PlatoAteMySnozcumber]

I don’t think it’s really the jobs that are bullshit but the types of industries we have in general. Everything has moved from actually producing something tangible to service based industries. Financial services, law, marketing and many corporate jobs in general are pretty bullshit but that’s the nature of the beast.

[Sittinonthefloor]

Hardback - are you talking to me? Of course bullshit jobs can be time consuming. The point is that in an economic crisis Bullshit jobs may be more vulnerable as companies make spending cuts. The person I know is a ‘brand consultant’ (or does pr for smallish companies). It’s all stuff that can be done in house, they pay him to advise on the advertising, but he doesn’t make the adverts or take the pictures. The clients tell him what they want and then he tells the photographer etc. It’s pointless, they could just tell the photographer themselves and now these companies are needing to make savings paying him as a middleman can be cut without much impact.

[Ghostlyglow]

I've got a bullshit job with the NHS. We have been mostly kept busy working from home (including weekly quizzes and "care cafes" ) but to be honest I wish they'd close the office, make us all redundant and put us out of our misery. I'm hanging on in the hope of redundancy but if it doesn't come soon I'm going to leave in the quite near future.

[okiedokieme]

I've had one of those jobs, well it was periods of activity but lots of nothing however they needed someone to do the role with the correct skills. Occasionally they did get me to cover reception or something else like that but mostly I sat playing computer games waiting for something to happen

[PlatoAteMySnozcumber]

I have a bullshit job according to the list. In all honesty quite a bit of it feels a little bullshitty, but I am always busy and get treated much better as well as paid a lot more than when I had a real meaningful job where I genuinely made a difference. Covid has made absolutely no difference to my work load.

[NaughtyLittleElf]

I know a few people who have jobs that are about "networking and facilitating" in the public sector (usually very senior) who must have been twiddling their thumbs while the rest of us were busy doing immediate Covid response work instead of our normal jobs, I'm not clear what some of them do most of the time most have no teams to manage and deliver nothing directly.

I also know a few people with admin jobs who've been less busy because normal work hasn't been happening, some of them have actively put themselves forward to muck in with whatever was helpful and others kept their head down, both behaviours were noticed and when opportunities come up in future some will be rewarded, even if it's just by having something different to talk about in an interview.