To question my job after reading this article

[Princesstwilightsparkle]

english.emmaclit.com/2017/10/05/work-why/

To think maybe I have a bullshit job after reading this and to ask what people consider isn't a B.S. job?

english.emmaclit.com/2017/10/05/work-why/

I work with a charity that supports people with a rare disease and their families. So glad I got out of my bullshit job and into this field.

Well, that’s quite a long rant. The simple truth is that we work in order to afford things; isn’t that obvious?

As for whether your particular job is “bullshit”, well if it is, why is somebody paying you to do it?

For example, one of the “bullshit jobs” cited is tax advisor. I’ve had to pay a tax advisor in the past to handle a deceased relative’s estate. Another example cited is financial journalist. Every time you buy a newspaper you’re paying journalists.

If you don’t understand why your job is important, just ask yourself why your boss or your customers pay you to do it.

I'm a TA in a special school. The pay is dire, but hopefully over time, I help severely disabled children to develop, become as independent as they are able. So not a Bullshit job.
Just a very very undervalued one!

If you don’t understand why your job is important, just ask yourself why your boss or your customers pay you to do it.

I think you've missed the point. Did you read to the end? Your boss pays you to do it because it makes him money, and your customer pays for the product/service because they believe they need it (due to marketing)

Not sure what your question is

If you can afford to work less, do

I plan to retire as early as possible and live frugally

Some people will make value judgements about that but they can fuck off

The meaning of bullshit job is debatable
I worked for a charity once but the way they wasted money, and their justifications for it, were so nauseating....I found myself pacing the floor one night and then decided to go back to a commercial place, I felt less of a raid that way.

That's just it Stillmedusa you have an amazing job, but not valued as you should be. I think I'd prefer to do something that felt more rewarding, but honestly I don't earn mega money, it's a moderate but reasonable salary, but not minimum wage & frustratingly I couldn't afford to give it up, but wonder if one day I'll regret that I didn't?

How do you have to gulp your food in an hours lunch? I eat in 15 and then have 45 mins to shop/ read/ chill/walk (misses point of post)

I think the author is French and maybe wrong here, but don't they get longer lunch times?

your customer pays for the product/service because they believe they need it (due to marketing)

How much do you spend, each month, on stuff that you merely believe you need because of marketing, rather than stuff you actually want or need?

Or are you clever and don’t fall for marketing, whereas everyone else is stupid and does?

Once in a while we’ll buy stuff by mistake (see the thread about crap toys, hatchimals, etc.) because the adverts looked good; but that’s very much the exception, not the rule.

Even for expensive stuff, I drive a Citroen Picasso because it’s spacious and cheap to run; not because an advert told me it was good.

Absolute load of shit. She's in a miserable job she's been doing the same thing for 10years?! So time to move on to a new challenge she finds more rewarding. Hardly rocket science.

Oh dear.

We got rid of good financial journalists. That's why "no one" saw the 2008 financial collapse coming (except they did... all the good financial journalists that can't get jobs anymore, that is).

So let's take another... advertising executives. Is that for all industries or just the ones she dislikes because it's ad executives that do the ads for charities, public sporting events, solar panelling, environmental concerns, public health campaigns ... "Five a day" was an ad campaign run by ad executives: was that bullshit and worthless?

And traders. Which traders? Commodities? You get rid of them and the entire system of buying and selling energy, food stuffs, metals etc breaks down. And you kinda need that system in a global marketplace if you want things like mobile phones, sugar, transport or chocolate.

That strip is just a typical display of the kind of anti-knowledge that passes for "incisive political comment" these days. It's no good lauding doctors if you've no energy to run a bloody hospital because you've decided international gas trading is a "bullshit job".

Ffs.

The article is a bit weird as while the author's job is bs not everyone working with the same/similar skillset in the company will have a bs job.

Also several of the bs jobs given as an example may not be be depending on who they work for. For example a financial journalist can report on normal day to day events which are important for anyone with a mortgage, pension and/or savings, but they can also report on financial scandals which damage the economy and mean loads of people end up unemployed.

Oh and marketing may or may not be a bs job. Everyone from charities and voluntary organisations to universities to shops to soft drinks manufacturers to virtually anything you can think off market themselves. If the first group didn't then some people, who need their help, wouldn't have heard of them.

I have worked in various office jobs, usually something administrative. My last role before becoming a SAHM was fairly important: if I screwed up in one way it would cost the company ££££, and if I screwed up in another way it would damage the company's reputation. My salary and perks reflected my responsibilities.

Now my dc are older and I've re-entered the world of salaried work. I'm now an LSA / TA. I'm paid a fraction of my previous salary, and have a fraction of my previous responsibility and authority. I get no perks.

Yet my current job is vastly more satisfying. I feel that I actually make a difference to the world, that my efforts benefits real people, and I realise that all my previous jobs were basically about moving money from one place to another. That what I did didn't really matter, other than to the people connected to that money. That they were TBH 'bullshit' jobs.

So I'm interested in what constitutes a non BS job. What do you think?

And that whole prosthetic arm thing pisses me off. Medical equipment isn't a loss making industry. You don't have to create a market to create a demand; the demand is already there.

People make packets of cash out of manufacturing crutches, hospital beds, disposable thermometers and the such like. And it all comes with a "medical" premium slapped on.

Crikey, this author really ought to investigate how the real world works, rather than how she believes it does.

Do you also believe in a ‘flat earth’? Similar scientific reasoning applied 🙄

Emma is full of shit.

There's a market for people's labor just like anything else. If you have skills that make you valuable to employers they will hire you at the going wage for your qualifications. It's what economists call a mutually beneficial transaction.

I for one think it's just fine that starting amazon.com made Jeff Bezos filthy rich, but in the cartoon he's just another greedy factory owner.

Erm isn't that just Marxism/communism? But not named as such? In a pure uncorrupted form.

Only doing work that's for the good of the community not for profit. This is supposed to mean fewer working hours are needed, people paid for their real worth to the community not based on productivity. The sick, disabled cared for by people feeling truly valued for that role. Educators motivated by the value of education in itself not just training up little producers...

I can think of one financial journalist well known who's made a real difference to ordinary people. Set up a very well known website and appears regularly on tv & radio.

Communism collapsed (mainly due to corruption bastardising the ideology), capitalism isn't working - never did really. Boom and bust is not a healthy economic model.

We need a new global financial ideology/working model - but most leaders believe the above are the only 2 options.

I don't think any job can be written off as BS.. all jobs exist for a reason. I was a teacher which is meant to be 'rewarding' but I find more reward working in freelance film/tv as I do now. It's all about perspective and attitude. Find joy and purpose in what you're doing or move on to a new career.

Laughing here at the 1 hour lunch break.

I get 30 minutes.

Toilet, wash hands, queue up, order, pay, eat, queue up for a few drinks to keep me going and run back.

Very naive cartoon post. If you don’t like your job, by all means change it. Please don’t spout such nonsense though. I’m wondering if this was posted to create blog traffic.

The two best companies I worked for, one was a Christian publisher and the other is a non profit (still there, not thinking of leaving any time soon!) Working in commercial publishing was soul destroying although felt quite cool at times.

If a job either satisfies the worker or feeds them then it's not bullshit. Besides, everything is so interconnected that, ultimately, the advertising sales exec making stupid money selling ad space to advertise things nobody really needs is enabling the magazine to pay the salaries of people feeding their families, paying their mortgages, and whose income funds the NHS.

I may think ad sales exec is a bullshit job, but they may feel the same satisfaction from their job as I do from mine. 'Bullshit job' is IMO a matter of opinion.