The book Bullshit Jobs has changed my life

[Polarbearflavour]

Anybody else?

Article here. www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/25/bullshit-jobs-a-theory-by-david-graeber-review

Most of my jobs are bullshit. My current job involves vast periods of time doing nothing, sometimes doing audits that nobody reads and just get filed away. Or attending committees, doing minutes for them that again, nobody ever reads.

For me a bullshit job is something which feeds the bullshit system we live in.

So yes, to me Russell your job is a bullshit job.

As are both of my jobs although one is less bullshit than the other!

In one I am a teacher - teaching kids how to get a bullshit job in a bullshit society.

In the other I am an acupuncturist. Generally helping people to cope with their bullshit jobs in a bulkshit society.

I get immense satisfaction from both but would far rather that we were all able to get satisfaction from living in a society that wasn’t so full of bullshit!

Are you up for another book, OP? Try What Should I Do With My Life by Po Bronson. It really did change mine.

Wait so it hasn’t actually changed your life. It’s made you think differently but you haven’t done anything yet?

I've had a creative, vaguely meaningful job for the last couple of years (creative, own business, working from home) and am about to start a fairly bullshit job back in the corporate world and I can't bloody wait!

I currently don't earn enough to have a decent quality of life. Some aspects of it are enjoyable but customer reviews fill me with dread and it's just a bit of a slog.

I'm excited at the prospect of sitting at a desk, learning new things, having people to chat to and being paid! And there's loads of things like a pension, healthcare etc which I can't currently afford

IncrediblySadToo NHS IT, band 7.

I work in Service Management and I make stuff lean.

I also write a lot of presentations on how my team saves money. It’s a lot of bollocks.

WingBingo thank you. Long may it last!

PolarBear. As you have so little to do, could you study while you’re there?

Most of human life is bullshit.

In a tribe, weaving macaw feathers into your hair for a ritual dance? Made up human bullshit, only serves a purpose in our minds.

Watching a drama? Irrelevant bullshit.

The concept of money? Made up human bullshit.

Bullshit jobs they may be, but bullshit jobs still pay, and unless you're willing to change jobs and retrain...take the bullshit money and enjoy your spoils knowing you got one over on them.

I haven't read the book so I can't comment on it, but if its premise is anything like the cartoon @BondiandBabe shared, then the logic is deeply flawed.

Yes nurses, doctors, law enforcement etc, are vital jobs, but that doesn't mean other jobs are bullshit. It's important that an economy is healthy enough to adequately fund these bullshit jobs, and that's where the other jobs come in. And it's simplistic to think that we could go back to trading skills instead of money... It's logistically impossible given medical and technological advances, and the training and capital necessary to maintain these standards... and given the population sizes.

And why has the comic writer drawn arbitrary lines of what's a vital and what's a bullshit job. A tax advisor is a bullshit job but an artist isn't?

Anyway I've realised I can't be bothered to deconstruct the comic since I couldn't really get past her saying that women only really entered the workforce 50 years ago. A basic history lesson would shows that's completely inaccurate. Women only started doing professional jobs relatively recently, but cooks, nannies, governesses, maids, farmers, mill workers, seamstresses... throughout history women have worked in numbers except for the upper classes.

*It's important that an economy is healthy enough to adequately fund these vital jobs

I genuinely think that the modern workforce is a kind of slavery. You have to work to fund your necessities of life in 99% of cases.

My work is going through a a major restructure and cost saving initiative. This is at the instigation of the latest boss who has been in the post about 2 years.
We are all expected to attend the seminars on our progress and 'growth' and smile and applause his genius adopting his 'new way of working'
Effectively helping him prove that the business only actually needs 50% of its staff.

Smiling and clapping our way out of a job.......

I don't see why we can't reduce the working week. With commuting time addad on its too long. More free time would mean more service provider jobs for others.
But the skewed cost of housing makes that unlikely to happen.

The thing is, even if you have a non-bullshit job, the economic conditions around it can still cause it to be bullshit on some level. I used to be a process development chemist in a big pharma company, I mostly worked on troubleshooting manufacturing processes of drugs that are already on the market. I would say that was pretty useful, you know, people use those drugs every day. But the bullshit factor is that they kept making people redundant and transferring operations to east Asia and India. Which is fine, those guys work very hard and are very good. But it leaves this rump of chemists and biologists in western Europe who had to go and change career, tons of them took early retirement or like me took the opportunity to become SAHMs when it came - they'd all happily go back and do research for beer money. And there are so many conditions that have no cure and the existing remedies are shite. But somehow, even though we have the need, and the people, there's never the money. And if you do still work in the industry it really saps away your sense of purpose to realise that there's a ton of people in the UK who would happily take your job, and in the east there's a ton of people who would do it and for half the cost of you. I don't know where we're supposed to get the motivation to get up in the morning. I suspect that this is a lot of the reason we ended up with Brexit too.

I blame PowerPoint for a lot of the bullshit.

There can also be a lot of bullshit aspects to non bullshit jobs. At one time I worked with vulnerable people. It was needed. What was not needed was the accompanying reams of paperwork that no one would ever actually read. In the end I left when it became 10% working with people, 90% pointless paperwork.

I’ll follow this threat with interest. I read the book recently and got me thinking, although it hasn’t yet changed my life. I’m not sure I have a bullshit job but it definitely has aspects of it

It’s also all the corporate bullshit. To me, a job is a job. I have no interest in happy clappy team building nonsense or attending “Town Hall” sessions with a CEO earning a million pounds a year whilst the underlings are on minimum wage.

I just can’t buy into any of it.

Rach182, yep, looking at some figures from Victorian England, around 40% of working class women worked after marriage, even if it was doing piece work / ironing at home for money.

Workers in more professional jobs were expected to leave work on marriage, The Civil Service marriage bar was only lifted in 1946.
Just read that in Ireland, The marriage bar was lifted in 1957 for primary teachers but remained in place for civil servants until 1973.

Today, around 70% of women of working age are in employment up from 50% in 1971. We’ve swapped from one form of servitude to another.

Just wanted to bump this thread as I can totally relate. I spend a lot of my time feeling frustrated about the fact that something so bullshit can cause me so much stress.

I'm reading it now, about halfway through. It's interesting but not earth-shattering or particularly new thinking, and I don't think it's going to change my life.

My job is also bullshit. I am always asked to provide stats that I know no one ever reads. So now I make them up. No one has ever noticed.

There is much that is suboptimal, counterproductive, defeating of purposes, inefficient wasteful

I think it's turning us all into nervous wrecks also.

ooh I'm going to read this

not sure what I can achieve without enough money but the whole live in a log cabin is very appealing.

have to have a massive stash of painkillers before I go in though!!