Do you have a bullshit job?

[bogrl]

On zoom earlier with some friends and were having this discussion about what constitutes a 'bullshit job' (ie one that doesn't really matter in the great scheme of life.

Given the current circumstances and how life has really been pulled into focus we were thinking about what we contribute.

I was being smug as a teacher and then when I thought about it, all I really do is prepare kids for bullshit jobs!

We basically ended up with saying we need to live in small communities where everyone works for the good of that community with no travel - essentially going back hundreds of years. No bullshit jobs and living off the land.

Do you have a bullshit job? Has all this made you look at things differently?

No I definitely don't work in a bullshit job! I help to diagnose and treat very serious life limiting conditions. TBH this is something I've thought of before all of this. I have a couple of friends working in very 'makey uppy' jobs and they try to find other ways to help people like getting involved in social/volunteer programs at work. I think I'm very fortunate to help people in my job, it's very fulfilling and gives me good job satisfaction, I don't need to seek that kind of validation from anywhere else. I have one friend who moved from an organization with strong social responsibility to a morally corrupt one which does no good to mankind and I judge her for it

I teach and it does occur to me that the (core) curriculum is essentially bullshit. That said, I can't imagine ping something frothy like selling artisanal coffee or PR for a bullshit sector. I'd love to work as a radiographer but I can't afford to retrain.

Ping? I think that was supposed to be doing!

I’m a secondary school teacher, and don’t think that the job in general is bullshit. HOWEVER, there are very many bullshit aspects to the job as it is nowadays, including the administration and data collection, and the act of teaching to the test.

I am senior management for a small (tiny) company that discovers new cancer drugs. We are doing our first clinical trial this year. I'd like to think it's not a BS job, but I'm not in the lab any more and manage people and projects. Maybe one of the ones that you could lose and be not worse for it???

I work in the community, not a bull shit job as it’s quite important but at the moment I’m wanting to do something bull shit 🤣

I am a lecturer as well and so I count that as half a bullshit job. Occasionally one of my students goes on to do very worthwhile jobs, and I think it's important to have critical thought about government policies through what I research, I also really enjoy helping students achieve their goals (which is usually get a good mark on their dissertation) but it's also a lot of hot air at times.

Probably, depends how deeply you look into these things doesn't it? My job involves helping people.

This lockdown certainly makes you take a long hard look at things, the lives we live and the reasons we do the things we do.

I've stayed in now for what, four weeks I think? I feel in limbo now, I don't really like lockdown but I can't quite imagine going back to my bullshit life queuing in traffic to get to my bullshit job, driving around to do stuff and to buy stuff. It's all just weird.

I was a school librarian, that was definitely not a bullshit job because it was mainly about encouraging students to love reading for pleasure.
But have worked bullshit jobs in the past so I do know what you mean.

SingingSands is your user name from The Moonstone? My favourite book.

FWIW I don't think teaching is a bullshit job. I just think we don't value education enough.

We value qualifications but we don't value being educated.

@StrictlyAFemaleFemale

I suspect we work in the same pubic sector organisation helping people into jobs - DWP or CIAG related?

My DB is frontline personnel. A Prof of Medicine that’s been working in a hospital. Before CV19, he taught in various Medical schools around the world contributing to the health of mankind with his research findings.
Me on the other hand, I was contributing to destroying the planet with building bigger oil rigs. Complete and utter BS job but so so so well paid. I’ve “retired” and now, retraining in Interior Architecture. BS job? Maybe but I’m on the camp that as humans we’ll always want pretty things to look at and live with.

Yes, prob even worse that I work for the nhs in a bullshit job! This whole situation is making me seriously consider retraining - perhaps to a clinical role.

I work for the third sector, helping people who are facing food poverty or an acute food access crisis. I find short term and long term solutions for them, as much as I can. Quite obviously, my job is incredibly vital right now.

However, it's a bullshit job in that it shouldn't exist and people should not find themselves experiencing food shortages in a country of plenty!

I don't know OP - there are certainly some bullshit jobs, but I think to extrapolate from that that nearly everyone is miserable at work and the only solution is to abandon on the social, scientific and techological advances we've made and go back to the rose-tinted past is just a little bit extreme!

I think you are being a very pessimistic about the future of your students - some of my jobs have been bullshit jobs, some haven't, but it's rare I've been genuinely unhappy in any of them - those I haven't enjoyed I've left as soon as possible and tried something else. I've switched careers several times already and am only in my early thirties. That's the beauty of life today - we have a lot of choice. If we went back to your idealised pre-industrial revolution style of living, you'd be a farmer or a housewife, or maybe a doctor/midwife.....and if you weren't any good at that, or had a physical or mental inability that meant you couldn't do it or just plain hated it then what? tough luck?

There's nothing to say that all the children you teach will go into bullshit jobs, and even if they do, lots of them might be really happy in them. One of your students could go into science, or research, or translation, computer software writing, or law, or risk analysis, or data examination, and be responsible for manufacturing and disseminating the vaccine for the next pandemic that comes our way in 20-30 years.

Yep, I have a bullshit job. I work in Finance in the steel industry so it's miserable & bullshit. It's a career I fell into & felt trapped.

I'm doing a bit of soul searching, I would love to retrain to do something more meaningful.

I'm a primary school teacher.

There's plenty of rubbish in the curriculum and people with genuinely bullshit jobs have screwed my work-life balance, but I think that the essence of my job is important.

Before teaching, I was a care worker, supporting adults with brain injuries. Definitely not a bullshit job.

First job when I left uni was a bullshit job because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I lasted less than a year and quit because it seemed pointless.

No I like my job I'm a specialist nurse

Teaching isn't a bullshit job and a good teacher does far more than prepare their students for bullshit jobs. You're opening their minds, helping them to learn to think, broadening horizons. Educating isn't just about qualifications or what purpose you use it for.

I wouldn't say my job's bullshit, but it's definitely not necessary.

I get paid a decent salary to tell people things they already know and then they do what I say they ought to do.

I love what I do, I enjoy it, but when I compare my job with DH's, I have none of the stress he has, I'm not putting my life on the line every day, and he gets paid about 10k less than me.

ALL of my jobs have been bullshit jobs. There’s a book called Bullshit Jobs.

Some of what I do is bullshit, but most of it isn't (almost all health and education related, mainly freelance, split between several companies/organisations). A lot of the information I provide is then used by professionals to help make decisions and/or advance their knowledge. And that was a deliberate choice about 25 years ago.

I could have made a lot more money by going into a more corporate/finance/commercial oriented environment but I couldn't have handled a lot of the people. (I still encounter them occasionally although I've lost touch with a lot of them over the years.)

I think for some people the sudden realisation of the sheer amount of bullshittery in their jobs is one of the many reasons this lockdown is proving very, very difficult on a personal, spiritual level. There's one particular previous employer that had utterly mastered the philosophy of management by pointless meeting and I really wonder how they're coping. (With endless Zoom streaming, probably.)

There'll be other sectors in time that will grow, I'd have thought farming (thank you sincerely to ALL farmers on here), food production, food security, AI, cybersecurity and surveillance, cybercurrencies; teaching and healthcare will continue, but morph dramatically (already seeing "telehealth" type projects), but it's going to be an, er, interesting middle bit! I'd hope the penny might also have dropped that machine translation isn't always enough when it comes to medicine and science, too. (Huge understatement there.) And I'd be surprised if there isn't more need for Mandarin and Russian speakers/readers in the very near future.

(The jury's still out in this house on MPs, members of the House of Lords, Royal Families, 'Slebs who don't actually entertain or play anything [we really hope most actors and singers and comedians, and some footballers come through this in some form], and PR, HR and marketing professionals.)

Plus I can do some useful-ish things outside the day job. Just don't ask me to do things that involve brute strength or dexterity. ;)

Is an architect a bullshit job?

A builder would probably say yes

Mine is total BS, but the pay is reasonable for the little brainpower required and it allows me to have a good work-life balance, so I’ve stuck it out far longer than I should. It depresses me every day though, as I’m just a bum on a seat to my employers. Now that I’m WFH I can do the work in about 1.5 per day, which says a lot.