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?

I work in law enforcement and I don't think my job is bullshit. I think we do a brilliant job in what we're trained to do but the public inherently hate us. Unfortunately we're massively understaffed which doesn't help.

Care home manager so not a BS job. But the amount of bs we have to do to jump through hoops set by other people whose jobs I would consider to be BS means that aspects if the work make aspects of the job BS, iyswim?

Fashion marketing, absolute BS. Not helping anyone, apart from the owners get richer. I would love to do something less BS but I dont know where to start, have always done BS jobs.

Once I met my (then new) DP’s friends, a couple. Got chatting to the woman and asked what job she did. “I work in HR at Paddy Power [the betting company]. It’s such a laddish company and HR there is really important to try to keep that type of culture in check”. I was like = bullshit job.

The original Bullshit Jobs article

I used to be in a health sector job which I wasn’t suited to. Moved to a bit of a bs job, but in a company that has great working conditions and policies. The company itself does tech/R&D stuff that is fairly useful to society. I sort of help it to function more efficiently. It has allowed me to help out more with family/relatives. My quality of life is a lot better. A job is only 1 part of life.

I'm in a bullshit NHS middle management job - utter, utter bullshit makey- uppy job, in a terrible culture. I'm actively looking for a way back into the commercial sector where at least I can do bullshit work in a pleasant environment, not a dirty, messy old office with crap technology.

I sorry op.but is this the first time you have thought this?

I knew that the vast majority of jobs are bullahit when I was 18 and I am 55 now.

The problem is that the answer is not to go back to 'simple' community living. We had that in the past and some isolated places still do. You still have people in those communities who are unhappy,. unfulfilled and mentally ill as well as happy fulfilled people. It is called the human condition.

I think we do probably need fewer people in the world but most importantly we need a complete rethink about the balance between social responsibility and individual freedoms and what is realistic but no human society will be a utopia with everyone leading perfectly fulfilled lives ( well not outside Star Trek anyway)
Many many people will live meaningless lives if you judge them by such lofty ideals
Most people want meaning in their lives. Not everybody finds it in the same place and many don't find it at all . Nothing you do to how society is organised will change that .

Bullshit job here! Started in middle management just before coronavirus hit. Appreciate the nice pay but not making a real difference to anyone or anything.

I'm nearly a qualified children's nurse so not a bullshit job, a carer for disabled children before that (awesome job, the opposite of bullshit).
But I've done some dire bullshit jobs over the years.
I worked in Comet for 2 minutes. I washed up in a restaurant for half a day, loneliest job in the planet, various pub and club work, barista!

I make TV programmes which is obviously total bs and I'd be the first to get eaten in a proper apocalypse. But with so many people isolated and alone at the moment, who rely on the telly to hear a human voice or get a bit of joy or comfort, it oddly seems like slightly less bs than usual.

Agree with bumbling. I think it's very idealistic/naive to say - oh if we can go back to a rural idyll where people all work together for the good of the community we would all be happier. Usually when people say this they imagine some sort of happy village with all the trappings and benefits of late capitalism - ie we would still have good health care, plentiful and varied food supply, comfortable and warm homes, arts, culture etc. Things that our global communities and plentiful taxes provide. One of my friends said something similar to me a while ago - about poorer countries being happier due to the simpler lives people have. Coming from an African country I was actually quite offended. In many places people there still do live a "simple" life - in small communities growing their own food etc. In fact, these places are some of the UNhappiest to live - poverty, violence, hunger, no healthcare so many family members die frequently (much more so than from Corona) - being just a few reasons. Whilst agree we could lose the pointless celebrity worship and consumerism we are all extremely lucky to be born when and where we have been.

I'm a scientist that works in the pharma industry. Currently the whole industry is testing anti-virals and looking for a vaccine. Feel pretty essential at the moment!

Call me cynical but I do think the ultimate bullshit job is being paid to write about how jobs you have no knowledge or experience of are bullshit.

@countfosco

I think you've missed the point of what calling a job bs actually means.

@bumblingbovine49

Don't be sorry, nothing to be sorry for.

But no, this certainly wasn't the first time I had considered this. I don't think I said anywhere that it was?

It may be the first time some people are considering it and that's ok, we all come to realise things at different stages of our lives.

@lokoho

Thanks for the link, that article is brilliantly written and sums it up in a way I definitely can't!

No.

But then I don't think you need to save the world/ humanity/ cure cancer and poverty for your job not to be bullshit. Most people in most of history have worked to provide food and shelter and, if they are lucky, some quality of life for them and their families. I don't call that bullshit or meaningless.

I've wrestled with this question throughout my working life. I started out very naive and idealistic and longed to save the world. I worked for orgs that intended to do good for vulnerable people and probably did some, but I realized that some people were able to position themselves as beneficiaries who weren't the most in need. I worked for orgs that did worthwhile things where my role added very little. If I'd been more mature, I could have worked out a way to use these concerns usefullly, to help the organization do better, but I was young and disillusioned and didn't know what to do with it.

My current role is in a different sector. I work for a big institution - if people feel the institution treated them incorrectly, they can come to me to have their concern looked at. In a small way, I feel I make things fairer. It works for my life at the moment - single parent with full financial responsibility - but I'm disappointed that I didn't do the great things I wanted to. I still hope that when DD is older, I might be able to do something more, but I don't know.

Apparently my job is like a super hero, angelic in some way.
To be honest, it’s not at all.

All of a sudden we are amazing.

After 31 years in the NHS with zero recognition, having to pay to park at work, having to pay professional fees every year to continue to do my job, having to document as a bullshit paper exercise my work hours, training activities, feedback from people in order to continue to do my job.
Just before corona I was kicked so hard in the chest by a patient that I was knocked off my feet, had to to have a week off work because he hurt my back (first period of sickness in over 10 years) and had to have a return to work interview justifying my time off.
Not the first assault I’ve had at work by a long chalk.
Being spoken to like I’m a piece of shit on the bottom of a shoe by patients relatives & doctors, for years and years on sometimes a daily basis.

Now I’m more terrified than I’ve ever ever been to go to my job, not because of potential for assault or being shouted at or spoken to like I’m shit but because I don’t know what ppe I will be faced with.
Who will be there, young old, a colleague, tragic tragic sick people dying before my eyes.
Sobbing, Holding the hand of that dying person because we will not, can not let them go alone. filling up the goggles with tears I can’t dry because I can’t touch the mask or my face.
But can’t go for a break for another 2 hours because there isn’t enough ppe for the rest of the shift If it’s changed too often.

So yes, I feel that my job is bullshit but not for any other reason than all of that I have described.

Intensive care has been my home, my life, my saviour my absolute constant for nearly 30 years.
I couldn’t do anything else.
Despite all the bullshit, and there’s a mountain of the stuff, it’s worth going in for.
To have the recognition is actually nice, but it will all go back to normal when we all go back to normal that is a bullshit cherry on a bullshit cake and that’s what is wrong.

I don't think that there are that many bullshit jobs to be honest. I've seen quotes such as: "I don't save lives, so my job's not so important" (I've paraphrased that but it captures the essence). Is that really true?

Let's get all the obvious non-contenders out of the way: health care, emergency services and teaching are the ones that jump out straight away.

Then we need our infrastructure to be maintained — right from major nationwide facilities to smaller things in our homes. And we need 'stuff'. So anyone in 'logistics' (for want of a better word), manufacturing and retail can be easily classified as non bullshit. I'll include central government here too.

Then there's the rest of us. Let's suppose that they got rid of all the other jobs. We'd be well, we'd have stuff, we'd have utilities and infrastructure.

And then what would we do? No entertainment, no restaurants, no theme parks, no sport, no arts, no lawyers to advise me, no accountants to keep the money in check, no fashion designers, no interior designers. No discretionary activities.

Sorry, I've rambled a bit here — and I know that my 'model' is over simplified — but what I'm trying to say is that, whatever you do, your job counts to the social environment in which we all live.

You're all important and what you do isn't bullshit

No. I own a business that transforms people's lives. DH works for a not for profit research organisation. Both definitely not BS jobs.

Op, don't feel like that. You don't prepare young people for bullshit, you prepare them to go out in the world and contribute to society.
I think you are feeling down with everything going on. Go a walk in the fresh air and gather your thoughts. You are doing a really important job

I feel like I help kids cope with life through the activities I teach so in a way it’s not bullshit. But it’s for a business which is very much for-profit and is only really accessible to kids who’s parents can afford to pay for it.

I’m hoping to move into the charitable/ social care type sector soon though and help kids that need it more

Nah, I'm 3rd sector helping vulnerable women. I can very smugly say that I do not have a bullshit job