The Story of Bullshit Jobs

THE STORY OF BULLSHIT JOBS

Imagine this, spending a whole day at the office on youtube watching funny cat videos and before you now it your boss is standing behind you. You expect a sharp reprimand but instead he/she gives you a suggestion for another video. You do this every day except when the deadlines for projects are right at your doorstep and the impact of your reduction in productivity is barely felt. You start to ask yourself if your job matters or if your contribution has any effect. I mean sure you appreciate the pay check, its the main reason you put up with work at all, but are you start to wonder if you’re adding any value or if your job is a bullshit job?

Why do pointless jobs exist? Today, bullshit jobs, just like office paper, litter offices all over the world like abandoned furniture left to gather dust. You would think companies and corporations are keen on cutting costs associated with

Bullshit jobs have now become a common feature, and indeed, the hallmark of the 21st century.

employing human capital. However, just like me, you are probably wrong. I know, it’s ironic that in a capital driven society such as today’s, where businesses are obsessed with the bottom-line and every infinitesimal cost that is associated with it, that they would somehow overlook one of their largest expenses. Bullshit jobs have now become a common feature, and indeed, the hallmark of the 21st century. There is even a movie about it! Just at the turn of the millennium, Twentieth Century Fox produced Office Space, a comedy featuring the

mundane lives of company employees working meaningless jobs. What’s more, it received good ratings for such a low-budget film. How ominous of our choice of entertainment. As it has turned out, that movie might as well have simply been a case of selfdeprecating sense of humour perhaps.

What kind of job would you do for a decent amount of money? Would you be willing to sit around the whole day just so you can handle a few office phone calls at a publishing company? Perhaps being a print paper feeder at the office would suit you. What about a lift operator? How about a seemingly important one such as a night security guard at an empty factory or warehouse in the middle of nowhere? A tollbooth operator? No?

Figure 1: Bullshit Jobs (Medium Corporation, 2017)

While such jobs are so “20th century”, we are, unbelievably, still neck deep in such types of occupations. Such a situation is highly is counterintuitive and is cast into even sharper light considering the expectations that came with technological development. As David Graeber observed:

“In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by Century's end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week.” How mythical such optimistic sentiments now ring in light of the situation we have found ourselves in.”

The above excerpt forms the introduction of a now famous essay that David Graeber wrote for ‘Strike! Magazine’ in 2013. Titled, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work

Rant by David Graeber, the piece was an instant hit. The huge reception that it received led to its translation into at least a dozen languages in a matter of weeks. Eventually, he wrote a book that covered the subject of mundane jobs much more extensively, turning him into an expert speaker of sorts on the matter. It is a wonder that it took Graeber to point out an issue that was glaringly obvious for people to finally notice. On the utopian claim, quoted above, by John Keynes, a 2015 poll conducted by YouGov in Britain dispelled it in toto. The analytics firm surveyed people on whether they found their occupations meaningful; revealing that about 37% of Britons felt that there was no real need for their job.

So why does capitalism keep creating pointless jobs? Commenting on Graeber’s book in an article for Medium, Erik Engheim opined that, “You can’t avoid bullshit jobs in a capitalistic system.” So why, in a system designed to improve efficiency especially in human capital, would there still be a proliferation of useless jobs? Graeber wondered whether someone somewhere simply came up with such irrelevant jobs just so they can keep us working. He described bullshit jobs as follows:

“A form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.”

Despite such a precise description, characterising someone’s job as “bullshit” is a slippery slope on its own. Amidst a population boom, that has pushed many out of employment and turned the world into a gig economy, a robotics revolution is slowly creeping its way into the market, threatening to shelve even more jobs. Bullshit jobs appear to have become a solution of sorts to this predicament, serving to keep people employed. This is in direct contravention of the tenets of our capitalistic world order. Of course, the irony of such a situation was not lost on Graeber. In economics, a profit-oriented firm would never dish out money just so somebody they don’t really need can earn a living. Nevertheless, against all odds, this is exactly what has been happening. It is even more bizarre that amidst all the cost-cutting measures employed by firms, such as downsizing and layoffs, paper pushers and the likes miraculously keep their jobs. What’s more, these jobs not only survive the cut, they also keep increasing! Although he argues from an economics standpoint, he believes that the solution to this problem is more of a

moral and even political one. Engheim believes it is simply a managerial oversight. While management is responsible for the human capital it employs, it is not all seeing. Therefore, regarding lower level jobs, management almost fully relies on its workers to tell them whether there is still a need for such jobs, and no such incentive exists for employees to do so. It’s more of a prisoner’s dilemma: workers and managers generally distrust each other, and while employees often know how to improve production efficiency, they prefer to let management figure this out for itself, rather than speak and risk losing their jobs.

While Graeber fails to furnish his readers with any persuasive solutions to this 21st century phenomenon, he most certainly ignited a conversation and re-examination that has caught on. This debate will no doubt become

In Africa earning a living is just that, earning a living. Only a very small percentage of the population can afford to think about actual fulfilment from employment. Unemployment is dire, so everyone with a job feels lucky to have one. Africa and the rest of the world are at two different point of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

While the rest of the world is beginning to be concerned with issues around esteem self-actualization, the African job market seems to be keener on safety and a sense of belonging.

(Inspired by David Graeber)